Growing with Earthbox

My brandies were large and a flat oval shape also. Then a different variety was rounded. No matter the shape they sure taste good.The brandies are heirlooms so they will not have the cosmetic look of hybrids. I've been harvesting peppers, cucumbers, eggplant and cantaloupes enough to supply two neighbors. This is coming from only four e-boxes. My others have the late started mini-orange tomatoes(they are just about ready) strawberries,which I had to prune the runners yesterday and watermelons about the size of a tennis ball.


This message was edited Jun 19, 2004 4:25 PM

i'm trying an earthbox this year for the first time - but please HELP!!!!! my corn is falling over. it's about 18" tall - should i push them down deeper into the soil? or should i try and stake them somehow? should i try adding soil through the little holes?

I don't understand! Corn should grow straight up because of it's growing habits. Did you apply fertilizer in a two inch line down the center of the box? Do you add water daily? Is it in a sunny location? Answer these questions and we can go from there!

handhelpers, we experienced a severe thunderstorm and the wind knocked my tomato plants sideways. I pushed them back into place and managed to slip those old, round tomato cages over them, and pushed the stakes into the soil, right through the plastic.

Perhaps that might work with the corn. I am sure that putting a stake wouldn't hurt either.

tplant - yes i have the 2" fertilizer strip down the middle. it's in a sunny location - i fill the tube with water every couple days if it doesn't rain [they're growing fast - and the soil seems wet, so i don't think water is an issue] maybe i have them too close to the edge? i started the seeds in a tiny pot = and then transplanted them when they were a couple inches tall - maybe i didn't plant them deep enough? but i remember definitely covering the roots at that time - now i can see them a little bit. what do you think?

You can always see corn roots reaching down to the soil out here in the country. Last year my pepper plants started to lean heavily toward the outside, so I put a stake in each end of the box and made a circle of pantyhose like a corral, to keep them from leaning out so much and possibly breaking off. It seemed to work.... I think as long as the corn doesn't actually pull out of the soil, it will keep growing and make ears.


Eileen

I do believe corn is supposed to be seeded directly and not transplanted. Perhaps that is your problem because you have done every thing correctly. I have never transplanted corn so I can't comment. If not to late in season maybe you can direct seed? Plant four kernnels in a tight circle in your e-box. Do this down the line on each side spacing a couple of inches apart. After they reach 10inches or so pull out the weakest and leave one strong stalk per circle. Do this to every circle and leave the strongest. I have never had your problem with corn growth. The squirrels can attest to this! Let us know how you make out.

i think it's too late up here to try and seed directly - corn's supposed to be knee-high by 4th of july! but maybe i'll take one hole and give it a whirl. i've put 2 bamboo stakes in the box [in each of the 2 Xs in the middle of each end] - and have strung fish line up and around. but think i'll replace with nylons tomorrow. i'll keep you posted! thanks all for your help!

One question I forgot to ask! How tall was your corn when you transplanted and when was that in relationship to the wilting?

it was about 4" tall - it never wilted....i think i'm gonna move the box to a place where it gets sun all day long instead of just most of the day....

Hi folks...how's everyone doing. I promised Eileen to post a picture of my EarthBox tomato cages a while back but never was able to get my hands on a camera. I just ordered one with my Father's Day loot and should have it tomorrow so I will post that picture and a few more of the garden. I've been picking cucumbers for the past week and should have some zucchini by the weekend. I also expect to have cherry and grape tomatoes by early July and ripe (red) hot peppers by mid July. I could pick some of my cayennes now nearly full size green but much prefer them red.

Rich

I've got cukes coming out of my ears. Next season I'm going to grow the burpless kind.(You know what I mean?) My mini-orange tomatoes are doing well for I have been eating them for a couple of days. They are a good salad tomato for they are only a little larger than a golf ball. I am surprised they did so well in this heat. I'm happy to know this because they will be part of my summer tomato crop. Peppers and eggplants galore. Been giving them away to my new neighbors. Great way to break the ice! I'm sure we will hear from others.

I haven't had near that kind of yield yet, but I did pick some nice bell peppers yesterday. The first ones!

