growing own veggies in bags and pots (Merged)

nodwah

If you can bear grow-bags I've had great sucess with courgettes - 1 plant per bag

Also strawberries and tumbler tomatoes in pots and hanging baskets, in fact even salads in hanging baskets as long as you're very liberal with the water.

nodwah

I've just remembered a thread on here somewhere about growing early potatoes in an old compost bag. and now I've just rmembered seeing a gardening programme where they folded a grow bag over a plank or something and grew potatoes in each half - it would need to be the early type as they don't need earthing up i think

Justamum

You can use old car tyres to grow potatoes too. Start with one layer filled up with soil and plant potatoes, then as they need earthing up, add another tyre and fill up. Would make harvesting quite easy too I should think.

zombiecazz

That's what I'm dping this year. I have large polystyrene boxes for growing my veg. Some of them I'm going to double up so they are quite deep for growing carrots and beetroot. Single depth ones for growing herbs, lettuce, radishes, spinach. Potatoes grow well in sacks . Rolled down quite far to start and roll up a little with each earthing up. Then once they are ready you just tip the sack out.

CazW_2

Hi... I'm new to growing my own veg and have decided to take the plunge this year and am going to grow potatoes, carrots, broad beans, green beans, peas, spring onions, mixed salad leaf, tomatoes, strawberrys and anything else i can get my hands on..lol... all of these things i intend to grow in the little black tubs that supermarkets use for there cut flowers.... my local morrisons sell them for 99p for 8... my main question to you all is... what is earthing up.. when talking about growing potatoes???... when i asked my mum about growing potatoes she just told me to pop them it and leave them..lol

THnaks for any help
Caz

Missy79

Earthing up is adding more soil to the top of the plant. If you don't do this to potatoes any that are developing near the surface will be exposed to the light and turn green. Green potato is poisonous.

angie_loves_veg

CazW wrote:

my main question to you all is... what is earthing up.. when talking about growing potatoes???...
Caz

Simple - in order to get the maximum crop, you need to make the soil progressively 'deeper' as the plant grows. In a pot you can achieve this by:

put 4" compost in the bottom of the pot

place your tuber/s 'rose' end up (the rounded end, or the bit with the most 'sprouts'

cover with about 4" compost

when you have about 6" of visible growth above the level of the soil, add about 4" more soil, so that just the tips of the plant is showing.

again, when you have about 6" of visible growth above the level of the soil, add about 4" more soil, so that just the tips of the plant is showing.

and so on until you get to the top of the pot. with each new layer you are increasing your crop!

Keep well watered, and water especially well when the plants are in flower (that is when the tubers are forming)

when the timing is right and you are ready to harvest, you can wriggle around the edge of the pot to have a feel (!) or just tip the whole lot out onto a tarp/sheet and pick out the tubers!

angie_loves_veg

PS. are the tubs you mention going to be big enough? I would suggest that you need something the size of a bucket (1 tuber) or bigger (2/3 tubers). When planting in pots, I put 2 tubers in a pot 40cm deep, 40cm diameter. I don't live near a morrisons, so don't know how they display the flowers!

CazW_2

angie_loves_veg wrote:

PS. are the tubs you mention going to be big enough? I would suggest that you need something the size of a bucket (1 tuber) or bigger (2/3 tubers). When planting in pots, I put 2 tubers in a pot 40cm deep, 40cm diameter. I don't live near a morrisons, so don't know how they display the flowers!

Thanks for the info!

the tubs are kinds like buckets that they put several bunches of flowers in... there what the flowers are delivered in so they have a large number of them to shift.. hence the low price... they are about 25cm deep and 25cm acros... so i only put one tuber in them but do about 4 tubs.

Thanks again for the help!
Caz

Lord_Gardener

We use old dustbins and compost sacks for growing spuds. Both work well if you have good drainage, water and mound up on a frequent basis!