EarthBox Fertilizer Comparisons 2020

[MsCowpea]

2nd box in row has 2 Mountain Magic (correction) one next to it has 1.

EB7088BB-D1E4-4A93-9E01-389DE1BD7B44.jpeg

[Barb_FL]

Your plants look great - my plants in the backyard are so fried from the storm / wind/ cold / rain. Barely any of the tomatoes fell off although some were really damaged ; For the ones left, I'm just waiting until they blush and then will pick them; hopefully before they get sunscald. I picked some today that have that weathered look.

What do you do in that case? I think with the cherry tomatoes, I might just cut them totally back and try for regrowth. That's kind of what I did with the hail last year. But for large tomatoes, I'm not sure there is time.

I'm reading Charles Wilber book; One thing I am going to adapt is having the plants 5' apart. I spread out much better than last year, but when you think our main growing season is when the days are shortest, we really need to provide the best sunlight. On most locations, I'm also going to go with 1 plant per EB.


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Marsha - For all the years that you have used the mix in the EB, have you ever dumped them? I cover the EB screen with either shade cloth or cut screen so get barely any mix in the bottom, but the amount of roots is insane; and if I wait fairly long before dumping them, there are roaches / palmetto bugs in the root area. I dump every one of them before I solarize or dump the mix. I also pressure wash them before using them to solarize. It takes forever.

[Barb_FL]

Elaine - So you like Magic Mountain? I grew Mountain Fresh Plus - 1 in an EB, 1 in a RP. The one in the EB is toast now, along with Defiant (another determinate), but their counterparts in Root Pouches were much better and produced more. I grew Mountain Fresh Plus b/c AKMark was very positive on it; but I thought BHN 589 was way better in Florida; Defiant too but they are much smaller tomatoes.

[Ginger2778]

Your plants look great - my plants in the backyard are so fried from the storm / wind/ cold / rain. Barely any of the tomatoes fell off although some were really damaged ; For the ones left, I'm just waiting until they blush and then will pick them; hopefully before they get sunscald. I picked some today that have that weathered look.

What do you do in that case? I think with the cherry tomatoes, I might just cut them totally back and try for regrowth. That's kind of what I did with the hail last year. But for large tomatoes, I'm not sure there is time.

I'm reading Charles Wilber book; One thing I am going to adapt is having the plants 5' apart. I spread out much better than last year, but when you think our main growing season is when the days are shortest, we really need to provide the best sunlight. On most locations, I'm also going to go with 1 plant per EB.


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Marsha - For all the years that you have used the mix in the EB, have you ever dumped them? I cover the EB screen with either shade cloth or cut screen so get barely any mix in the bottom, but the amount of roots is insane; and if I wait fairly long before dumping them, there are roaches / palmetto bugs in the root area. I dump every one of them before I solarize or dump the mix. I also pressure wash them before using them to solarize. It takes forever.

Hi Barb. No, I have never dumped the Earthboxes. I might just change out 1/4 of them per year. I'm far too lazy to dump snd pressure wash each. Wow- a lot of work,
After last week's weather everything is diseased and yellowing. It's depressing. I'm going to be out trimming off dead leaves tomorrow, and spraying copper on Tuesday I guess. Been picking off hornworms too. ☹

[pepperhead212]

I love all the info here! I have yet to try the organics in my SIPs, even though I do just about everything else organic in my garden. After hearing some of the results here, I am going to try some of those types mentioned. I like the idea of mixing it in with all of the mix, instead of putting it into a strip.

I just use a basic 10-10-10 granular fertilizer, which I put into a strip on one side for the tomatoes, eggplants, and other plants that I only plant 2 of per pot. And I picked up a tip from the old EB forum - I put the fertilizer in a brewing bag - a flexible, sock like material, for steeping hops and other items in beers and other beverages. The one I got was 50' long, which I cut to length. Haven't come close to using it all yet! It's much easier to put in place, and remove, when cleaning out, and adding some new Promix. I can usually use them for 2 more years, adding some more fertilizer to them, then they start to rot, and I toss it into the compost. The bucket sized SIPs I put 3 small pieces of the sock, with 1/4 c of fertilizer in them, on the outer edges, about 3" under.

I add that weekly calcium nitrate snack (another of the inorganics), once the flowers start, and some of the epsom salts every 3 weeks. And early on, some hydroponic micro-nutrients, including some iron - the SafeGro brand. I add some of that maybe every 3-4 weeks, depending on the plant's appearance. I don't do much trimming, except on the very bottom. I just train the vines along the trellis, away from the plant on the other side of the SIP, but it's a losing battle! I learned, early on, to put the tubs far apart, but the plants still reach each other.

I don't have nearly the same problems you have with heat, but it is still a major problem here, as there is almost always a heat wave, causing blossom drop, then the large ones have to recover from the first blossoms! As a result, I always have a bunch of cherry tomatoes, to grow back quickly. And years like last year we have humidity like Florida, as it was raining non-stop through mid July! Thus, almost every variety was affected with septoria, as well as other disease - even resistant varieties. Something I do to sterilize the trellis is to take a wide paint roller on a long handle, and roll a Clorox solution on the wire - a quick and easy war to sterilize it.

