Earth Box Planter - Garden System Review

The Earth Box Garden System has been around since 2001. If you are looking for a good way to do container gardening for larger plants like vegetables, including container tomatoes and peppers and the like, you will need a container that holds at least a couple of cubic feet of soil. The EarthBox is just the right size, measuring about 29×13x10.5 in. It’s a totally self contained garden system. It goes together quickly, about 20-25 minutes including the addition of the potting soil.

Self Watering Planter: One of the big disadvantages of container gardening is the tendency for the planter to dry out quickly. The beauty of the Earth Box design is that it has a built in watering system. The water reservoir is in the bottom, and there is a vertical pipe that extends above the soil so you can add water. Their claim is that you cannot overwater the plants with this system, and in fact you simply fill it to the top of the watering tube and forget it. There is an overflow hole that allows any excess water to escape, so do make sure this hole is in a place that you won’t mind the water coming out.

A single container will hold all sorts of vegetables. For larger plants like artichokes, tomatoes, and eggplants you can plant two seedlings. For somewhat smaller plants like peppers, melons, and cucumbers you can plant 4 seedlings, for broccoli, cauliflower, onions and most herbs you can plant 8 seedlings, and for peas and beans you can plant 16 seedlings. It makes a great herb garden that you can keep right outside the kitchen door, or even on your patio or balcony if you are an apartment dweller. And of course the Earth Box works great as a flower planter as well. One great use for an EarthBox is to try some root crops like carrots that may not be suited to the soil in your area.

Fertilizer: They suggest that you add a strip of fertilizer in the potting soil in a sufficient quantity to last the growing season. ( About 2 cups of dry fertilizer in a 2 inch strip). When you replant the next year, you can simply dig out and refresh this strip. Doing so allows you to continue using the same potting soil in the Earth Box for 5 to 6 seasons.

Covered soil: There are two covers (one a spare) that are black on one side and white on the other. You keep the black surface on top unless you are in a very warm climate. The covers not only help to retain moisture, but keep out many pests, help keep the weeds down, and keep the rain from splashing the potting soil and fertilizer out of the container.

Tomatoes: If you plan to put tomatoes in the Earth Box, they suggest that you increase the pH of the soil by adding hydrated lime or dolomite to avoid blossom end rot.

Staking your Vegetables: You can stake your vegetables with optional staking kit: One reason that it’s good to keep the water reservoir full is that it lowers the center of gravity of the Earth Box, and helps to keep it from tipping over. Since adding stakes to the Earth Box can make it top heavy as the plants grow larger, they also offer a staking kit (that comes in matching colors if you wish) that stands on the ground under the Earth Box itself so that it is more securely anchored to the ground. A great additon if you are wanting to grow tomatoes or some other type of climbing or vining plant.

Optional Casters: With 2 cubic feet of soil and the water reservoir, this unit can get heavy in a hurry. If you need to move it during the growing season, (protoction from storms, or even better to garage it for the first frost or two to extend the growing season a bit) the optional casters are a great addition.

Probably the one negative I’ve seen in reviews on the web is that some folks claim to have had a problem getting through to customer support for ordering if you went to Earth Box directly, and the shipping costs were on the high side. I don’t know how real that may be, but you can fix that easily enough by just ordering through Amazon or some other retailer that already has the unit in stock.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to see a video of the Earthbox in action.

The Earth box comes in 2 colors, you can order the EarthBox Dark Green Garden Kit or the Terra Cotta Earth Box Garden Kit from Amazon. You can also order the matching Dark Green Staking System or the Terra Cotta EarthBox Staking System from Amazon as well.

Here’s an interesting overview of the Earthbox actually being used in commercial applications.