Good input from both of you. I know what you mean about the local critters, as my chickens are free range and love to scratch in the garden. I'm counting on tomato cages in the boxes to help keep the chickies out. The dogs liked to dig in my raised beds as well, so I ended up having to put a cattle panel over the top to discourage two and four legged critters. Chickens love to eat tomatoes also, so I have had to make the lower ends of the cages chicken proof as well. Rick, Thank you for explaning the plastic cover better and that mulch can be used instead without damaging the wicking properties of the bed. You make good points about aeration. The raised beds will have drain holes at a height half inch below the ag drain pipes. The water should not get higher than that, so some aeration would still be present over at least half the bed or more. While the bed will not be 'drainable', the Australians call them 'wicking worm beds', and there are good online references of doing beds this way. They also intentionally let the beds go dry a couple of times each year as a control of misquito and other types of undesirables. For me, this setup would be designed to store water between rains, making it less frequent to actually have to add water myself (I have to haul water in a tank to the garden). I would also hope that it would help maintain a constant water supply to reduce 'spliting' of tomatoes from a heavy rain. Can you tell that I have tomatoes on the brain? Carol

If you want to go cheap and use 5 gallon buckets, cleaning them takes forever. What I'm trying with the white 5 gallon containers is to put colored electrical tape or large stickers on them. As far as "ugly" containers go, if you look at someplace like Target throughout the year, you can get colors that are more attractive/appropriate for SWC's. They have orange/rust colored containers that look like clay color in the fall. And these *are* real rubbermaid roughneck containers. As far as using containers year after year, if you are an urban apartment dweller who will probably move every 2-5 years, the durability is not as much of a factor. Then again, you don't have the economies of scale from building large numbers of containers. If the cost of your components is $20, and a real Earthbox is $30, how much is your time worth? You have to go out and buy materials, gather your tools and put them away afterwards, then your first time you spend some thought processes to figure out how it works. Given a large supply of 5 gallon buckets, I could probably pump them out at 15-30 minutes apiece. But I need to know where to buy funnels, tubing, cups of the right height for the wicking chambers, zip ties... And if I were making the 2/3 height SWC's, using the lid instead of 2 buckets, I'd need screws, and a good knife and sturdy scissors. I also need 4 or 5 different types of drill attachments. And then there is the time spend decorating the darn things... They do look respectable at any distance over 5 feet. Where you can't see the stripes are crooked, or that I covered over the label with white duct tape. And the colored electrical/duct tape cost a bit. Alice

Yeah ... any time I hear the phrase "deviations can have undesired consequences" or any variation on that theme, alarm bells immediately go off. You do realize that he is not, and has not been for many years, a commercial grower any more? He puts all his time and effort into the Earthboxes and the "Earthbox Research Center" - where they have Earthboxes lined up on asphalt in what looks like a parking lot. I would like to point out that once allowances are made for the reservoir in the bottom and normal clearance at the top, this thing is only 8" deep. And its a VERY expensive solution for a commercial grower - hydroponics would be a ton cheaper and easier than dealing with hundreds and hundreds of containers. $33 apiece for a container that allegedly will grow 2 tomato plants at a time is an awful high initial expense. This is NOT a feasible solution to the problems of a large grower. It does, however, work for a minority of folks who have extremely limited growing space and options for container growing. Whether or not the fertilizer strip is at all useful is arguable - but not very. Tons of people use SWCs just like the Earthbox, with no covers or fertilizer strips. The Rubbermaid container based versions can work better than Earthboxes because they're deeper (within limits) - they just don't hold up to the sun. And that's the root of the situation - soil volume. Because of the limitations of a self-watering system, there is a limit to how deep any SWC can be. Personally I have found that limit to be unacceptable - which is why I have stopped using SWC and have gone to drip irrigation and mulched containers. When I'm top watering I can have a container that is sufficiently deep to let the plants I grow root well, without becoming root bound. In an apartment situation, where there is no garden hose to hook up, its a whole different ballgame. If you can't water regularly - and I am sometimes not to be trusted to handwater in a timely manner - a self-watering system becomes much more attractive. Earthboxes work well - WITHIN THEIR LIMITS. And those limits are imposed by physics. Some of us just choose not to be limited and seek more optimal growing conditions for our plants - because we have the space, the desire, and the know-how. You know, it's clear you're a convert. That makes it very hard to respond to you without sounding overly harsh. But here are a few things you might just think about, if you could. Earthboxes are expensive. Earthboxes are low-capacity They were "invented" for a particular purpose in a particular environment - growing a couple of tomatoes in a hot, humid area with heavy rainfall during one part of the season, Very few people actually live where those conditions exist Peppers are not tomatoes. Eggplants are not tomatoes. Carrots are not tomatoes (and need way more than 8" depths for many varieties). Even tomatoes are ... well, they're tomatoes, but they don't all have the same growth requirements. None of that is meant to detract for their usefulness in some circumstances for people who are limited in their growing options by space, Nazi homeowner's associations, demands on their time, etc. Earthboxes have advantages, and they have limitations. When one outweighs the other, then a person makes their choice accordingly. But a system that insists you must slavishly follow a cookie-cutter pattern regardless of the plant you want to grow or local conditions is already flawed from the outset. That doesn't mean that your tomatoes or other plants are going to die in an Earthbox, because Nature is way more flexible than that. And any method of growing things needs to be flexible as well, because everybody does better when we adjust to reality. You can only push things so far. A Wall-o-Water may extend your growing season in Chicago, IL - but it isn't going to do much for you in the Antarctic. You like your Earthboxes. We get that. I once had a couple myself. They were fine. But over time I realized almost any other container worked better for me, in my varied conditions, than the Earthboxes. Earthboxes and their ilk - including the home-made, unapproved, heretical versions - have their place, in some situations and for some people. Just not in all situations or for all people and plants.

Dave, Hehe...I hope its that easy with my toms this year. I've had BER in the past with a few types of tomatoes in containers, but ever since I started adding domolite to my mixes, it seems to have been alleviated. This is also the first time I've had it when using SWCs. Its funny that you mention how you've seen it disappear as plants mature. In my current situation I've seen two patterns to it's appearance. The first was with the Olpaka which has been about 75% of the fruits having BER since the first ones set last month. The other pattern with the Cherokee Purple, Kellogs, and as of today Arkansas Traveler is one where a month of good fruit set and growth is followed by new fruit developing BER. The older fruit is still healthy. I know that temps, water conditions, etc. play a major role in the plants' ability to uptake calcium. Aside from the normal, seasonal warm up we are experiencing, there hasn't been any appreciable change in the weather or other conditions. So far, the only variable that seems to be different this year than previous ones is the absence of the domolite. I'll try a little of everything in attempting to eliminate the BER on new fruit. If anything works or if the plants just decide to "grow up" and act like adults, so long as the BER disappears, I'll be happy. Steven