Anyone do an earthbox?

[Jonnio]

I had given up on planting hops because of the poor drainage of Alabama clay - then I ran across these

http://www.earthbox.com/

A buddy at work had tomato plants over 9' tall and 2' wide using this thing....

I think I might order some rhizomes now!

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JULY UPDATE
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So here is how things look after less than 2 months in ground. The Willamette are doing great, the goldings, not as well.
I actually had both goldings sprout, but something to one sprout and it hasn't come back up.

and in case your curious what one tomato plant and 2 jalapeño plants look like (also planted late)

 

[scinerd3000]

california has ****ty soil too. I planted in a 5 gal pot. some people use plastic buckets like the fermenter type buckets.....drill holes for drainage and walah! its working. i just checked and both my cascade and mt hood just poped up today

 

[scinerd3000]

also as for soil- i bought potting soil and mulched in compost.

 

[Jonnio]

Yeah, I was thinking pot, but this should be one step better. We will see, I went ahead and ordered some rhizomes today!

 

[scinerd3000]

you can always transplant them. the rhizome is a portion of the root, so its not super fragile. You can split them or dig them up and replant them using some care. Alot of people start them in pots and then transplant them or you could just use the 5 gal home depot buckets if you dont care too much about astetics. I have seen people grow full trees in them successfully. how much is that box thing? it would be interesting to try considering it "doubles the yield"

 

[Jonnio]

I have found plans to DIY it for around $10. I am going to be making a handful of them today and I ordered 4 rhizomes from freshops yesterday. I plan on putting two rhizomes of Kent Golding in one and two rhizomes of Willamette in the other. I will post updates to this thread and see how it goes. Unfortunately I didn't read about these sooner though as I am about a month late, so that may mess my results up a little.

 

[scinerd3000]

i planted my two rhizomes may 1st and there already up. besides theres always next year buit its worth a shot.

 

[chardo]

california has ****ty soil too. I planted in a 5 gal pot. some people use plastic buckets like the fermenter type buckets.....drill holes for drainage and walah! its working. i just checked and both my cascade and mt hood just poped up today

The bigger the container the better. You could also build a raised bed. Check

out http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1641.html For info on raised bed gardening.

Good Luck
Chardo

 

[CarlLBC]

South GA soil is pretty bad too, so I knew this would be the only way.

 

[Schlenkerla]

There is another really easy cheap way to have good dirt & drainage. - Make a mound.

You will need;

• Four large bags of potting soil (40lbs each)
• One bag of manure/compost. (40lbs)
• Two bags of mulch.

Pick the spot, dump the 40lbs of manure/compost. Procede to dump all of the bags on top of the manure. Making a mound, slit the top ~ 2" deep for the rhisome. Then plant and cover the rhisome. Cover with mulch. Water regularly.

Thats it for dirt work. Rigging a pole & rope is pretty easy too.

I use tomato cages as a starting point with jute twine tied to 18" of conduit.

:fro:

 

[scinerd3000]

Damn carlLBC....thats very nice. How long did that take you to rig up?

 

[Hopleaf]

South GA soil is pretty bad too, so I knew this would be the only way.

Very nice! I would love to have something similar in my backyard.

 

[Jonnio]

Yeah, that is a nice setup Carl. I have something similar (not as fancy) for all my veggies, but I don't get near the growth that my friend does out of his earthbox.

I think this will be a good experiment. I will keep this thread updated with pictures etc... and see if it is a viable way to increase first year production or anything else from your hops.

My current plan is to put them up near the house in the back yard and train the bines up to the gutter.

 

[CarlLBC]

several weekends, could have done it quicker but i'm putting hardwood floors down in the house and the wife is yelling at me to get that done first. so the tomatoes and peppers were put in to help justify the side track. floors are done so I want to put pvc under the bricks so I can put a faucet in each box, the soaker hoses would have their own shutoff in each box. i'd do it kind of like a sprinkler system but under the bricks and up into each seperate box. the brick path isn't properly laid so it needs to be redone anyways. hope the hops can stand the dirty south weather, that's why I went all american with the varieties.

 

[EdWort]

South GA soil is pretty bad too, so I knew this would be the only way.

Sweet! Nice job. I'll be redoing my Texas hop garden next year. This is a good example for SWMBO's garden as soon as the deer fence goes up.

 

[CarlLBC]

you want to talk about sweet. lets talk about that brew house you're building.

 

[Schlenkerla]

South GA soil is pretty bad too, so I knew this would be the only way.

Do you have plenty of lattice length for growth? More than 18'...

If you do it looks like hop pickin' will be a breeze. :rockin:

 

[count barleywine]

Jonnio I have a container-planting book with a picture of Sunflowers almost as tall as a house growing out of earthbox-type bags. It is so odd looking yet amazing, I'd love to see how hops do in one of those. Keep a post going.

 

[Jonnio]

Will do count. I got some boxes built yesterday. I put my Meyer Lemon tree in one, I am going to have a tomato plant and two jalapeño plants in another, and then two with hops in em once my rhizomes get in.

If anyone is curious about container construction I can post some pics of that as well.

 

[CBBaron]

I've used earthboxes for tomatoes with good but not outstanding success. However for hops I would recommend a mound or raised bed. Hops will be come root bound in a pot and the pot will require much more water than you would probably use in a mound, or at least you will have to water more often. I know with my tomatoes it requires filling the reservoir once a day in the summer. I would imagine hops will require even more.

Craig

 

[CarlLBC]

Do you have plenty of lattice length for growth? More than 18'...

If you do it looks like hop pickin' will be a breeze. :rockin:

it's probably 6 up and 8 over. i'm not worried about that length though. i'll just train them back and forth if I have to or snip the tips.

