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A guy planted two potatoes in an Amazon shipping box to prove a point. Mission accomplished.

You should see how many potatoes he got out of this experiment.

The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni/YouTube

Can you grow vegetables in a cardboard box?

In the era of supermarkets and wholesale clubs, growing your own food isn't a necessity for most Americans. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to try.

A household garden can be a great way to reduce your grocery bill and increase your intake of nutrient-dense foods. It can also be a good source of exercise and a hobby that gets you outside in the sunshine and fresh air more often. However, not everyone has a yard where they can grow a garden or much outdoor space at all where they live. You can plant things in containers, but that requires some upfront investment in planters.

container garden, growing plants in containers, growing vegetables, homegrown, producePotted plants and herbs can thrive in a container garden.Photo credit: Canva

Or does it? Gardener James Prigioni set out to see if an Amazon shipping box would hold up as a planter for potatoes. He took a basic single-walled Amazon box, lined it with dried leaves to help with moisture retention, added four to five inches of soil (his own homegrown soil he makes), added three dark red seed potatoes, covered them with more soil, added a fertilizer, then watered them.

He also planted a second, smaller Amazon box with two white seed potatoes, following the same steps.

Two weeks later, he had potato plants growing out of the soil. Ten days after that, the boxes were filled with lush plants.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

Prigioni explained how to "hill" potato plants when they grow tall enough, which helps encourage more tuber growth and protect the growing potatoes from sunlight. Hilling also helps support the plants as they grow taller so they don't flop over. He also added some mulch to help keep the plants cooler as the summer grew hotter.

After hilling, Prigioni only needed to keep up with watering. Both varieties of potatoes flowered, which let him know the tubers were forming. The red potato leaves developed some pest issues, but not bad enough to need intervention, while the white potato plants were unaffected. "It goes to show how variety selection can make a big difference in the garden," he explained.

The visible plants have to start dying before you harvest potatoes, and Prigioni checked in with the boxes themselves when they got to that point.

vegetable garden, growing potatoes, grow potatoes in a cardboard box, Amazon box, farmingFreshly harvested potatoes are so satisfying.Photo credit: Canva

"I am pleasantly surprised with how well the boxes held up," he said, especially for being single-walled boxes. The smaller box was completely intact, while the larger box had begun to split in one corner but not enough to affect the plants' growth. "This thing was completely free to grow in, so you can't beat that," he pointed out.

Prigioni predicted that the red potatoes grown in the larger box would be more productive. As he cut open the box and pulled potatoes from the larger box, they just kept coming, ultimately yielding several dozen potatoes of various sizes. The smaller box did have a smaller yield, but still impressive just from two potatoes planted in an Amazon box.

People often think they don't have room to grow their own food, which is why Prigioni put these potato boxes on his patio. "A lot of people have an area like this," he said.

"I will never look at cardboard boxes the same," Prigioni added. "There are so many uses for them in the garden and it's just a great free resource we have around, especially if you're ordering stuff from Amazon all the time."

cardboard box, container garden, amazon box, growing vegetables, gardeningDo you see a box or do you see a planter?Photo credit: Canva

People loved watching Prigioni's experiment and shared their own joy—and success—in growing potatoes in a similar fashion:

"I have been growing potatoes in every box I can find for several years now. I have had excellent success. I honestly think potatoes prefer cardboard. And yes, most of my boxes were from Amazon."

"I live in an upstairs apartment with a little deck and I have a container garden with containers on every single stair leading to the deck. I grow potatoes in a laundry basket. It's amazing how much food I can get from this type of garden!! Grateful."

"I literally got up and grabbed the empty boxes by our front door, the potatoes that have started to sprout, and soil i had inside and started my planting at 1am. Lol. I will take them outside today and finish. Thank you James!"

"I grew potatoes and tomatoes on my tiny balcony in Germany (in buckets and cardboard boxes). Now I have a big garden here in America. I so love to grow my own food."

"I grew sweet potatoes in cardboard boxes. It’s so much fun."

Next time you're stuck with an Amazon box that you don't have a use for, consider whether you could use it as a planter for potatoes or some other edible harvest. Gardening doesn't have to be fancy to be effective.

You can find more of gardening experiments on The Gardening Channel with James Prigioni.

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'Forgotten' water harvesting system transforms 'barren wasteland' into thriving farmland

The half moons even help replenish the water table.

Credit: Andrew Millison/YouTube

Half moons allow water to be retained for agriculture and even replenish the groundwater table.

When the Great Green Wall initiative began in 2007, it was just a vision of a big, beautiful wall of greenery spanning the width of Africa to keep the Sahara Desert from encroaching on the rest of the continent. Despite years of successes and failures, celebration and criticism, we can see the progress being made as an inspiring example of how local and global collaboration can help counter the effects of climate change.

Just a few years ago, the Sahel region at the northern edge of Senegal was a "barren wasteland" where nothing had grown for 40 years. But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and local villagers teamed up to regreen the area, bringing back agriculture, improving the economy of the people who live there, and preventing the climate migration that desertification ultimately leads to.

How do you hold back the world's largest hot desert?

