If you want to start a garden but lack the space or materials for a raised bed, you may be wondering what your options are. As home gardening has become more popular, more people have started to experiment with their own herb or vegetable growth, but gardening can be difficult. Your soil may not be cooperative, or you may have a landlord who doesn’t want you digging up the yard. What can you do?
Choose Grow Bags
Grow bags are an excellent resource for beginning gardeners and for people who don’t have much space to work with. Standard grow bags can hold two or three plants each and give you a functional garden that you can move and shape according to your needs. Grow bags don’t require you to dig up the ground and can even be started indoors (if you use a tray for drainage).
Grow bags are great for salad greens and plants with shallow roots, such as tomatoes or peppers. If you’re growing greens, you can lay the grow bags on their sides and cut them open vertically to create more space to plant.
Grow bags are also useful when your soil does not have enough nutrients for planting. If you want to improve the health of your soil, consider pouring the grow bags onto your soil every year; this can drastically improve your soil health in just a few years. You can also create your own grow bags with paper sacks from the grocery store; that way, your grow bag is also biodegradable and environmentally friendly.
How to Use Grow Bags
Grow bags generally work best for plants that germinated elsewhere. A coir grow cube is an excellent medium for seed germination; by facilitating root growth, it minimizes the damage caused by transferring plants to the grow bags.
One of the most important things to determine is whether you want to make your own soil blend or purchase a preconstructed grow bag. A preconstructed grow bag is much easier to use. However, making your own grow bags gives you more control over your soil blend and lets you use soil amendments to improve the health of your plants.
When using a grow bag (ready-made or personally blended), the first thing you should do is ensure that your soil is well-aerated. You should also make sure your bag has drainage holes and that your soil or compost is evenly distributed. If you decided to make your own grow bag, you can add coir pith to your soil to improve its water retention abilities and guard it against mold, fungus, and parasites. In general, bugs don’t like coir as a medium.
Once you’ve transplanted your seedlings to your grow bags, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to maintain your garden. You can use the bags to grow plants in a sunny indoor spot, in a greenhouse, or as a makeshift raised bed outside. Their versatility gives you endless options when you want to try your hand at gardening.
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