I finally have my grow bed in the back yard up and running. It's 3'x7' built from recycled material, old deck boards and other salvaged materials.
I have a 1/6 hp sump pump on a cheap timer that runs for 1/2 hour and is off for 1 1/2 hours. It's on a $5 indoor light timer from the local hardware store. It fit inside the weather proof fixture that I already in place for the pond pump.
The return hose is a 1 1/4" central vac hose that I've had sitting around for years, don't have a central vac system, and it's fed with a garden hose.
The media is mostly lava rock then topped with river rock.
I have one tomato plant, rainbow chard, bush cucumbers, green beans and a few zinnias planted. The beans and cucumbers have popped up since the pictures were taken. The tomato plant was started in my indoor system then moved out here.
The pond is shallow and I'm estimating about 280 gallons. I moved 8 goldfish from the indoor system back out here, they seem to be doing good.
The next thing is to make it look pretty, for my wife.

I think the greenhouse is out, at least for this property, so I would like to build a series of grow beds across the back fence with a fish tank on the high end. Then I need to work in the existing pond to make it work better as a sump. Maybe next year.





The media guard is a plastic jar that held whey protein from my sons football days. It worked great cause it's sturdy enough and has a screw on lid.





There's a 1/4" hole at the base of the stand pipe for the water to drain after the pump stops.



The fish hide under the flat rock so the herons don't snack on them. It does bring the water level down in the pond but not as bad after the media went in.