SweetPea - They look great! My Bells suffered from sunscald and not BER as originally stated. I believe Ritch had the same problem but mostly with Bells. Weird but true!!!!

Here's a picture of 2 Roma plum tomato plants in an EarthBox with one of my cages. On the left side are some of my cucumbers. Just got the camera today so if the pic isn't the best please excuse a photography novice.

Rich

What the heck...the first post seemed to work out OK so here's a shot from my back porch showing about 2/3 of my self watering pots. Mostly hot peppers on the concrete with some basil, parsley, an EarthBox with grape tomatoes and my zucchini in the background.

Rich

Lookin good ritchh!

Wow! Ritch, what a healthy garden! Looks great.

Jean

Rich, Thanks for the pictures. Is that red plastic mulch you have under the cucumbers? I tried putting some on top of the earthbox w/ the tomatoes last year, but the foliage covered it right up. I never thought of spreading it on the ground under the earthbox!

Yes that's red plastic but it's actually there because there are three tomato plants in the ground in front of the cucumbers. I also have it on the other side of the porch with three more tomato plants in the ground. It's the first time I've used it and although it's still too early to tell my plants seem to be setting more fruit. If nothing else it saves my chronically bad back since I don't have to weed.

Great pictures - they are stirring up some ideas over here....

I've been gardening for over 35 years Eileen, and not one of those years has gone by where I didn't get some new ideas to try next year. It's one of the things that keeps gardening new and fun. I've scaled back the garden over the last 10 years. I used to start all my plants under fluorescent lights in the basement and besides the pots and small plot of ground behind the house, I had a 10' x 40' plot on the side of the house which I routinely double and sometimes triple cropped. In addition to that I had 4 fig trees, all planted in the mid 50's when the house was built by my wife's father. The one remaining tree, which was over 20' tall last year and produced without any exaggeration over 1000 figs, died back to the ground with the very bad winter we had. I thought it was completely dead but it has started to throw up shoots from the ground. If you look at the picture taken from my back porch you can see the new growth in the far right-center of the picture and the stumps left after I sawed down all the dead wood. It seems that the last 5 or 6 years, between the bad back and the time demanded to do it right, come the end of July I am starting to think that "this is the last year I'm going to do this", but every winter when the seed catalogs start to arrive I'm off and running again. I guess at this point it's in my blood to the point that my mind is programed to react every spring and that's probably not a bad thing.

Rich

I am also snagged by the seed catalogs every winter...of course I start my seeds under lights too early and have gangly monsters to plant out in spring! For me it's the knee-hi weeds, mosquitoes, and biting flies in July & August that make me wonder "is it worth it?". That's why the earthbox idea intrigues me...no weeds, and less bugs hanging around. But then there are drawbacks to earthbox (for me anyway) such as the @#$% zucchini wilting at mid-day even though I fill with water every morning...even having to add water daily can be a chore. Has anyone perfected a way to water these things regularly *besides* having a garden hose handy? My hose has to go thru the garage to reach my earthboxes, then my husband routinely drags the hose back to the front of the house and I'm back to dripping milk jugs full of water... I keep thinking that there should be a way to put together a watering system, all linked together, with just one spot to plug in a hose to fill all at once. Anyone???

Gardeners Supply has a double connection T- valve that lets you use two or more hoses from the same faucet. I have them and my son waters the lawn and I water my e-boxes. They are also available at Lowes and Home Depot.

Tplant -- a belated Happy Birthday to you! Hope it was a good one!

Yesterday, I had my very first taste of a Brandywine tomato grown in my Earthbox. Delightful. VERY tasty. Just delightful. It was worth waiting for!

Eileen, I know how you feel. The hardest part of watering the garden is dragging the hose all the way to the back of the yard to water the Earthboxes, and then waiting and waiting for them to fill because I am filling that little spout with a garden wand sprayer (too lazy to unscrew it for just this). I'll have to look into that T-valve that Tplant mentioned.

Jean

LSP, Arrgh! you already ate a tomato (a real one, not those plastic substitues found in the grocery store)? I'm so envious! Mine are still golf-ball sized and green!