 

[The Soft Underbelly]

Carl,

I was imagining a similar trellis design. Did you buy those pre-made, or did you construct them yourself? If so, of what? Also, did you attach them to the walls of the raised bed, or just sink them into the ground?

 

[CarlLBC]

I built the boxes first to be able to get the hops in the dirt. During all that I was thinking what I should do. the poles are 2"x2" and about a foot in the ground and then the height of the box. they are also screwed into the sides of the box with about 4 deck screws. after that I just made it the easiest and cheapest way I could. I was going to do wood pieces up the side too but the cost would have been too much. plus with the twine strung across the bines could climb easier on it then on the wood. at the end of the season, if I had to cut all the twine off to get the bines down it would be easy. there are screws along the vertical piece to wrap the twine around. the wood on top helps shade the hops and they seem to wrap okay around them. the box is treated pine and the trellis is untreated pine. I didn't want the bines to touch the chemicals in the treated wood so I went with untreated where they would climb. just parinoid I guess.

 

[The Soft Underbelly]

I too share your paranoia of treated lumber for trellises. did you use some sort of lattice across the top or just wood planks of some sort?

 

[Jonnio]

My hops got here early, so I went ahead and built my boxes in between brew steps, so I thought I would do a quick pictorial of the build and end product.

Cut the lid out

Drill lots of holes, and cut two big ones

Support it from underneath

and add a drain hole

 

[Jonnio]

Two containers ready for dirt.

Add the dirt

and the hops

a little fertilizer

 

[Jonnio]

Cover it all up

and cut an access hole for the plant to poke through.


Now, just wait and see how well this works!

 

[CarlLBC]

I too share your paranoia of treated lumber for trellises. did you use some sort of lattice across the top or just wood planks of some sort?

those are just 2"x1"x8' cut in half

 

[The Soft Underbelly]

Jonnio - cool set up. let us know how that works!

One last question Carl, did you uproot or kill the lawn before piling the dirt on top of it? Seems like all that dirt would be enough to take care of it, but if i have to, i'll just murder the grass before topping it with soil.

 

[CarlLBC]

yeah that was a pain in the ass. I didn't do it with all of the boxes and I later thought I should so I went back and weeded all the grass out. I'm paranoid with weed killing chemicals too so I did it by hand. I went with brick so I wouldn't have to weed between the raised beds.

 

[The Soft Underbelly]

I just wound up constructing raised bed from landscape timbers and piling the dirt atop the grass w/o uprooting or killing it. My soon to be brother in law did similar beds years ago and told me i'd be cool.

 

[Bobby_M]

Yeah, there's no way grass will survive a few inches of soil on top of it. No light = Dead. I just did my veggie garden boxes like that.

 

[Jonnio]

Well, I figured I would report the progress so far. Under a week since planting and my Willamette popped their heads up today (as did most of my corn and beans in case your wondering )

 

[BrewinRob]

I'm using some half oak barrels. I drilled several 1/2" holes in the bottoms to allow for drainage (I have them sitting on bricks so it drains properly). I've seen hops do pretty well in these so I decided to give it a go. At the moment they are up about a foot tall and I only planted them a few weeks back.

 

[Jonnio]

I updated the first post with some pictures. Overall I have been very pleased with my first year hop performance in these boxes. Next year I might even add a couple more varieties.

 

[Joe Camel]

Bump

Hi Jonnio,

I'm very interested in knowing how your plants are doing these days. I have some Cascade hops planted on the side of my house but want to move them next year to grow on a pergola I'm planning to build. These types of containers look ideal for growing them as there is no where to build a bed. I like the plan since I can pop a lid on at the end of the season and lug them into the garage for overwintering.

Are you happy with the design, would you change anything?

How happy are the plants? do you have any update pics?

Cheers

Joe

 

[Jonnio]

Joe - I am very pleased with the containers. All of the hops are doing quite well IMO for first year plants and less than ideal growing conditions. I have even started getting cones on my Cascade plants. The only thing I am going to change for next year is a better way for them to climb. I had thought the fence would work, but it just didn't cut it. I am also going to look at the root structure and see if one box can support 2 mature plants. I think it will be able to, but I want to make sure.

I will try and post some update pics next week for you.

 

[Joe Camel]

One more bump!

Hi again Jonnio,

Now that winter is here, what are your thoughts on how the earthbox fared? Do you think you need to go bigger on the container as the rhizome grows or just trim it a lot in the off season? Did you dump the soil and store the rhizome or just stack the containers with dirt and all for the winter.

I think I'm still going to make at least one of these this spring. I was kicking around the idea of using a float valve from an old humidifier to automate the watering.

Cheers

 

[Jonnio]

One more bump!

Hi again Jonnio,

Now that winter is here, what are your thoughts on how the earthbox fared? Do you think you need to go bigger on the container as the rhizome grows or just trim it a lot in the off season? Did you dump the soil and store the rhizome or just stack the containers with dirt and all for the winter.

I think I'm still going to make at least one of these this spring. I was kicking around the idea of using a float valve from an old humidifier to automate the watering.

Cheers

I think they did pretty well, so much so I am building 3 more for additional varieties this year, so I will have a total of 5 different varieties going this year.

I ended up just covering them and leaving them out in the cold all winter long. I was afraid that the garage would get too warm and the hops would think its time to pop back up.

I think that at the appropriate time this next year I will "dig" out the root structures and see how they are doing and trim as needed. I don't anticipate ever going to bigger boxes, but I do have an experiment where I only have one Williamette plant in a box due to a non-starter last year, so if the yield from that one is significantly better than the Kent Golding then I will go ahead and move to a one per box solution. I doubt that will be needed though. I figure occasional trimming to send off rhizomes to other people should keep the roots to a reasonable size.

 

[WortMonger]

Any news on this for this year?