Rich and Tplant,
Your veggies/fruit look fabulous!
As for me, I am using 8 EB's.
1 cherry tomatoes
2 regular tomatoes
2 cucumbers
2 zucchinis
1 pepper
and they are all doing great. I also have 8 non EB containers and I am thinking of buying the new EBs in place of these (buy 4) next season, but those new EBs are rather expensive, aren't they. My tomato plants are not really staked right and cherry tomatoes stake broke and bent a bunch of branches over, so if I get the new EBs, I will probably get the staking system too, which will add more cost. I guess I have a whole year to save up! I wonder how well the new EB staking system works. The stakes don't look very tall.
tmm
About Earthboxes and What You're Growing
The stakes appear to do the jobs King Ed stated. The tomatos really need the support from the center and up except for the very upper parts. You'll notice the tomatos always stay fairly low. The fruit that is!
I got my first 3 EBs recently & have planted them w/ tomatoes, w/ 4 jalapenos beside a Sungold tomato in one box. So far, I think they're great, what are good things to plant in the fall in these? I'm zone 7b, I think, should I try lettuce, collards, cabbage? What are other good fall veggies?
Never planted fall lettuce in EB's but grew a spring crop of romaine, buttercrunch & leaf lettuce in 3 EB's and they turned out great. Last year I grew a fall crop of raddicchio in 2 EB's and that grew well and was picked well into November. I would get the seeds started by mid July at the latest. This is a pick of Red Sails taken in early May of this year.
Rich
Finally got ahold of my little sisters camera :)
Chris
These are my 3 lemon and 3 lime basil plants
Mammoth Basil
An Overgrown Rutgers tomato plant and two hard-to-see purple basil plants.
Yellow Pear tomato 2x
San Marzano 2x
2 Yellow Crookneck Squash on the right, 2 eggplants on the left here... hard to see them due to squash explosion.
L Box: 1 Jalapeno, 1 Serrano, 2 Sweet Pepper
R Box: 2Purple Beauty Bell, 2Corno Di Toro
Lastly... Random herb box.
I've got one box of lettuce I just finished, and Im about to start that one again with something new. I will attempt to obtain the camera again once they are respectable looking.
Thanks for inspiring me with all your pictures, without which these would have never made it up here!
Chris
Georgeous Chris!
I second that...i gotta learn to start herb seeds!
I was looking forward tonight to eating one of my two ripe Amy hybrid honeydew and so I went out to my garden to pick them only to find that some bird or critter ate out the center of both of them. Judgeing from what it or they left it must have been delicious.
It's the same bird that likes your Suddeths Tplant..he is very picky and only eats the best!
My son saw a big fox outside our gate last night and my little Shih-tzu has been hesitant to go past the gate to do her duty the past few nights so she must have sensed his presence. Needless to say someone has been feeding him which is a no no but I can understand as I love animals and would not let them starve but we are on school grounds where children play and we must not have wild animals running around for the safety of the children.
However, he was not guilty of eating my melons as the hole was that of a bird pecking thru it. I have some real big honeydews almost ready and will cover the rest of my plants with bird-netting. Why didn't I think of this sooner?
Good Idea Tplant. depending on how persistent they are, and how windy it is in your garden, you might want to think about a scarecrow-type addition.
In my fathers garden, it took the combination of both to keep the birds out of his plants.
Tried all those! The birds found them to be entertaining while they munched on my produce...
that is some basil, virginiapesto....might you use all that basil for pesto? all of your EB's look so lush and wonderful.
tplant - thia is one big fat BUMMER about your melons. sorry for the rude surprise.
Well I just finished protecting my melons with bird net. I'll see if it works again as it did help my tomatos.
I wish I could say that I'm having a great EarthBox experience, but the truth is, I'm not.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
I used MG potting mix, followed T's instructions on setting up, and I've kept the box watered well. It's impossible to overwater, right?
This is the best of five EarthBoxes. It has Sun Sugar and Sun Gold in it. Stupice and Druzba completely died. I have another Druzba in the ground, and it is 7 foot tall with inch thick stems and loaded with tomatoes. I took a small and frail Eva Purple Ball out of it's EarthBox and put it in the ground ,and two weeks later it is dark green and strong, and now has five small tomatoes on it.
I dropped the same MG potting mix into one gallon sized holes dug in a sandbox, and those plants are twice the size of plants grown in the Earthboxes.
I am also growing plants in five gallon buckets in the same potting mix, and they look exactly the same as the EarthBox plants.
I'm not going to give up. I'll try again next year, I'll just be more careful what I plant in them. This year I put all of the plants that I wanted to try the most in the earthboxes. I have more seeds, so next year I'll put them in the ground.
I don't know how Ya'll do it, but your EarthBoxes look great!
I believe you used the wrong mix by MG. They have one that says in small print on the back of the bag "Not for Containers." If you are to use MG, buy the three cu.ft. bag. By doing this you can not make a mistake unless you do not use the recommended fertilizer and lime. Cherry tomatos will survive in most any mix as they seem to be indestructible. Don't try to cut corners but do follow directions of set-up and planting to the letter.
I knew others were having problems with certain potting mixes, and i made sure to get the right kind. I did NOT buy the kind that says "not for containers"
I knew that someone doing good would try to say that i was doing something wrong. Look, i'm just trying to show my results, sorry they weren't as good as yours.
Lots of people love skydiving, lots of people do it with great results, lots of people make it to the ground safely. That doesn't mean that everybodies chute is going to open everytime. I guess that person pancaked on the ground must have done something wrong when he pulled the cord, because that's never happened to me or my skydiving friends.
I'm sorry also! I was just trying to help you solve a problem. Someone had to teach you how to skydive and I'm certain you were corrected in classroom activities. You were shown the right and wrong way? This is what I was trying to do. To solve your problem and protect your investment but you know best! Sorry and Good Luck!!!
musta been something outta wack cause if the work for me with as dense as I am about growing (and I can promise you saying that I'm "special" is an understatement) did you start with a plant or start your own seed? what type fertilizer did you use? We used a 10 10 10 and I often thought maybe a 8 8 8 would have been better as I felt I had to much vegitative growth and not enough fruit...this is so is very intersting...
GreenThumbGreen:
There are a few questions I could ask about your EB problem. But you are too defensive. Your reply to Tplant was tacky. Happy Landings.
Tplant - I don't know if this would work in your garden, but one of the best bird deterrents I have found is a fake snake! I got mine at West Marine to keep birds from pooping on my boat under the dock at the Marina. I have never had to keep birds out of my garden (thanks to my kitty) but others have told me it works. http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/producte/10001/-1/10001/36217/0/0/snake/All_2/mode+matchallpartial/0/0
Great idea! Never thought about a snake? Used an owl that was supposed to work . It had a swivel head. The birds just laughed at it....
I know that Chelle uses a snake tplant you can ask her...you know she's not on much during the weekend but starting monday she'll be back on in full force.