Inside Urban Green

The Cabbage Patch Garden Looks Like A SIP Winner

It's great to see a business built on the exploitation of sub-irrigated planter (SIP) systems. Dick Larsen in Minneapolis was savvy enough to see the opportunity and seize on it. 

You can read about the progress he is making with his Cabbage Patch Garden planters in the following article. Is it too bad a pun to call his planters SIPerior? Based on the article it appears his customers think they are. It's well worth reading.

I applaud both the aesthetics and functionality he has incorporated into his planters. It reflects the work of a master carpenter which is what he is. Incidentally, based on his website photos (scroll down) it appears that he has incorporated the drain pipe method. I also like his 3-box SIP insert design. It provides a great deal of flexibility. Overall, he has done a great job of both design and fabrication.

My opinion is that these planters will be highly productive in both a business sense and in terms of customer satisfaction. I have no doubt that over time Cabbage Patch Garden SIPs will produce many tons of fresh vegetables for his customers in the Twin Cities. I wish him the best of luck and tons of money too. Small business is not for the faint of heart.

via simplegoodandtasty.com

Dick Larsen is not the guy you'd expect to be at the helm of a revolution. He's soft-spoken and slightly built. With his thick, retro, architect glasses and pink rock-a-billy shirt with two roosters over the left pocket, it wouldn't be surprising to see a pack of cigarettes rolled up in his sleeve, but there are none. A carpenter by trade and, now, the sole proprietor of The Vegetable Revolution, Larsen is a self-taught man.

An Uncommon Organic Rooftop Farm

Photo via www.organicnation.tv

Uncommon Ground is a popular Chicago restaurant with a certified organic rooftop garden. It is claimed to be the first of its kind in the U.S. Garden Director Dave Snyder is performing a valuable public service by blogging about the progress of the garden on Huffington Post. This type of information is currently unavailable from our public institutions.

As you can see, the garden has large custom made top-watered planters along with EarthBox sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). It should be noted that fellow Chicago restaurateur and chef Rick Bayless also has an EarthBox  garden on his Frontera Grill rooftop.

Now in its second season, the Uncommon Ground garden offers the unique opportunity to compare experiences with both top and bottom methods of container gardening irrigation. Dave Snyder is sharing this information with us as it happens. I don't know of another project like this anywhere in the world.

Here Dave shares his opinions about the EarthBoxes.

Dave Snyder: Uncommon Ground Rooftop Farm Update: Week 5

Enough doom and gloom. Lets focus on the good stuff. The tomatoes are popping up in our earthboxes. If you're unfamiliar with earthboxes, they're a self-contained, sub-irrigation system -- like a self-watering planter box. They're a great way for urban gardeners to grow vegetables in places where you might not have access to soil: rooftops, fire escapes, balconies, window sills, even parking lots! But of course, since they're sealed on the bottom, they're also usable in places where the soil is infertile or contaminated. They're so efficient and easy that an organization called Growing Connection is sending them all over the world to places where people have trouble accessing reliable sources for fresh vegetables. If they work in Ghana and the Bronx as well as they work here, it's gonna be tomatoes all the world over this August.

A Skeptic Grows Into A Believer

If necessity is the mother of invention, it can also be the mother of new thinking. That is what happened when journalist Maureen Gilmer gave an EarthBox to a friend in need due to hip replacement surgery.

Much to her surprise, the EarthBox demonstrated benefits she was skeptical about. She became an enthusiastic believer and wrote about it.

Kudos to Maureen for sharing her experience that has been widely published. We need many more journalists who specialize in horticultural writing to open their minds to new thinking as she has done.

via www.eastvalleytribune.com

Maureen Gilmer, Scripps Howard News Service 

Every spring, without fail, ads come on TV about the latest new product that makes gardening a cinch. I watch countless demonstrations with fake, powdery soil that bears no resemblance to the clay of my garden.

2010 Earthbox Garden - A Photo Set On Flickr

There are challenges to growing food in rural and suburban environments as well as the city. The EarthBoxes shown in this Flickr photo set are located on wooded, hilly, rock strewn land that is ill suited to gardening.

