Tribox story

Tribox – the grandfather

The Tribox is the grandfather of the latest Gbiota boxes.

The top box is essentially a normal growing box, just like the millions of pots that are used across the globe.
It is filled with soil or, if no soil is available, commercial potting mix, and then seeded and watered on a regular basis.

Read more here – Gbiota intro

The growing and breeding boxes have a hole or multiple holes so that all the water can drain away.

Waterlogged soils not only kill the plants but allow harmful organisms like root-eating nematodes or E-Coli to breed.
We control the species of organisms in the soil by controlling the conditions – specifically the balance between
water, air and nutrients.

This is called Eco-balance and has been tested over millions of years.
Read a longer article about evolution
here.

The difference between a regular growing pot and the top Tribox is that a conventional pot is watered with fresh,
clean water, while the top Tribox is watered with a brown liquid full of nutrients and living microbes which we call
soil blood. It does the same job as our blood – circulating nutrients and living cells around the system.

The middle box in the Tribox tower is where the microbes breed. It is initially filled with organic waste,
typically kitchen waste, but it could be any organic waste – grass clippings are particularly useful as they are low
in nutrients and balance out the often over-rich food waste.

Plants don’t like too rich a soil – read
here
about how water moves, where I explain osmosis.

The middle box has holes in the base to drain any excess liquid away.

The bottom box is purely to catch the excess water that drains away.

Circulating soil blood

There are two absolutely essential features of the Gbiota system.
Read more here.

In a conventional growing pot the water is essentially stagnant; in a Gbiota box the soil blood is regularly flushed
and drained away, adding nutrients and microscopic life to the soil.

Flood and drain

Beneficial microbes need to breathe. If there is no oxygen then harmful microbes like root-eating nematodes or
E-Coli will breed.

In the Gbiota system the boxes are partially flooded, which expels any stale air, and then drained, sucking fresh air
back into the soil.

People are busy

The Tribox works fine but has one disadvantage – to add extra organic waste to the middle breeding box or to collect
the soil blood from the bottom box, the boxes in the tower have to be lifted off to allow access.

Honestly, not really a big deal, but people nowadays seem to be excessively busy and just don’t have any spare time –
even if the benefits are a longer, healthier life and avoiding all those horrible chronic diseases which occur because
our modern food system is not feeding our gut brain. The gut brain goes into emergency mode and makes us store the wrong
fat in the wrong places.

Read more here.

I want everyone to benefit from the Gbiota system and have a healthy gut, so I think: how can I make this system as
simple and easy to use as possible?

Merging the middle and top boxes

The first step was to merge the middle and top boxes so, instead of having a box for growing the plants and a separate
box for breeding the microbes, we just have one box with the bottom full of organic waste to breed the microbes.

NB: you don’t just throw a bunch of rubbish into the bottom of the box. You need an inoculant with starter microbes
and minerals to feed them (and you). This is all covered in our manuals. For direct help you can contact me at
colin@gbiota.com.

The top is to grow the plants which act as carriers for the microbes to our gut brain.

There are arguments for and against merging the boxes.

The argument for is that plants exude sugars from their roots which feed the microbes, which is clearly good.

The argument against is that labile or young compost produces both methane gas and other growth inhibitors.

The only way to tell is to do experiments – which I have done – and, if done properly, this system of a single box
with two layers works fine.

This reduces the number of boxes from three to two, but to circulate the soil blood the top box has to be lifted off,
the soil blood poured into another container, then the soil blood poured onto the top growing box.

Two down to one

But we can reduce the number of boxes to just one by fitting a swivel tube to the base of the box so we can drain
the soil blood and flood the growing box.

This makes operation extremely simple – just drain the soil blood out into a temporary container (I am using an old
3 litre milk bottle), twist the swivel tube into the upright position so it does not drain, then pour the soil blood
onto the growing box.

What could be simpler?

But the question is: will it work as we expect?

Again, there is only one way to find out – run some experiments.

The experiments

I did this and what did I find?

I had two sets of boxes in my experiments.

The first set of boxes had the two boxes, with the top box having holes in the base allowing the soil blood to flow
into the storage box below.

The second was just a single box with a swivel tube and a milk bottle to collect the drainage.

Some things in life you cannot miss

No one is fully in control of their lives and it just so happened that, at the end of the experiments, I had to take
an extended trip for a vital mission – actually to attend my granddaughter’s high school graduation.

As the boxes with the swivel tube were really little more than modified Wicking boxes I thought I would be smart and
flood the boxes and leave the swivel tube in the up position so there would be a reserve of water for the plants.

What did I learn?

At the start of the experiments I was at home so I could manage everything and it was just obvious that the swivel
tube system was the easiest to use.

I have been playing around with Wicking Beds for some three decades now and know the big danger is having the soil too
wet, so I was very careful to ensure I was not over-watering.

With the swivel tube system there is always some water left in the bottom of the box so I fitted a sight tube (just a
bit of ag pipe pushed into the soil) so I could check that the water had been used up before I watered again.

That put the swivel tube system in the lead over the two-box system and it was clearly the system I was going to promote.

But when I was away for the best part of a week I had been too clever by half in trying to use the swivel box as a normal
Wicking Bed with a built-in water supply.

When I returned the plants had started to turn brown – a sure sign that they were suffering from waterlogging.

However, the plants in the twin box system (which had a hole in the base so there was no possibility of them becoming
waterlogged) were fine.

The plants were showing signs of beginning to wilt after being left, but as soon as I watered them they sprang back into life.

So what is the action plan?

I had started to write the manual promoting the swivel tube system, but I have just put that on hold while I repeat
the experiments – making sure I twist the swivel tube into the drain position and allow time for the plants to use the
remaining water in the base of the boxes before re-watering.

I am pretty sure that as long as I don’t do silly clever-cloggy things and try and store excess water so the soil is
left saturated, this will work fine and will be my recommended system.

However, having been involved with supporting people using Wicking Beds for many years, I know that people so love their
plants that they cannot resist over-watering. So I will give them the option of using the twin box system with holes in
the base of the box which pretty much guarantees that the soil will never become saturated.

Today’s punch line

Use the swivel tube system – it is just so easy – but fit a sight tube so you can see the water level and don’t keep on
topping up with water unnecessarily, however much you love your plants. Waterlogged soil is no good for plants.

And if you want to ignore my advice – just grow watercress. It just loves water and it is full of iron anyway.

Next read About Gbiota.