The watering system I envision has hose sections that go into each earthbox, but they are linked together and have one port to connect the hose to. Then they would all fill at the same time. Kind of like a drip irrigation system, without the drip. Would you use hoses? pipe? pvc?

SweetPea, Thanks for the birthday greeting. This makes it 67 years of a very interesting life.
Don't know if I used the proper terminology for describing the
t-valve but I have a spray wand connected at one port and my garden hose with a variable adjustment for my regular watering. Another method is to use a portable water connection(also at Gardeners Supply) that extends your distance from your main water faucet. It to has a faucet on a metal stake that you drive into the ground. You simply run a main hose between the to faucets.

EileenLamb, This would work great for you for they also have one(which I have) that holds the hose so your garden looks neat. I bought this because I had a similiar problem pertaining to my watering and with my T-valve set-up , I could use both hoses at the same time. These products are available at Lowes or Home Depot.

SweetPea- How many Brandies(tomatoes) do you have on each plant? Mine were few!

Tplant,

Are these the things you are talking about? The 2-way or 4-way hose connectors? And the metal-stake hose extension?

I think what might be helpful would be to replace my regular ol' cheapie one-setting spray wand with one of those multi-pattern spray wands.

Right now, I place the head of the wand over the watering spout on the Earthbox to fill it. It works, but since the wand head is wider than the fill-hole, most of the spray falls outside of the fill-hole. So I wait and wait and wait for the box to fill.

If I had a multi-patterned spray with a 'jet' or small-stream setting, the water flow would be concentrated into the fill-spout.

My ideal would be to have one hose, coming off of one of those 4-way splitters, that is dedicated to the Earthboxes. At the EB-end of the hose, another splitter (possibly made up of PVC T-connectors?) with a short piece of hose or pipe (as Eileen suggested) running into each EB fill-pipe. And extra plus would be to have that hose on a timer.

Eileen, is that what you had in mind? Do you all think that might be feasible?

Also -- I've harvested only four Brandywines so far. I think you told me Tplant, a while back, that although Brandywines are tasty, that they are not prolific producers. I'll keep you posted on how they are doing.

The bell peppers are coming along just fine, and they taste so crisp and fresh.

Jean

Yes Jean, that's what I was thinking. The timer would just be a bonus! My hose problem is that my DH doesn't like the hose being in his garage. The splitter would allow a dedicated garden hose that I wouldn't have to turn on & off - could just use the valve & timer to fill the earthboxes. I would have to find 150 feet of hose to loop around the garage to the earthboxes, but then it could just stay there - hopefully disguised in the landscaping or something. Then, the earthboxes would be individually tubed and it would all connect into a main pipe which would connect to the hose. I suppose I should go to someplace like Home Depot or Lowe's and research all the connections; I need to see the parts in person to visualize the end product.

That's what I need to do also, Eileen.... go to Home Depot and actually look at the parts I will need. First, I am going to try to draw it on paper.

If you are going to have to lay out 150 feet of hose (!) and run it through landscaping, you might want to play with the idea of soaker hoses. If on a timer, then by the time the rest of the landscape is watered, then the EB's might be filled too. Something to think about anyway.

i like my soaker hoses - as well as the drip system on the patio - hadn't thought about running it to the earthbox, but that's a great idea. since i only have 1 so far, it's not a problem to just fill it with the hose.

I have a total of 13 EarthBoxes and 16 other self-watering pots and I really don't mind filling them up with the garden hose daily. I guess it would be different if I had to drag the hose a long distance but my hose is within a very few feet of all my pots. I'm surprised Eileen that your squash is wilting so quickly. I have 4 yellow straight necks in one EarthBox that are now producing and they get by just fine with a once a day filling. I also have 2 Sweeter 100 cherry tomato plants in one that are about 5' tall and Sweet Success cucumbers in another whose vines are about 8' and have climed up to my porch's wrought iron railing and they get along fine also on the once a day fill. One thing that I've found is very important is that the pots are on a level surface. I check them with a level when setting them up. If the EarthBox is out of level either left to right or front to back, you can dramatically cut down the amount of water that can be stored in the pot before it runs out the drain hole. Also I make sure that the potting mix is very thoroughly tamped into the two corners where it goes into the water as this insures the greatest efficiency of the capillary action that brings the water up to the plant.