As always, it is important to realize that this sub-irrigated planter (SIP) garden could be located anywhere there is adequate sunlight. That is the only requirement. SIPs create opportunities for millions of people to grow personal and family food where they otherwise could not.

The big question is why is our education system is so lax in teaching about these modern methods of fresh food production. You should ask your representatives at all levels of government and education. If we have food injustice, it starts here.

via www.flickr.com

Jamie Oliver – Gardening – EarthBox Company Garden

This is from the well known celebrity chef Jamie Oliver website.

via www.jamieoliver.com

The EarthBox Company Garden provides employees with healthy produce grown out on asphalt pavement alongside its facility in the sustainable EarthBox Container Gardening System that uses less water and fertilizer than traditional gardening, reuses the same potting medium season after season. and eliminates fertilizer run off, weeding, hoeing and digging. With the EarthBox, employees don't need to spend so much time in the garden yet they benefit from its high yield. Surplus produce is donated to the local food pantry. The garden also provides the Education Department with a laboratory to run the experiments introduced in its standards-based Pre-K 12th grade curricula.

EarthBox Or Garden Patch Grow Box Online

EarthBox

Garden Patch Grow Box

This is from someone online calling themselves "Earthbox". They sell both the EarthBox and Garden Patch Grow Box sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). I have no experience with them so you're on your own.

If you have any experience with this site, let us all know by posting a comment.

EarthBox Tomatoes In Just Five Weeks

If you are new to sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox and unsure of results, check out this series of photos.

This documented experience is not unusual. It is what you should expect when growing fresh food in SIPs.

The only inhibitor to growing personal and family food in SIPs is lack of information from our educational institutions. 

Bloggers like Sabrina are helping us all by documenting their positive experiences. If you know of someone who is blogging about SIPs, please let us all know by posting a comment and link. We, together, can do much to solve the SIP information deficit problem.  

See the photo of Week #5

GreenSmart: Sub-irrigated Planters From Australia

This very productive strawberry patch growing under protective netting is in Australia.

The plants are growing in Australian sub-irrigated  planters (SIPs) called GreenSmart pots, similar to EarthBoxes.

The GreenSmart pots are available in two sizes (product specifications). One is about the same area as an EarthBox but almost four inches deeper. A distinctive feature is an external fill tube that acts as a water level indicator.

Click through the gallery of photos and note the impressive quality of the plants growing in these SIPs. 

Website: greensmartpots.com

A Sub-irrigated Salad Garden Growing On Concrete

A set of photos on Flickr shows the progression of a salad garden growing in EarthBoxes.

It continues to impress me that most of the sub-irrigated planter (SIP) gardens I find are in the suburbs with backyards and lawns.

Most people in the city still don't know that they can have a highly productive vegetable garden growing on concrete, blacktop, a balcony or on their roof.

via www.flickr.com

Corrugated Drain Pipe Sub-Irrigated Planter Bed

Thanks to the synergy with my friend Frieda the Flower Diva, we have a new method of making sub-irrigated planters (SIPs). Let me modify that a bit. It's really a riff on a 120-year-old method used by Liberty Hyde Bailey, a father of American horticulture.

This is just a peek at these beta test planters located at Liberty Sunset Garden Center in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There will be more photos to come, but you can easily understand the method from just this look.

Those are sections of 4" diameter corrugated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) drain pipe wedged down at the bottom of the planter boxes, which are lined with sheet plastic. The sheet plastic will line the planter all the way to the top on the next planters. What was done here was the result of a  miscommunication with the planter builder.

There are slots around the periphery of the drain pipe that provide for both air and water flow. The drain pipes form instant water reservoirs and air chambers. The fill pipe in the corner is made from recycled water bottles. There is an overflow drain hole not shown in the photo.

All you need to do is add the media, plants, sunlight and nutrients. This method can be used in any watertight container including tote boxes.

It has the potential to revolutionize home and community gardening. Sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) will out produce any other method, including in-ground growing, while saving water and time. They also overcome the widespread and often undetected problem of contaminated city soil.