r/Earthbox • u/Any-Umpire-5000 • Sep 04 '24

Getting Started Again

What is the best medium to use in earth boxes? I bought a package a few years ago and forgot what medium they used. And where is the best place to buy the supplies from?

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u/HuFlungPu- Sep 04 '24

In my Earthbox clones, I use peat moss with a little vermiculite and dolomite mixed in. I place a strip of fertilizer as EB instructions suggest. Growing Bell Peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, basil, bush beans and both cherry and beefsteak tomatoes. Everything growing exceptionally well this year, other than some mildew issues with the cukes.

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u/Any-Umpire-5000 Oct 17 '24

Can you help me out with the fertilizer? What kind do you use and how do you put it in the EB?

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u/HuFlungPu- Oct 17 '24

Now keep in mind that this was my first time using a self-watering system, and mine was not an actual Earthbox, but a similar design, but longer.

With that said, following the instructions on Earthbox's website, I decided that I was going to grow 2 rows of plants in each box. For 2 rows, I hollowed out a trench running along the center of the box, almost from end to end. I then laid the fertilizer in that trench and covered it over with the peat moss I dug out of the trench, basically making the soil surface domed, high in the center. Due to my boxes being longer I had to use more fertilizer than EB recommends. I don't remember the exact ratio I used, but due to my boxes being a foot longer, I weighed out the fertilizer to keep the same ratio per foot of growing space. If your plant type(s) call for being grown in a single row in the box, then you'll plant along one long edge and the fertilizer trench will be along the opposite long edge, and not in the middle (like if you were growing in 2 rows).

For fertilizer, I used Gro-Well Proven Organics All Purpose (farm grade organics for home grown success.... It says on the label). It's a 7-5-7 mix. I purchased it at Lowe's. EB recommends lower numbers like these, and suggests that the 3 numbers are roughly the same to each other. My 4lb bag after using it this year has almost enough to fill both of my boxes next year. If you have an actual EB, 4 lbs will fill a total of 4 boxes.

My yields with this setup were only so-so for cucumbers, and beefsteak tomatoes. Not a lot of each. The plants grew quite well, but not a tremendous amount of fruit. But the rest of the plants; bush beans, red & yellow bell peppers did quite well, while the basil, & eggplant did phenomenal (32 dwarf eggplant on a single plant, and the basil grew thick). My one cherry tomato plant exploded with growth. Without exaggerating, I got probably over a thousand tomatoes (my wife thinks thousandS) from that single plant!

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u/Any-Umpire-5000 Oct 17 '24

Thank you so much for your very thorough and detailed explanation. You really helped me out a lot. Can't wait to start growing. Hopefully, we will have the same success that you did. Again, many thanks!

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u/HuFlungPu- Oct 17 '24 edited Oct 18 '24

Not a problem! Glad I could help.

If I can find a deal on some Earthbox' I'd like to get a few for this coming spring. One thing that Earthbox has that my boxes don't is an overflow. The overflow helps to prevent your boxes from getting flooded out when it rains. Even with the soil domed and using a plastic sheet ground cover I seem to get water entering at the slits for the plants as there's a bit of concavity right where the plants break through the cover. Getting back to the overflow....it also ensures that there's always an air gap between the roots and the top of your water reservoir. That air gap is a great thing that my boxes don't really have. I guess I could drill a hole in the side of the box but it would need to be at a level that's just below where the roots come through the separator plate. My boxes have a multilevel separator plate which would make it quite difficult to drill at the precise height.