Digging into earth boxes
I have garden envy. One of my friends, overwhelmed by the idea of gardening, decided to forge ahead and plant her own garden this year. I went with her to the garden store -- where I bought a cucumber and pepper plant for the Veggie Challenge -- and coached her as she picked her plants and herbs, a pot or two, and an EarthBox.
Months later, my plants are struggling along as i try to keep them hydrated and healthy, and her plants -- cantaloupe, Lima beans and cucumbers -- are EXPLODING! It's amazing!
I'm happy for her, but yeah, I'm a little jealous. OK, a lot jealous.
The EarthBox is basically a pre-fab self-watering system. It comes with fertilizer and all the tools you need to build it. All you have to add is water, potting mix and your seedlings. But it's a little pricey. It's not too bad -- my friend bought hers for about $60 -- but at that point in the season, when I'd already bought oodles of pots, it was just too much me.
Flickr apparently has an EarthBox group -- feel free to check it out for yourself. If you're too frugal to buy a box, some kind folks have published instructions on how to build your own. (The photo above is one person's tomatoes from a DIY box. She has a photo set detailing what she did.) I may make my own before I leave on vacation in a few weeks to make my watering solution more manageable.
Anyone had success with EarthBox or made their own? I'm curious.
Comments
Check out the Garden Patch "Grow Box". (www.agardenpatch.com). It works even better than the EarthBox and they're about 1/2 the price.
Posted by: Kip | July 21, 2009 9:48 AM
I have four EarthBoxes and I've had fantastic success with everything I have grown in them. I've done side-by-side tests growing tomatoes in an EarthBox and the same variety in the ground, and the EarthBox plants ALWAYS out-produce the in-ground plants. I honestly don't know why anyone would try to make their own growning box, because my EarthBoxes work so well. The website is great, too, with a great forum filled with hands-on information.
Posted by: Randy Schultz | July 22, 2009 12:17 PM
I have an EarthBox and I'm very, very happy with it. Rather than recommend a brand, I recommend using a sub-irrigated planter in any shape or form, which is what an Earthbox is. Ikea makes a few that run between $10-$20 and there are a lot of DIY instructions online. It would be a lot cheaper to just build a sub irrigated planter yourself out of materials commonly found. But for the manually challenged, an Earthbox, Grow Box, or the Ikea SIPs are good choices. If you have water, fertilizer, and calcium available to your plants 24/7 they will do better than those in the ground or in conventional planters. SIPs are the way of the future.
Posted by: graciela. | September 25, 2009 3:14 PM