While our USDA extension program, the National Gardening Association and others in the media drone on about “you’ve got to have a drain hole” nonsense, we’re fortunate to have two leaders like Dr. H. Marc Cathey and Vint Cerf.
They are advisory board co-chairs of The Growing Connection, a U.N. agency, which is a major supporter of sub-irrigated planters through its connection to the EarthBox.
Dr. Cathey is President Emeritus of the American Horticultural Society. I’ve known of him since my first days in the interior plantscaping industry back in the mid ‘70s. As a speaker at our trade shows, he was a big help to all of us groping our way along in a new industry.
Vint Cert, known as a “founding father” of the Internet is Vice President & Chief Internet Evangelist of Google. Of course, we all know about Google, a major success story in the history of U.S. business.
I would not know what I know about our out of date horticultural education without Google web and individual site searches. Both good and bad information have no hiding places from Google.
It is perfectly understandable why they would be supporters of the EarthBox as a company. It is the only high profile name brand in the field of sub-irrigated food planters.
Recognize however that although the EarthBox is a patented product, no one can patent the benefits of sub-irrigated planters. Sub-irrigation, along with its benefits, is in the public domain.
Whether you plant in a repurposed pop/soda bottle, an EarthBox, or any of the inappropriately named “self-watering” planters the core principal is the same. Whether you are growing tomatoes, or houseplants the core principal is the same.
Water moves up from a reservoir into the soil via some form of wick by the basic principal of physics called capillary action. It is just that simple.
As the EarthBox has proven, vegetable production is dramatically increased with water savings in the range of eighty percent. These benefits attracted The Growing Connection in its work with third world countries with scarcities of rich soil and water. It is also the ideal approach to urban agriculture where open land and space are at a premium.
If two distinguished professionals like Dr. Cathey and Vint Cerf can see the benefits, why is that so much of our horticultural bureaucracy cannot. Why are they still playing with clay?
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