Hey escoehng, thought you might be interested.

See photo at: http://static.flickr.com/42/114625874_c2cd4ed386.jpg

The Early Purple Stem broccoli in the back row of the box on the left is doing really well.

I had some Waltham 29 Broccoli in the front row of that box, but the frost kept killing it. Not sure what's there now. For some reason I thought all the broccolis could tolerate a little frost. The purple stem leaves turned brown after a frost but always came back. The box on the right has a mix of lettuce, kohlrabi, cabbage.

I made another box last week and will put 2 tomatoes in it today. Accuweather is predicting no <40F temps between now and April 2.

I plan to build another box for sweet peppers and eggplant.

I'm also finding the boxes make good guides for dragging hoses.

dawdler, Could you explain how you made your earth boxes?

Sure WandaK.

I downloaded the instructions from:

http://www.hometown.aol.com/jmalt31/myhomepage/Earthbox.PDF

The instructions are pretty straightforward and there are lots of pictures.

The commercial version of the earthbox is available at

http://www.earthbox.com/


Message was edited by: dawdler

I did put broccoli in one of my boxes too! So far so good. I have the Waltham broccoli too, and also some of the kind with the swirly top. The other box is empty right now but it will get eggplant in a couple more weeks when it is warmer. I also want to do one with melons and one with tomatoes but I haven't found anymore containers on sale yet.

Established broccoli can take frost, but maybe not every type I don't know. I usually have some over winter outside, though they don't all make it. I know their ideal temperatures are around room temperature.

Glad you posted the pictures, hopefully DH will take a picture for me one of these days.

I saw an ad for the earthbox and was interested but it seems like it's a little more complicated than I need. What's the advantage of this or the home made version over just a regular container? Is it the water storage? I'm going to supplement my raised beds with some containers this year and am trying to decide just what to use.

I'll have no trouble keeping up with watering and think a simple container with adequate drainage should suffice.

Of course the earthbox web page says it's the best thing since sliced bread, but what do you think?

DD

The big advantage I see, is the water storage. The bottom 1/3 to 1/2 of the container is water. Hopefully it's enough I will not have to water for a few days during the drought of summer.

With the plastic covering on top there should be no weeds.

In my area we have problems with tomato wilt. There's another name for it, but I can never remember it. Anyways by using potting soil in the earthbox I can avoid the fungus that causes the wilt.

So mostly I'm using it to be sure I atleast get something. The earthbox looks pretty idiot proof.

I'm just getting started on building up the organic material around here. So the earthbox is helping me while I get a grip on things.

Oh and I like trying new things.

My computer is so slow that it takes too long to even be able to read this. I will copy the address & try it some time late at night when I can wait for it to finish. Thanks for your effort.

Here water stress is a big issue in mid summer. The earthbox also lets air get to the roots from underneath the plants. Also, the fertilizer can slowly leach into the soil since the plant is not watered from the top ever so it doesn't get washed down from the surface. If you didn't need the water storage component, perhaps just adding an air tube to the regular container, putting fertilizer on top of the soil and cover it with something, so water comes from a dish underneath only, would do the same thing.

Usually here eggplants do better in containers anyway so I'll be trying them too. Also I can never get a mellon (except for a volunteer one time X-( ) so I am going to try that too. I'll try one with tomatoes just to see how they do. Maybe I will grow one earthbox with tomatoes and one container not converted to an earthbox next to it and see what happens.