The EarthTainer "Farm" Update - June 1 - "Clean and Green"

[rnewste]

Thanks all for the kind words.

Henri,

Growing sweetcorn in EarthTainers is not a great R.O.I. as compared to tomatoes, but we have no farms anymore left in Silicon Valley, so all our (bland) corn is trucked in from hundreds of miles away. Result: crummy tasting corn at Safeway. I really like the bi-color varieties, so even though I only get about 16 ears per EarthTainer, it is worth it to me. I am able to grow 2 full corn crop rotations each Season, so that helps defray the expense.

Homegardenpa,

I find the above ground containers gives me a 4 to 6 week jump in the Spring as the Sun warms up their soil much earlier than in-ground. I am also able to tailor the EarthTainer's grow media to optimize growth conditions.

While I don't want to get too far out in front of my headlights, so far this Season a variant of my 3:2:1 Combo Mix is providing very robust plant growth. I have broken the "3" component down into three equal parts Sunshine Advanced Mix #4, Happy Frog, and Ocean Forest:



I know adding 2 new products into the Mix is going to drive Naysen, Dewayne, and others nuts - - but just wanted to report my early findings. The "good news" is that per cubic foot, Happy Frog as well as Ocean Forest are a lot less expensive compared with Sunshine Advanced Mix #4.

Raybo

[JamesL]

Great stuff as always Raybo!
Love the PowerPoint chart, photos, new trials, etc..........
You are like "The Flash", a constant blur of motion! Do you ever sleep?

[z_willus_d]

That's OK Ray, I've already purchased and am becoming more than enough familiar with two of the three in your "3" -- the Ocean Forest and Sunshine Adv #4. I've been teetering on whether or not to jump on the happy train as well. Your positive results will likely be the impetus I need. It's the cheapest per volume of the three options, which can't hurt.
-naysen

[Dewayne mater]

I'm psyched about something new! I love the fact that you are always striving for improvement.

In fact, I think I'm going to change out my soil entirely after this season. Some are in season 3, some in season 2 now and I've just changed out maybe 1/3 of the soil up to now. The tainers were hit pretty hard with disease this year, more so than those in the ground, and on the chance that some disease is surviving the winters in the soiless mix, I going to end that possibility.

Dewayne mater

[lakelady]

Raybo, as always, a class act! Great looking garden and plants!

[meadowyck]

Wow what a garden, never knew you could grow that many corn in such a small space.... I'm going to have to give that a try.

[mdvpc]

Ray

I spent the last two days reading about earth boxes on their Forum. I am not handy with my hands at all, so bought one of their earth boxes for a trial. Going to use your mix and tomato tone, with espoma garden lime as my cal/mag cause I have a bag of that. Thinking about using flora nova grow and then floranova bloom as my snacks, 1 tsp in a gallon of water once a week.

You do a soil drench sometimes, do you put your snack down the water tube?

Also, the earthbox forum has discussed using the weed barrier and say no, but your idea seems a good one, so I am going to do that.

May also use clearex, but may not, since I will be using ro water.

As an aside, I am going to Santa Fe for work next week. If I have time going to stop in our son's hydro store.

[Chrissykin]

I know this is an old thread but I have a couple of questions....I bought the Grow Big/Tiger Bloom/Grow Big trio. How exactly and in what amounts are you using this? Soil drench or down the tube? I will be using it in my earthboxes and do you only use it on tomatoes or other things as well?

[rnewste]

I start out with the Grow Big (1 ounce down the filler tube every other week), then shift to the Tiger Bloom when the plants have begun to set fruit.

Raybo