According to Andrew Millison, a permaculture designer and instructor at Oregon State University, the Sahara desert has expanded by about 10% in the past 100 years. The idea behind the Great Green Wall is to build a barrier of vegetation to stop that expansion, which threatens the ecosystems and economies of the Sahel—the region south of the Sahara that separates the desert from the savanna.

In a video from February of 2024, Millison shared the collaborative nature and progress of one Great Green Wall project in Senegal, including the rejuvenation of 300,000 hectares (about the equivalent of 600,000 football fields) of seemingly unusable land.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"The process started with the community-based participatory planning," WFP program policy officer Bakalilou Diaby shares in the video. "By the end of this process, it was agreed that one of the major action is the land reclamation or land recovery project."

At first, it took some time to convince the community that the regreening of the degraded landscape was even possible, but after learning about how to improve the land, "the people believe and they are convinced, and they are also committed," says Diaby.

The 'forgotten' half-moon method of harvesting water

One of the keys to this particular regreening project is using long-forgotten techniques for harvesting water. When soil is crusted and sunbaked and hard as cement, rainwater doesn't penetrate and it's impossible for plants to take root. The solution? Half-moon shaped ditches dug in such a way that water flows into them on the straight side with an embankment built on the rounded side to hold the water in. Each half moon is 4 meters in diameter and takes about a day for one person to dig.

Local vegetation domesticated on the Sahel thousands of years ago, such as sorghum and millet, are planted in these half moons, rehabilitating the land and feeding the local community at the same time.

"This is nothing new—we have not invented a technology here," explains Sebastian Muller from the WFP resilience team. "The half moon technology is actually an endogenous technology to the Sahel and has been forgotten over time. We have rescued it from the past."

Not only does capturing water in the half moons help with the immediate need to grow food and contribute to the Great Green Wall, but 10% to 15% of the water will actually soak into the ground to replenish the water table, creating a more sustainable agricultural process.

"That way we actually achieve a balance of water. So we are not depleting the water resources, but we're making sure that we keep enough water in the ground for future generations," says Muller.

Other crops such as okra and tomatoes are grown in horizontal horticulture beds, and between those ditches grow trenches with fruit trees in them.

Engaging indigenous wisdom for sustainable farming

"This is just a very first step in this pilot," adds Muller. "We'll also be using other native species that will be planting in the pits that will drive the rejuvenation of the soil and the protection of the soil as the system starts growing into abundance and producing food and life for the people here."

According to Muller, the "syntropic farming" methods being employed were developed in Brazil and are based on global indigenous practices that mimic the way natural forests grow and thrive. These natural growing dynamics make agriculture more sustainable, continually replenishing the land rather than continually depleting it—truly a testament to global collaboration carried out at the local level with local community support.

"This project was really, really interesting because the World Food Programme wanted to demonstrate how you could take the most devastated areas and turn them back into resilient, food-producing locations," says Millison. "And they specifically placed their project on a very degraded landscape that had been taken down to bare, compacted earth."

If this desertified "wasteland" can be rejuvenated so successfully, it provides hope for recovering other land that many people might write off as useless or barren. As climate change continues to alter the Earth's landscape—literally—we'll need to keep working together both locally and globally to find solutions like the Great Green Wall and support their implementation.

You can learn more about successful permaculture practices on Andrew Millison's YouTube channel.

This article originally appeared in January.

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Amazing WaterCube invention can create up to 100 gallons of water a day out of thin air

Say goodbye to your water bills.

via Genesis Systems and Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

Genesis Systems' WaterCube.

A seriously impressive piece of technology grabbed a lot of attention at this year's CES trade show convention in Las Vegas, Genesis Systems’ WaterCube. It’s a home and office appliance that’s about the size of an A/C unit and can produce up to 100 gallons of water daily from thin air. That’s the amount of water used by a typical family of 4.

The amount of water it can produce depends on the humidity levels, but Genesis Systems says it can even create water in dry environments. Much like solar panels provide energy independence, this does the same for water.

"Our first mission is to sustainably solve global water scarcity," said David Stuckenberg, who founded Genesis with his wife, Shannon, told Techxplore. "Once you have this plugged into your house...you can turn yourself off (from) the city water."

"One of the challenges that we're facing, in terms of making humanity sustainable, is the stuff we need for life," he said, according to Techxplore. "Next to air, water is the most important thing."

The WC-100 WaterCube stands more than 3 feet tall, weighs close to 600 pounds and will cost around $20,000 to pre-order. So, even though you may not have a water bill anymore, you will have a pretty expensive monthly payment plan on a WaterCube for a few years.

But once it’s paid off, your water is free as long as you own the appliance.

Genesis Systems believes that the WaterCube creates “an infinite water source” that is “democratizing the water supply.”


This article originally appeared last year.

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Permaculture expert shares how he transformed his average yard into a 'food paradise'

It's amazing how much you can grow on 1/3 of an acre.

Andrew Millison/YouTube

Andrew Millison's yard went from average lawn to abundant garden.

Fifteen years ago, Andrew Millison's yard looked like most average suburban American yards with a row rose bushes, a few trees, and a basic green lawn that had to be mowed and watered—good for running around and picnicking on, but not much else.