Something I use as an antifungal, that may help fertilizing, is potassium bicarbonate spray. This is a fairly good antifungal, except in years like last year. And I experimented spraying aspirin, which did nothing - the bicarb did a little better, though, like I said, it was raining almost constantly. I actually turned my irrigation off most of the time! Then, in late July, we went into a drought! Many of the trimmed tomatoes came back, though nothing like earlier.

[Barb_FL]

So I've been going out every night in the dark with my cheapo black light at night for about 2 months now. I missed 2 nights last week due to heavy rain and really cold/wind.

I find a lot of caterpillars; some nights up to 10. The ones I find under the leaves look like tomato hornworms without the horn and not that large. But, I think they are really the green stage of the brown ones that eat the tomatoes.

Overall, I think the moth / butterfly activity has been very high this year. I had a lot of tomato hornworms early on and only one in the last month or so.

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Pepperhead - We don't have problems with the intense heat at the end of the season; by the time that rolls around we are done and are solarizing our mix. We have it at the beginning of the season (Sept / October) but that is when we sow and our plants are very young without fruit.

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Marsha - Yes the entire dumping / solarizing process takes forever; plus I'm adding the crabshell into the mix to solarize. This past summer I added rice hulls too. Pressure washing an EB, the EB Screen, plus my shade barrier takes minimal time; it's the root pouches that are super time consuming. Plus they are so gross.

Your initial pictures of the fruit set were very impressive; Probably just the amount of rain in mid-late December that may be causing your problems. Will you cut your plants back to 3-4''? I will do that on at least a couple of the large tomatoes just to see how it goes and report back.

[MsCowpea]

I, too , have emptied many many boxes that were so tangled with roots and broken down mucky mix in the bottom that I wondered ‘how can you reuse this? ‘ But I think the roots must rot and disappear and it must not matter that the mix breaks down in the bottom as long as you put new mix and fertilizer on top to get the plant going. And with all the supplementation (synthetic snacks/extra fertilizer which are water soluble and available immediately ) reusing the mix just works. As Marsha says they just keep pumping out tomatoes. Until it doesn’t, and then you change it out.

Over the years, I just preferred to empty my boxes and use it with compost , perlite etc in my other containers. Plus I didn’t always have so many EarthBoxes. Next year I will see if reusing the mix works with organic inputs.
But my habits are hard to break-I can’t see me reusing for years but I will definitely experiment and hopefully the results will be better than fresh mix.

As much as I love EB, I did buy some tomatoes grown at the EB center and didn’t like the taste at all - more of a store-bought tomato taste so you just have to figure out the inputs that you want to use (variety being one) , fertilization, etc. and that is where everybody goes their separate ways which is fine.

[MsCowpea]

Pepperhead, what you do is classic EarthBox setup (except for the snack which only started several years ago.) but now everyone who has ever used Earthboxes seems to be into the snack. I never got why calcium nitrate would be used right from the get go in an EB (he used 10-10-10) but people loved the results and who can argue with that. May not be much Ca in that fertilizer so it is important. I was just researching EB /SIP supplementation and TV post came up — the gentleman who invented the snack was going to switch to plain ole Miracle Gro after visiting Earthbox Research Center (I think it was 2017) but don’t know which he preferred in the end. He is a staunch earthbox advocate and has done many helpful videos on his techniques.

The classic setup using conventional fertilizer works great-just as the box was designed. Using organics in a closed system container will get you only so far and then it gets tricky if you want to use an organic supplement.

The thing to do is experiment with organics with maybe just one earthbox and a SIP and compare to what you have been successfully doing for years. Do a blind taste test as well. (Maybe you won’t tell a difference, maybe you will ) Look at yield, etc. Length of use before box peters out. You can even do a mixed box with organic and synthetic inputs and compare to all organics. So many experiments, so little time.

[MsCowpea]

Barb, I do like Mountain Magic. I ‘think’ one of its parent is Momotaro which would explain why I like it. Professor Gardner from Univ. NC developed all of the mountain series.
The two boxes pictured say Momotaro on the plastic cover but my map of all the boxes say MM so if they don’t get bigger they are Mountain Magic.

[MsCowpea]

Eeerrrrr. Look at this- I was waiting for that one. Barlow Jap.
It is a bird , not a rat.

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[Ginger2778]

Eeerrrrr. Look at this- I was waiting for that one. Barlow Jap.
It is a bird , not a rat. B368F465-F2FD-4A23-8101-CC3565370F6D.jpeg

What tells you bird? Just asking cause I dont know how to tell the difference. I have actually seen a bird only once pecking, but with ours, we knew it was a nocturnal critter . DH put up an infrared camera. So far we have seen lots of rats(caught 8 last year) 2 possums rand a racoon this year, and a family of 4 days eating our starfruit. But we haven't seen bird activity until this past May and just the once with bluejays, we think they were thirsty. But thsts just our little property, and I know others on Tville say they get bird pecked. I try to always pick at first blush and let them counter ripen, because of critters, doesnt always work.

