Earthbox Alternative

Picked up a couple of City Pickers boxes at Home Depot. It's an Earthbox knockoff:

http://www.emscogroup.com/products/prod ... gory_id=57

but it's well executed. Larger dimensions (about 25% more planting space). Tomatoes are doing great in them; much better than the ones I put into the ground at the same time.

Just an FYI if anyone wants to try it. 24" X 20" box, comes with casters, water fill tube and plastic cover (very flimsy, but does the job) with 4 binder clips to tie it down. Oh, and it's $30.

I have a friend who just gets a bag of topsoil and plants right into the bag....cheaper yet

spinynorman99 wrote:Picked up a couple of City Pickers boxes at Home Depot. It's an Earthbox knockoff:

http://www.emscogroup.com/products/prod ... gory_id=57

but it's well executed. Larger dimensions (about 25% more planting space). Tomatoes are doing great in them; much better than the ones I put into the ground at the same time.

Just an FYI if anyone wants to try it. 24" X 20" box, comes with casters, water fill tube and plastic cover (very flimsy, but does the job) with 4 binder clips to tie it down. Oh, and it's $30.

Nice find, almost takes away the need for SIP unless you get the buckets for free. Does it hold more tomato plants than the Earthbox (2)?

pairs4life wrote:

spinynorman99 wrote:Picked up a couple of City Pickers boxes at Home Depot. It's an Earthbox knockoff:

http://www.emscogroup.com/products/prod ... gory_id=57

but it's well executed. Larger dimensions (about 25% more planting space). Tomatoes are doing great in them; much better than the ones I put into the ground at the same time.

Just an FYI if anyone wants to try it. 24" X 20" box, comes with casters, water fill tube and plastic cover (very flimsy, but does the job) with 4 binder clips to tie it down. Oh, and it's $30.

Nice find, almost takes away the need for SIP unless you get the buckets for free. Does it hold more tomato plants than the Earthbox (2)?

They recommend 3, I planted 4. It works like the Earthbox in that it wicks water from the reservoir at the bottom. Just filled them an hour ago. One was down 2 gallons from yesterday, the other a gallon. So it's important to use a potting mix rather than straight soil which doesn't really wick.

You can build your own Earthbox (self watering) alternative for about $10-15 in materials. You can make it much larger than a genuine Earthbox. Detailed instructions via google.

I have been doing self watering containers for about 7 years or so with great success as you described. But in the past three years I have started to become convinced that micro irrigation (aka drip irrigation) is even better. Micro takes more work and cost to initially set up, but once set up you really don't have to do anything all summer other than enjoy your produce.

Hi norman, which Home Depot did you find the planter from? I picked one up from the Naperville Lowes, I would love to pickup another one but no luck so far.

TIA

KC2 wrote:Hi norman, which Home Depot did you find the planter from? I picked one up from the Naperville Lowes, I would love to pickup another one but no luck so far.

TIA

The one at Lincoln/McCormick. Home Depot's website has a "check store availability" feature:

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R ... key=Search

Shows the item as in-stock in Darien, Woodridge and Downer's Grove.

Thanks norman, appreciate it!

For anyone with an interest in these, they're awesome. The tomato plants are monstrous and the basil looks like something from a Stephen King book (the stalks are as thick as my thumb and the plants are over 18" tall with massive leaves). I'm going to pick up more so I can get an earlier start next year.

We've been working two Earthboxes this year--our first time. Indeed the results have been amazing.

We have a mix of hot peppers in one, a sweet red corn in the other. Banana peppers are producing weekly harvests, the others are fine, but so far there's no obvious yield. The corn looks great! It's now about five feet tall, a couple of fingers thick.

The only problems we had--a couple of weeks ago (before the tornado) all the corn flopped--just keeled over and looked sad. We made sure we watered it well, propped it up and it seems to be doing ok now--except for one stalk that looks like it snapped.
The peppers were devastated by the strong winds--they flopped, got twisty and looked very unhappy. Again a bit of support, water and warm sun brought them back within a week or so.

The theory is that the fertilizer and light soil provided with the system encourages rapid growth while not providing a strong (dense) enough support system for the plants. As I said, generally things look great, but the yield is going to be the true judge.

It seems that you could build a raised bed, set up the watering system and use the dame type of soil/fertilizer mix for a bit less cash layout than these manufactured systems cost you.