Switching to planting bags for the garden wasn’t a planned improvement as I reused planting containers. My collection of hard black pots were accidentally recycled during a surprise to me cleaning project. Great project, I was broken-hearted about losing the planters and shocked at the cost to replace them. Planting in garden bags has helped with poor soil.
I didn’t know I needed planting bags for the garden until I had them!
Raised bed gardening went well, after years of adding compost the sandy soil remained a challenge. In 2019 the garden was moved closer to the house and kitchen. This rebuild was different by trying to preserve the nice soil in bags. There are a lot of planting bag varieties, the square plastic bags were perfect in square gardening boxes resolving a lot of gardening issues.
I’ve had many gardening problems over the years that impacted how much produce grew which are:
- Keeping everything watered
- Poor germination
- Plant loss from insects and bug infestations
- Plant disease that typically strikes during peak growth
- Post harvest plants that wither
- Succession planting
I’m calling this planting style plug and play as the bags allow me to pull out anything that isn’t producing and replace it. The test gardens were definitely easy to do and very successful. A few plants were started early in the hoophouse and transplanted into bags before moving into the garden space.
The square plastic bags are available in multiple sizes, they worked wonderful and performed exactly as expected. The 7 gallon bags by Viagrow (25 bags for $18) were a nice large size that work for one large plant like eggplant and peppers. Ten gallon bags by Viagrow ( 25 bags for $20) are large enough for a tomato, cucumber, or squash.
The plan worked perfectly, when the summer squash struggled with mildew, I removed it easily. When a plant outgrew the space, it was easy to move other plants out of the way. Rotating lettuce, peas, and other greens for succession planting easy peasy.
This year I will be using the bags to utilize all the benefits of planting and rotating vegetable during their growing season.
Has anyone else changed the way the plant their gardens or increased the size of their gardens to increase production?
Check out some of my gardening adventures