[MsCowpea]

Oh the birdies and I go way back. There are a lot of them. I see the little ones swooping around constantly during the day. In and around the cages. I see mockingbirds sitting on top of the cages scoping out what tomato they want to peck. I am sure there are rats around--my neighbors yard is a jungle as is mine! But People abandon their unspayed cats and leave them on our dead end street which makes me livid when people are cruel like that. Plus we have ferals that have been trapped and fixed. You'd think they would keep the rat population in check but some get fed so maybe a rat doesn't interest them.

Told once the birds just wanted water so I set this up:
He's trying to decide do I want a tomato or a drink or water. He pecked on the tomato. A bird person told me that was the wrong shape bowl for the bird to use.

Bird and tomato.jpg

We have raccoons and possums- but they are not the tomato-eating kind. They do dig holes all over the garden looking for worms and grubs. I have learned to live with them.

[Barb_FL]

I get bird pecked all the time too. Those mockingbirds will swoop down and peck a blushing big tomato when there are hundreds of ripe cherries to choose from. If the ripening tomatoes are on the edge, I try to pick them earlier than I like too.

It's the mockingbirds and bluejays here although the bluejays haven't been around in awhile.

I l fill huge containers of water to sit overnight, we have an unscreened pool, sometimes fill 5 gallon buckets but they always go for the tomato.

[Ginger2778]

Oh the birdies and I go way back. There are a lot of them. I see the little ones swooping around constantly during the day. In and around the cages. I see mockingbirds sitting on top of the cages scoping out what tomato they want to peck. I am sure there are rats around--my neighbors yard is a jungle as is mine! But People abandon their unspayed cats and leave them on our dead end street which makes me livid when people are cruel like that. Plus we have ferals that have been trapped and fixed. You'd think they would keep the rat population in check but some get fed so maybe a rat doesn't interest them.

Told once the birds just wanted water so I set this up:
He's trying to decide do I want a tomato or a drink or water. He pecked on the tomato. A bird person told me that was the wrong shape bowl for the bird to use.

Bird and tomato.jpg


We have raccoons and possums- but they are not the tomato-eating kind. They do dig holes all over the garden looking for worms and grubs. I have learned to live with them.

That is interesting. Your photo is very cool. We caught the possum red handed eating the tomatoes, and it decimated our pomegranates. We live caught it and took it for or a 5 mile ride, then released. The racoon was only seen once, a few nights ago, eating the cat food we put in the possum trap. And we are very suburban.

[PlainJane]

If I leave a ripening tomato on the vine after it colors it will get bird pecked, so I remove temptation. I’d rather look at them on the counter anyway!

[peebee]

Birds like to drink from shallow water, such as a bird bath & preferably with stones in it so they can perch on them while drinking. I put a couple of ceramic pie pans on top of inverted 5 gal black pots in the garden since I stopped fooling myself I was ever going to bake pies one day. They love to bathe & drink in my garden. I rarely get bird-pecked tomatoes.

[Barb_FL]

Birds like to drink from shallow water, such as a bird bath & preferably with stones in it so they can perch on them while drinking. I put a couple of ceramic pie pans on top of inverted 5 gal black pots in the garden since I stopped fooling myself I was ever going to bake pies one day. They love to bathe & drink in my garden. I rarely get bird-pecked tomatoes.

I will try that although mockingbirds are so brazen they are mocking me.

[SQWIB]

Not to get too off topic here but I call BS on the theory I heard that birds peck tomatoes because they are thirsty.
A lot of times I think they are cleaning insects and hit the occasional tomato.
What may help is to leave that tomato there, don't remove it, most likely the bird will peck the same tomato.

I have a squirrel problem with tomatoes and what I have been doing is if I come across a tomato that a squirrel started nibbling on, I'll pull it and rest it right on the fence, that same squirrel comes back and nibbles on that same tomato for several days.




Now back to our regularly scheduled program!

For those that have used 10-10-10 would a cup of fert as a strip be OK for a 10 gallon pot.
Then when the plant flowers, switch to Tomato Tone (2-5-3) at a cup per 10 gallon container?

[peebee]

For those that have used 10-10-10 would a cup of fert as a strip be OK for a 10 gallon pot.
Then when the plant flowers, switch to Tomato Tone (2-5-3) at a cup per 10 gallon container?
[/quote]

Sqwib, is your 10 gallon a self watering pot? Just asking cuz it's not clear if perhaps you are asking about normal containers w/ holes on the bottom or EBs.

[SQWIB]

Sorry, should have been more clear, This would be for 10 gallon pots with drip irrigation, some are air pruning pots and some regular pots with holes in the bottom.