grow boxes

Existing market for grow Boxes...Exisiting grow boxes.....

...Strengths and weaknesses

ABOVE: recycled material is a bounus making this one of the only grow boxes on the market that is low cost although once you add on all the edge covers from but metal and the hinges and stuff is still retails for 230 dollars. It also takes heavy handeling and work to create and put in the ground it is un moveable and not very long lasting. LEFT: The best thing about these although there is alot of down fall about them is that they take less than 10 minutes to set up. They are TOOL FREE and come in small packaging easy enough to be able to throw in the back boot of the car. But they are made out of expenise wood which has been treated and cut down, making the cost of these ones from 200-600 dollars.

POSITIVES COMBINED: recycled material, easiness, tool free, saftey , transportation.

Exisiting grow boxes........Strengths and weaknesses

TOPLEFT: Home made one, no tool method again but the structure is un easy, any more soil and things will collapse. It is important to rememeber that soil is incredibly heavy in the amounts i will be needing. the way this one is lined is very limiting to what can be grown. the hight difference how ever alolows for things that need deeper rooting to be planted higer up. but then again limits space due to wall thiness. BOTTOM LEFT: using old beds

to make garden beds. very pracitcal and very easily assembled, it would take work digging it into the ground but the inital strucutre is all ready sturdy. this does bring me to the conculsion that i think i may want to incorperate some amount of mobility in it, so that as peoples needs in there back yard change so can there kids gardens beds, because as chilren grow there wants will change rapidly which may mean having the grow boxes mobile would be a benifit. FAR RIGHT: not anything very innovative with this design, drainage will be poor but the wall climb that is self standing is a clever way for tomatoes to be able to be grown under the circuimstances i want.

Making it low Maintenace...

...Worms ...Soil

...Mobility...Drip IrrigationIt's much easier to control your garden if it

has definite boundaries. Containers provide the ultimate in control. You control the soil, water, exposure and even limit the growth of the plants in the container. ...Time Released Fertilizer

Making it low Maintenace...

...Self wateringtThere are alot of very smal scale projects out there with self watering systems. such a school experiments or even the type that sit on your kitchen bench, they all work on a sort of suck it up drainage system and trickle through affect. this would be fantasitic to be able to impliment on a large scale. As it means children would not have to be so attentive to watering only filling up. It makes the whole thing far less demanding. It does mean the set up will be a little more high tech but not overally much more. It also risticts some of my material choices to either entireally plastic to partically plastic.