Today, it couldn't be more different or more productive. Where there used to be grass, now there's a "multi-layered permaculture food forest" that serves both Millison's family and their neighbors. In a video tour of his property in Oregon's Willamette Valley, the permaculture expert shares the five strategies he used to design his edible landscape.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

But first, what does permaculture mean?

Permaculture refers to sustainable agricultural and design practices that work with nature rather than against it. Permaculture practices include observing and learning from natural ecosystems and creating purposeful systems that emulate them.

For instance, huge fields filled with neat rows of all one kind of crop might make planting and harvesting more efficient, but nothing in nature actually grows that way on its own. Agriculture that goes against nature means having to work hard to keep away pests, manage water distribution carefully, etc. Permaculture aligns human action with the diversity, stability and resilience that make healthy landscapes productive and self-sustaining long-term.

Here are the five strategies Millison used to do that right in his own yard:

1. Create productive edges

Edges of yards and gardens are usually decorative, but Millison's yard edges are almost entirely made of trees and shrubs that produce fruit or other food. From cherries to blackberries to fennel to grapes and more, he created "a solid corridor of food" for him and his community to enjoy. He even has an apple tree that grew out of a crack in the sidewalk. As neighbors walk by, they can partake of the abundance.

Andrew Millison at the edge of his yardThe community benefits from the food growing at the edges of Andrew Millison's sidewalk.Andrew Millison/YouTube

His cherry tree is grafted with four different varieties so they ripen at different times throughout the season. He also has a fig tree that he planted in the south-facing part of the yard to take advantage of the increased heat reflected off the sidewalk.

2. Plant food everywhere

We're used to thinking of a gardens as a distinct part of a yard, not the whole thing, but why? Millison makes use of the land he has by planting food literally everywhere—front yard, side yard, back yard, all of it.

Millison has perennial plants like his artichokes, which means he doesn't have to replant them every year. He also has an annual garden patch, growing things like lettuce, zucchini, broccoli and more, which he harvests from every day during growing season.

flower gardenFood and flowers and native foliage fill the landscape.Andrew Millison/YouTube

3. Diversity of plants

Hyperdiversity is an important strategy, says Millison. Flowers and native plants are a big part of the food-bearing ecosystem, not only attracting pollinators but also supporting insect predator and prey relationships, keeping pests at bay in the garden.

"So I not only have the cultivated ecosystem of exotic food and flowering plants, but I have the ecological matrix of a native, intact system as well," says Millison.


bees on a honeycombMillison's bees help pollinate the whole neighborhood.Andrew Millison/YouTube

Along with the diversity of flowers, Millison also keeps bee hives. The bees pollinate the garden and provide honey (which he puts in his tea he makes with the overabundance of fresh mint he has growing). And because their range is about a mile, the bees from Millison's hives help pollinate his neighbor's gardens as well.

4. Chicken rotation system

Bees aren't the only animal Millison tends to in his permaculture garden. His chickens also play a big role in fertilization, weeding and tilling of the soil, thanks to a rotation system he uses season to season. During the summer, they stay in a paddock where their activity prepares the soil for a winter crop that will be planted there. After the harvest in the fall, they move to the main garden area where they do the same thing, preparing the soil for the next summer's planting.

"Having the chickens move back and forth between these gardens creates a wonderful synergy where the chickens take care of a lot of the important garden work so I don't need to do it," he says.


Chicken paddockChickens take a lot of the work out of soil preparation.Andrew Millison/YouTube

The chickens have a coop that can be accessed from either area and which is also connected to the greenhouse, which is part of Millison's final strategy.

5. Create microclimates

Millison's small lot has about 50 trees planted on it, but it's designed as a "solar bowl" so that all of the plants get the amount of sunlight they need.

A microclimate element familiar to most of us is the greenhouse, and Millison's greenhouse is made from mostly recycled materials. It stays much warmer than the outside, enabling him to keep citrus trees, desert foliage and other plants that don't do well with prolonged below-freezing temperatures. (His greenhouse even has a jade plant from a cutting he got from Jerry Garcia(of The Grateful Dead.)


inside a greenhouseThe chicken nesting boxes open up into the greenhouse.Andrew Millison/YouTube

In an example of the whole permaculture design working together, the chickens' nesting boxes in their coop are attached to and open up into the greenhouse for easy collection.

"You know, your quality of life really goes up when you surround yourself with gardens, with nature," says Millison. "I find my peace in going out here and gardening. It's my hobby. I have a lot of creative energy out here as well. It's a wholesome feeling and it's a secure feeling."

Millison says the garden does help with their grocery bill and there's nothing like eating something fresh that literally just been picked. But it's also about sharing, he says.

"I've got a school down the block. The kids are always walking by, they're eating all the berries and fruits on the sidewalk. I've got neighbors coming over—I'm always sharing my surplus. It's a really good way to build community with your neighbors."

Imagine if everyone's yards were used to grow food this way. You can learn more about Millison's expertise and other permaculture projects around the world on his YouTube channel as well as his website at andrewmillison.com.

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