Rich

Well I think the zucchini is going to be a failed project. Every day it seems to require at least 2 gallons of water, the box is fairly level as it sits on the deck and I can add lots & lots of water before it begins to drain out. I have 3 plants on one side and 3 yellow squash on the other. The yellow squash was quickly overwhelmed by the z. and hasn't really grown much so I'm not counting it as a contributor to the problem. The z. not only sucks up gallons of water, but it is now blossom-end rotting as well, likely related to the water issue. (used 10-10-10 down the center, as in all boxes) Meanwhile the extra z.plants I set in the regular garden are growing without watering (except rain) and setting fruit without problem.

Having said that, the celery is thriving and so are the herbs, have already cut & dried lots of parsley & par-cel. Wish I'd done dill too.

I looked up"Growing Peppers" on google and discovered that peppers do not require lots of water, so I cut back on the water in my e-boxes to once every other day and surprisingly no more BER. If you are having this problem, Rich, try it! I only seem to have BER with the Bells and not others. My eggplants love the e-box. they are prolific producers and I can almost feed the neighborhood. It is extremely hot here, not just the temperature, which is usually in the upper 80's but the sun is so brilliant that it burns some delicate plants like peas and most of all tomatoes except for cherry types. For now I am limited to peppers and eggplant. Can I send you some?

I think that some of the example plant counts given by EarthBox have to be taken with a grain of salt and some common sense. I have 4 yellow squash plants in the EarthBox. Any more and I too might be having your watering problem. Also I have found that 6 and not 8 is best for chili peppers. I did manage to grow 8 broccoli plants earlier in the year but with the cooler weather watering was never an issue, same for the 8 romaine lettuce I planted in early April. I have one planted now with 8 basil plants and they seem to be doing super. My wife freezes both parsley and basil. Being Italian, she is always making a pot of sauce and both the flat leaf parsley and the basil are indespensible. Are you sure that what you are calling BER on the squash isn't merely fruits that did not get pollinated. I've had some grow to 4 inches before shriveling up. Was thinking of Tplant tonight at dinner (lol). I picked my first few red chilis today (Super Chili Hybrid and Masquerade) and put them on a hamburger. Even being the chili head that I am, I must admit that they were seriously hot and my lips were burning for at least 15 minutes.

Rich

Hah! Hi ritchh, Even you are susceptable to those hot peppers. Don't know how you can do it unless you are Phillippino? I do eat some hot peppers but sparingly. Had to pull my cucumber. Couldn't keep up with them and it is just too hot for me to get around. My mini-orange tomatoes are still bearing tomatoes in spite of the heat. Low 90's during day but mid 80's at night. Not so good for tomatoes. I'll be planting my fall seeds next month. Can't wait for the cooler growing season although have no problems with peppers, eggplant and melons but I'm really a tomatoe man and do miss the varieties that I am used to growing.

Ok, after Rich pointed out that I may have overloaded my earthbox w/all the squash, I performed surgery and eliminated the center zucchini from one side, and all 3 yellow squash from the other side (they were withered and useless anyway). I do notice less water consumption - now can fill every day with approx one gallon. Still, the fruits are all rotty. I do see plenty of flying insects around to pollinate... the problem is happening in the main garden as well but only rarely, whereas the EB plants have no good fruits forming. I will try to be patient and see if it resolves (and maybe I'll help pollinate the flowers too).

The night manager of my local convenience store is from Thailand. When the peppers start really ripening about the beginning of August I will bring him a weekly bag full. He eats them like you or I would eat a carrot stick. You'd have to see it to believe it. Last year I grew a pot of Red Savina which is supposedly the hottest pepper on the face of the earth and he did the same with them. He puts me to shame.

Sorry to hear about the squash problems Eileen. Sometimes you just can't figure out why something like that is happening. Last year I grew 2 zucchini plants in a large self watering pot and got a total of 2 squash. This year I planted 10 plants in pots and in the ground and I am totally inundated with squash to the point that I am taking a bag full to work tomorrow and have given a bunch of others away to relatives.