Last year we tried a community garden and... well it didn't work very well. Too many bosses and not enough workers. This year we decided we didn't need that many things; a few tomato plants, a couple cucumber plants and maybe some strawberry plants. Our situation is not that different from many of you who live in an apartment. Some of you may not know how good tomatos are that have ripened on the vine. I was surfing the net and happened upon the plans for an awesome planter.

Follow up:

The Earthtainer&tm; is a "Green" self-contained vegetable growing eco-system. You can go read all about it on their site. I built two and have two tomato plants planted in each. The automated watering approach based on the principle of capillary action seems to be working very well. Just a word of caution, make sure ypu follow the directions and buy Potting Mix not potting soil. Our neighbor bought potting soil and is having to water from the top. We were not able to find the tomato cages specified in the directions. We found some with four legs and after installing them they seem very stable. Our neighbor found some cages constructed of heaver wire but they only had three legs. She had a difficult time securing the cages to the planter and they don"t seem to be as stable.

The only other comment I would make is you need 17 1/8" wire roap clamps, not 15 as the parts list states. Overall each planter cost a little under $100.00 in parts and took around three hours to build. I built mine one at a time. One might be able to save a little time by building more than one at a time.

EarthTainer Planter
Tags: container gardening, earthtainer, tomato planter