Here we go! Life with the Shibaguyz…

In our ongoing quest to find the coolest new gardening tools, gadgets and toys, we have come across this latest little wonder… The Earth Box.  And, priced at under sixty bucks, this fits into our field of frugalness just fine.  Read on…

These are a few of our photos of our Earth Boxes…

No, we didn’t remember to take any when they first arrived because we immediately whisked them off to a class we were teaching the next day.  At first glance, they seemed a bit labor intensive… this coming from a guy who can’t put together one of those desk kits you buy in the stores.  Luckily, Jason is very handy at such things and knew immediately what to do… read the directions.  Imagine such a thing…

In the interest of the every man/woman out there, I too took a crack at putting one of these together… okay… I watched Jason put it together mostly but it made perfect sense to me!  I know!  I didn’t glaze over or go cross-eyed once during the entire process.  Simplicity… check…

Now for the filling of the things… did I mention we have three of them??  For guys who specialize in small spaces we don’t really seem to do anything small in scale… how do we do this to ourselves?  Anyway, back to filling…

Step #1: Well… there actually was a step before this one where you take it out of the box and put the grid in the bottom and insert the watering tube… but that took so little time I forgot to take any pictures of it… *ahem*

Step #1 (for real this time): Fill the Earthbox with a good potting soil.  To do that you… well… open the bag of organic potting soil and fill er up! ‘Nuff said?  Okay… moving on…

Step #2:  Add The Lime.  To ensure proper balance in your soil, the kit comes with a packet of lime.  We don’t generally do this with our own containers but we wanted to follow this step by step as the manufacturer suggested.  So… lime it is!

Step #3: Gently work the lime in with a cultivator.  Keep in mind here that Jason is dealing with chemicals here… yes… they are chemicals… so he’s wearing gloves and not touching his eyes and such.  A light raking across the top of your soil should be sufficient to mix in the lime.

Step #4: Cover the lime with more potting soil.  Not too much… just enough to cover the lime and soil layer.  As before… just tip up your bag and… well… cover…

Step #5:  Make a trough down the middle of your Earthbox and pour in your fertilizer.  Why down the middle?  Because when we transplant our seedlings, we will be planting them along the sides of the Earthbox.  There’s a handy dandy little sheet that comes along with your kit that shows the cute little plants in their different arrangements depending on how many of them you wish to plant.

So… trough down the middle, open bag of fertilizer and pour… easy… moving on…

Step #6: cover the trough o’ fertilizer with more soil.  This step didn’t need this many photos I was just getting shutter happy at this point.  You can’t see my beer setting off to the side on the table… hehehe… which leads us to…

Step #7:  MORE BEER! oh… wait… no… um… cover with more soil!  We’re good at this one.  Put just enough soil over the center of the Earthbox to make a little mound.  Don’t go crazy here… just a little.

Step #8: Cover the entire production with one of the little bonnets in your kit.  The kit comes with more than one.  Presumably in case you tear one or for use in another planting.  It’s just like a fitted sheet… just put it over the edges.

Notice here the light and the dark side OF THE FORCE! *ahem* No… not that… the light and the dark side of the bonnet (see… “of the force” was WAY cooler than a bonnet…).  The light side up will reflect light in case you live in an extremely hot climate and want to protect your container from baking.  In our climate, it is best to have the black side up in order to absorb heat and heat up the soil as much as possible.  Yes… we are on the dark side… Luke… who’s your daddy?  *ahem*

and… the bonnet is in place… again with me being shutter happy.  Added bonus of the cover?  Besides heating the soil faster and keeping water from evaporating as quickly, it keeps anything else from growing in your planter. Just sayin’… handy…

Step #9: Finally, cut and X in the plastic anywhere you want to put in a seedling.  Again, there is a great diagram that comes with your kit.  The diagram shows you just where to plant your starts in the Earthbox depending on how many you are planting per box.  You know us… we planted a LOT closer than recommended.  No reason to throw out all of our Biointensive training…

Easy peasy folks… and you know we’re all about the easy… Don’t mind hard work… but if it doesn’t need to be hard why make it so?  Right?  Right.

After two weeks here what our little plants looked like…

Basil and tomatillos at two weeks…

Cucumbers at two weeks…

Not bad for containers!  And here’s where the frugal part comes in… know how often we water them?  About every two weeks!  No kidding… the soil stays moist, the plants love it, and we save on watering… can’t beat that!

Oh… and here’s another handy dandy feature:

Wheels!

You know by the nature of The Jungle, we grow food in a lot of pots… 25 this year to be exact… and those pots have to be moved from time to time.  And, while it isn’t a big deal for us to drag one of those pots scraping and grinding across the concrete patio, it’s a whole heck of a lot easier with wheels!  Not to mention the fact that if we did have a nicer deck we were putting these on, we would be thankful for those wheels rather than scraping and dragging the finish of that deck.  But, we don’t… so it’s just darn nice to push them along on their little wheels.  Sturdy little suckers too…

All in all we’d have to say these are definitely worth their weight in gold.  Recently, we went through a week of high nineties to one hundred degree temps.  The Earthboxes needed no more water than their once weekly allotment!  It was really amazing to us.  As a matter of fact, it seemed like we were having trouble keeping our other containers supplied with enough water while the Earthboxes had no problems at all.

Now, at a month and a half into our evaluation, here is what the Earthboxes look like now…

Basil and tomatillos at six weeks…

Cucumbers at six weeks…

All of these plants were started from seed then transplanted into the Earthboxes.  So far, the only noticeable difference aside from the amazingly low water requirements have been the plentiful basil harvests and the quick growth of the cucumbers.

We have probably five other pods of basil planted and these two pods in the Earthbox are producing more than those five pods put together.  In addition, we have basil planted in ground at one of our other plots and there is absolutely no comparison in the two… the Earthbox basil just keeps producing and the plants are bigger and healthier than those in other containers or in ground.

And cucumbers… don’t get me started!  The Earthbox with the cucumbers has larger plants with thicker vines than our other planters or in ground plantings.  We’ve tried cucumbers two other years and they weren’t nearly this successful.

We attribute the success to the good fertilizer and the steady water supply.  We haven’t had to break from our watering schedule of topping off once a week and we haven’t had to fertilize any more than with what came in the box.  A good review?  Yup!  Worth the money?  Yup! Yup!

If you are living under a water restriction or just don’t want to be a slave to watering and fertilizing your plants, this is the way to do it.  Could you make this yourself?  You certainly could!  There are even video tutorials out there on how to do it.  Personally, we decided that for the money and effort we’d have to put into making them ourselves… keeping in mind we’d have to buy or borrow some of the tools… just buying them online is definitely worth it.  You can bet that we’ll probably be adding a few more of these next year.

Hope this helps!  We did the work so you don’t have to… we’re like that… we’re givers… LOL

There’s plenty of time left in the growing season to get in your fall crops of lettuce, hardy greens, squash, peas and beans.  We’ll be rotating our Earthboxes into overwinter crops after these are harvested.  We’ve already worked out a cover for them that should keep them producing all through the winter here… WOOHOO!!

Let us know what you think!  And… hey… if you have a cool garden gadget or toy you’ve used… let us know!

talk to you soon…
The Shibaguyz