Inside Urban Green

Planter Box, Raised Bed SIPs: Home Grow Micro Farms

Home Grow Micro Farms is a sub-irrigated planter (SIP) service business in Los Angeles.

The last time I blogged about them they were in Austin, Texas. That's okay, I move around too. L.A. is no doubt a much bigger market for a business like this. 

This blog post got my attention in that they are not just using EarthBoxes but also providing wooden box SIPs. In my view the potential market for raised bed and box SIPs is enormous.

via earth911.com
Website: Home Grow Micro Farms

In a city of cement, die-hard gardeners usually have to content themselves with a window box of gardenias or a series of never-ending potted plants. The prospect of growing anything even remotely more ambitious is extinguished by factors that characterize an urban environment, such as lack of living space.

Planter Box, Raised Bed SIPs: Cabbage Patch Garden

It's good to see the sub-irrigated planter (SIP) concept taking root so to speak. Nice job! See more photos on the website and Facebook.

There is no doubt that we will see many more sub-irrigated raised beds and planter boxes in the future. It is an idea whose time has come.

via www.startribune.com
Website: CabbagePatchGarden.com

Plant to eat local

Dan "Dick" Larsen, a local maker of custom cabinets, says he's trying to start a vegetable revolution. Larsen builds and sells 4-by-2-foot cedar planters with a sub-irrigation system that waters plants from the bottom. The reservoir is replenished as needed, so planters could sit for a week untended -- nice for cabin owners. You can choose pre-sown seeds for each of the three containers, or plant your own. The Cabbage Patch Gardens are built in northeast Minneapolis and delivered to the customer's front door in the metro area and western Wisconsin. Cost is $129.99 per planter. For more info, visit www.cabbage patchgarden.com.

Green Solutions: Vegetable Gardens To Go

Ever so slowly there are new small businesses sprouting up around the country that provide "gardens to go". These are companies that provide pre-planted sub-irrigation planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox.

Green Solutions is one of them. They are located out on Long Island here in the New York area.

There will be many more of these companies before too long. It is an idea whose time has come.

via www.plantgreensolutions.com

With the Earthbox you will experience the fulfillment of providing nutritious vegetables for yourself and family.

Two Dog Organic Nursery Teaches Too

Ready to go EarthBoxes at Two Dog Organic Nursery

Two Dog Organic Nursery not only offers fully planted EarthBoxes to go, they also teach about them. It's an excellent way to market a business and do some social good too by freeing people from dirt and drain hole bondage.

Based on my knowledge of how little is offered on this subject here in New York City, this could be a full time business. The two major botanic gardens offer nothing on the subject. Amazing, but true!

Via their blog: 2dog-blog.blogspot.com

Two Dog Organic Nursery announces Monthly EarthBox Planting Classes!

EarthBoxes To Go From Two Dog Organic Nursery

EarthBoxes to go – Jo Anne on the right helping a customer

Jo Anne of Two Dog Organic Nursery in Los Angeles is sending off another smiling customer who will soon be enjoying fresh picked vegetables without the hassle of digging dirt.

Jo Anne and partner Alejandro were smart enough to see the business potential of portable sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) like the EarthBox. The idea is a winner.

Despite all the rather overblown rhetoric from dyed in the wool dirt huggers, most mainstream urbanites are not going to start “victory gardening”. There is buzz that is all out of proportion to reality. Without a major crisis as happened in Cuba dirt gardening is a non-starter for the vast majority of space limited and super busy city dwellers.

What does make sense, however, are portable SIP gardens that require very little work and space. Busy people in the city can easily handle this kind of “gardening” or more accurately personal food production. We will see more and more small business “SIP services” in the city in the future.

Source: www.twodognursery.com

A SIP Service in Austin, Texas

Here is another "Sip service" (sub-irrigated planters) using EarthBoxes. Would you like your fresh vegetables with or without roots today?    

Previous "sip service" post Harvest to Home

via homeandoats.wordpress.com

Down in Austin, TX Lucas Brower and Jesse Kamm have started a genius company making and delivering Home Grow Micro Farms––self-watering garden boxes that yield a variety of seasonal, organic vegetables over the course of 3 months.

SIP Service: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

via www.harvesttohome.com

The market for fresh vegetables via "SIP service" (sub-irrigated planters) will grow exponentially as more entrepreneurs and consumers understand the positive benefits. It's just a matter of time.

Via: www.dailypilot.com
Product source: EarthBox website

Mike Saraylian organizes one of the Harvest to Home vegetable and herb gardens, a self-contained organic garden box. The systems require no dirt.

Mike Saraylian, 29, owner and operator of Harvest to Home, rents out EarthBoxes for growing vine vegetables and fruits. The boxes, he said, are somewhat hydroponic, self-fertilizing and self-watering. For those who don’t want to do the gardening, but want the freshness that comes with organic food, Saraylian said, he’s got the secret.

What’s special about these boxes?

Typically when you have plants, you water them from the top. When you water from the top, you don’t know if it’s going all the way down. With the boxes, the plants sit in the soil and the roots travel to the bed of the water and pull up the water as it’s needed. It’s operated off of pressure.