Earthtainer Support

[Ed of Somis]

I just received my first EarthBox (corrected name). I am kind of excited! I was wondering if anybody out there has found a good way of supporting tomatoes in these?

[Balr14]

I use a 5' tomato tower with 3 legs and position it so the 3 legs go through 3 of the holes in the grid over the reservoir. I position 2 legs in the front and 1 leg in the back. Then I drill a small hole in each the top lip of the container, at each corner and wire the tomato tower tightly in place, using aluminum wire. Since the tower is anchored, I use it as base to run support wires wherever I need them. Each container has 3 tomato plants and 1 tower in the center and that's all the support they have. I run into problems when the plants get about 10' tall, but that's another issue. You could use two towers in each container, but the wiring gets rather tricky.

[Gussie]

I use a set of 2 pea fences like bdank on the Earthbox forum:

http://forum.earthbox.com/index.php?topic=7378.0

I get my pea fences from Burpees (http://www.burpee.com/gardening-supp...rod001250.html), and you can almost always find a great coupon by Googling.

The pea fences fit perfectly in the Earthbox. And don't think you can get by with using a single pea fence per box. My plants are up and over the two pea fences every year. It's like the Earthbox makes all plants giants or something.

Best of luck! Watch out though because your first Earthbox will never be your last. hehehe.

Gussie

[Barb_FL]

Originally Posted by Gussie

Best of luck! Watch out though because your first Earthbox will never be your last. hehehe.

Gussie

You are not kidding; I started with EB in 2014, and just ordered #9-10.
Thanks for the links, maybe I can improvise my cages to something similar. I will at least, try it with the feet sticking up; maybe just one in the middle like Blair.

For support, I used Park Seeds square cages, and stacked them (if needed but not shown). When the plants got heavy, I anchored them with bungee cords, attached through each side and under the box, etc. I also would insert 6' bamboo poles when needed. Mine are all portable, on movers dolly or EB casters.

DSC_0596 (800x530).jpg


Blair,

Your tomato plants look amazing! What are you attaching them to in the 2nd picture?
Also, do you always grow 3 plants per box? All types? Any recs re: what does good with 3 per box.

This was my first year with EB. I wanted to try it with different varieties so mixed and matched plants. In one case, one of the plants ended up being a solo half way through the growing season and it produced 100s of tomatoes - it was a Porter so not a cherry.

[Balr14]

Originally Posted by Barb_FL

Blair,

Your tomato plants look amazing! What are you attaching them to in the 2nd picture?
Also, do you always grow 3 plants per box? All types? Any recs re: what does good with 3 per box.

This was my first year with EB. I wanted to try it with different varieties so mixed and matched plants. In one case, one of the plants ended up being a solo half way through the growing season and it produced 100s of tomatoes - it was a Porter so not a cherry.

I have lines attached to a frame work on the garage wall that I run to my network of tomato towers when the plants get really tall. It helps prevent serious "tip over" accidents. Right now, the lines are just draped over the top, so I can find them; they aren't providing any support. The towers are all the support they are getting.

I started growing stuff in EarthBoxes on a whim 5 or 6 years ago when my mother gave me 2 of the old green Earthboxes. I had no idea what I was doing and never thought of looking for information or forums on the internet until last year. So I do everything wrong (like putting 3 tomato plants, or 6 pepper plants in one container). This year I tried to cut down to 2 plants per container, but I found so many interesting varieties to try, that I actually ended up with 37 plants. I have 12 Earthboxes for tomatoes, so one plant is a homemade self watering container.

I like a lot of unusual varieties and I try to put plants that I know grow taller in my back row. I try to put plants that will "get along" together in one container, ones that grow at the same rate, etc. Since I have never grown 50% of the varieties I chose every year, that whole plan is pretty useless and chaos reins.

I believe I have 24 varieties this year, and everyone is doing very well except San Marzano:

Health Kick Roma
San Marzano
Amish Paste
Purple Cherokee
Grafted Purple Cherokee
Black Krim
Green Zebra
Red Sugar Berry
Yellow Sugar Berry
Yellow Pear
Tomato Chela
Black Cherry
White Cherry
Sweet 100
Golden Jubilee
German Johnson
Sun Gold
Grafted Mr Stripy
Grape
Patio
Sweet Million
German Queen
Indigo Rose
Old German

[Irv Wiseguy]

Originally Posted by Gussie

I use a set of 2 pea fences like bdank on the Earthbox forum:

http://forum.earthbox.com/index.php?topic=7378.0

I get my pea fences from Burpees (http://www.burpee.com/gardening-supp...rod001250.html), and you can almost always find a great coupon by Googling.

The pea fences fit perfectly in the Earthbox. And don't think you can get by with using a single pea fence per box. My plants are up and over the two pea fences every year. It's like the Earthbox makes all plants giants or something.

Best of luck! Watch out though because your first Earthbox will never be your last. hehehe.

Gussie

I'm doing the same thing for the first time this year and so far this method has worked well for me. I got my fences from Lehman's.

Irv