New DIY earth box design.....maybe

[Jerzybred]

I have a couple questions. Just cause I am so new to all this I figured I won't get bashed asking a few questions. This is in regards to growing vegetables indoors in the home made earth boxes. I made one of the regular old 18 gallon waste a second one cutting it in half thing last year and it produced fairly well indoors with good lighting.

Now the modifications I have been thinking about and have the most questions about are; with the original setup you are filling up a large amount of space with very usable soil mix and fertilizer. I harvested a very large crop last year and when I moved I cleaned out the containers only to find that the roots predominantly grew downward even on the larger squash and winter squash plants.

Now with this a fair amount of soil was not utilized by the root systems of the 6-8 plants I had in there. So I had been sitting here ready to start a few e-box creations in my new place and thought of a design change I wanted to run past.

I was at lowe's and saw a plastic(may be some kind of PVC) pipe that was holed and wrapped in a in cloth material to block(in original design)dirt to come in only allowing water to flow through. I want to use these backwards. It is usually used as french drain pipe and such to run rain and excess water from around your house away from your foundations and can be planted in and around gardens.

Now they have 8 inch round tubes and I was thinking about cutting the holes in the top of the container(earthbox) but instead of having an upside down half a container in there...

• Can I use the pipes loaded with good soil and fertilizer and fit 6 tubes with just soil and fill the bottom of the container with water and let each one of the tubes just act as their own wicks?

• Or will this lead to the plants having way too much water?

I figured it would keep the interior of the box and all the tubes loaded with soil and roots nice and warm and humid. I just don't know if this will work of if the roots will want to grow out too much.

Like I said I only grew one container last year and it was too much fun at first for me to really write down what I was doing and how it produced and the actual ways of doing it. This time I am being a little more thought out with it and trying to make it a little lighter and easier to move since I am in an apartment and have to adjust for lighting outdoors part day and artificial lighting part day.

Sorry for rambling on but I just kinda sat down with this and got kind of excited about going to lowes this weekend and playing with new toys.

[rainbowgardener]

interesting idea, not something I've ever tried, so I don't really know. What I do grow indoors is starting seeds and growing them til they are big enough and it's warm enough for them to go outside. So, in that circumstance the 3" pots are in trays and I put water in the trays, so the plants are watered from the bottom. There's holes in the bottom of the pots and they just soak up water. What I know about doing that is that I have to be careful not to put too much water. They definitely don't want to sit in water. For the little pots I just put a quarter inch of water or so and they want to be able to dry out a little (not totally) in between waterings. All of that would be scaled up for your operation, but you'd definitely need to be careful about too much water. Obviously it depends on what you are growing and squash likes more water than a lot of things.

[Venomous_1]

Not that there aren't some very knowledgeable folks on here, but perhaps you should pose your question here:

https://forum.earthbox.com/

It is a forum dedicated to those who grow stuff in earthboxes.

Good luck. I've thought about trying earthboxes myself. Just haven't made that leap yet.