So — I love gardening. A bug I caught years ago when my friend rented me a house he and his wife had cultivated a large vegetable garden in. I felt like I should maintain it, replant it and keep it going. It was so much fun and I was able to make such incredible meals out of the tomatoes, zucchini, corn, beans, peppers, pumpkins and melons — I actually refuse to eat some varieties of supermaket produce now (tomatoes especially; they just don’t compete.)

I now live in a place where deer are a constant challenge and planting outside our fenced in area seems like a complete waste of time. Inside the fenced in part of our property its already pretty well landscaped AND I’ve actually found tomatoes and strawberries (all I’m currently working with) to grow great in containers! Both seem like like warm roots and the containers heat up nicely.

Knowing this I went looking for something more than just a pot. I figured all these upside-down tomato growing things I see in SkyMall must have some merit — maybe that was something I should try? Thanks to the power of the internet, I found the EarthBox.

The Earthbox is a self watering, mulching container garden. You set it up, put your plants in and just fill a reservoir of water up periodically. Impossible to over water, if you have 1/2 a clue it’ll be pretty hard to underwater as well. You pre-fertilize the potting mix, so no remembering to feed it or anything — plus it comes with a bunch of Dolomite (HA! HA!) to add calcium to the soil which tomatoes just love.

So I figured I’ll try it. It arrived last week and I plan to get some potting mix and strawberries going with it. I’ve already got 4 containers of tomatoes, but I may order another and put some indeterminate tomatoes in as I made the mistake of going all determinate and heirloom with the ones I’ve already put up.

Anyone have any experience? Earthbox’s forums seem to have a lot of encouraging info.