How many plants can you fit inside such an earthbox? Won't the plants compete for root space?
Realistically, only one in a junior and two in a regular Earthbox. Naturally the two in the regular Earth box should be of the same strain.
The real power of the Earth box lies in 2 main areas and they play off and compliment each other. The relationship the plant develops with the wicking area to obtain relatively nutrient free water and the
large nutrient mound.
The media that I pot up in the Earth box is nothing really super special, but it is more than what you can buy off the shelf for sure. But realistically any good media that will wick well, will work.
I think where people underutilize the power of the Earthbox is from the size of nutrient mound they build. I think the timing of the nutrient mound is key also. As you know, organics does take time. That's why I add my first round of making a nutrient mound is at the time of potting up. This gives the mound time to decompose and be made available to your plant by all your little garden helpers and that's why I also add bokashi as the final topping. The second topping, mainly directed toward flower ingredients, It is usually added a week to 10 days after the beginning of flower.
It will not hurt to make the nutrient mound quite large. And this is where the 'playoff and complement each other' comes into play. With that clean source of water available to the plant to take up as needed, the plant is not
forced to take up nutrients along with the water. That's why I strive not add to or to keep nutrients from getting washed into the reservoir water. The plant can pick and choose what nutrients it
needs and not being
forced to take it up with moisture or what you
think it needs in chemical fertilization.
As the nutrient mound breaks down, the fine Feeder roots will start to find their way into the mound to get their nutrients. The
fine feeder root intrusion into the nutrient mound is how I gage how much the girl is eating and if I need to adjust my application. If you see the
large feeder roots on top of your nutrient mound, then you've waited too long to add to the nutrient Mound. I closely monitor that now after I waited a little too long on Jean-O's RBF and got forever behind on her with her really aggressive feeding. I won't make the same mistake with her again.
If I can grow a 9 foot tall monster outdoors in a regular earth box, then two girls in an earth box indoors is not going to be an issue. Now that mound on that outdoor Asian haze was quite large and I was barely able to get the cover on at the very end. I Definitely didn't do only two top dressings to the mound with her! After my second normal addition to her nutrient mound , I had to change things up a little bit and make my ingredients into a thick slurry and apply that on top of the mound. That's Solved two problems. it allowed me to use liquid nutrients easier and I didn't have to try and wet down dry nutrients on a rounded surface. In addition to making that slurry, that grow also made me mix up all the nutrients up first, then apply them to the mound. That helps to keep The rock dust and other powders from floating up and getting on the leaves when trying to wet them down.
So really, two girls in a regular earth box just means a
larger nutrient mound. With each girl planted on the ends, each girl will have her own wicking area. Like with other sips, you want to wait until the root structure is well established. In juniors, that's usually 12 to 14 days before you can do a partial fill of the reservoir. And regular earth boxes with the girls planted on each end, it's usually around 17 to 21 days before a partial fill can be done safely. Now in both the juniors and the regulars at the 1 week mark, I do add a little bit of water to the reservoir, but that is to only wet the wicking area. And juniors it's one Dixie Cup and in regulars it's 2. This helps to begin that root relationship with the wicking area a little bit quicker. I usually do it today that the girl needs a little bit of water, so instead of just watering her directly, I wet down the wicking area.
Let me know if that makes sense to you. I didn't come up with the idea, I took it from Jeremy at BAS, but he doesn't do his grow like that. He has the smaller more numerous top dressings. I train my girls quite a bit in the Earth boxes. This also helped solve taking the cover off and disconnect all the pulls while training just to top dress and then having to put everything back together. That's just too much extra work. It's easy to pop off a few velcro strips and pull up the cover to look at the root intrusion.
Now that may sound a bit complicated to some, but in reality, that can make for an extremely simple grow. It can be extremely simplified with easily obtainable and Limited number of ingredients and grow quite excellent canna!
1.Good media base
2 Good quality compost, yours or store bought
3 Your own or good quality earthworm Castings
4 Craft blend from BAS
5 A simple good quality flower amendment.
And that will work quite well with most girls. Your added life and garden helpers will come from the compost and earthworm castings.
A Beginner can do several simple grows and learn and then can adapt and refine the procedures to their own way of doing things and products available to them.
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Though this time I filled the EBJr’s with straight Roots Organic Original, zero amendments and started with soil full mounded so I can’t add dry amendments later. Instead I am feeding with Foop on my res fills. We will see if it results in a problem by harvest via residue but I’m thinking I’ll be ok. I tried something similar with terp tea added to res and it worked ok but not perfect but I think those powders added to water were more prone to settling than the foop will be
