this year's veg garden...

mardatha

I have 3 one-tonne builders bags, and I want to use these for veg. I have plenty room in the garden itself but fancied trying these containers because it might be easier. I want baby turnip, lettuce, onions, and syboes. Can I do this ? When and how ? LOL!

A._Badger

Have you considered how much compost these will use? It could add-up. They will also need regular watering and feeding - more so than regular growing will require.

As for when, just follow the instructions on your seed packets. The timing is much the same as it would be if you were growing in open ground.

kippers

You could fill the bottem with polystyrene or large rocks etc if you could get hold of it as this will save on compost

N9eav

Vermiculite added to the compost will help retain moisture

RAS

mardatha

You could adapt this idea: http://www.sendacow.org.uk/baggardens

lolarentt

A. Badger has most of the why-nots! If you have enough room in the garden why do you want to spend a fortune buying enough compost to fill 3 'big-bags'? Also it's wasted on things like lettuce that only need a little depth of soil to grow satisfactorily, and the rest don't need that much depth. The watering will be much more of a chore than normal.

I could see some point in using for potatoes as you can make more use of the depth

mardatha

Well I wanted to do it this way to make life easier for us. We are decrepit and can't dig I have two giant compost bins full to the top & thought I'd use them to fill the bags to the appropriate depth, just rolling the sides up like socks. This way I can control the watering/feeding and also possibly put netting over the top to cut down on pests. (but things never go to plan do they ...!)
Last year I failed totally with lettuce, dont know how people grow the things. They either rotted or screamed and fainted at the sun.
Onions, I planted 2 doz and got about 6 through, the rest sank without trace. But the ones we got were GORGEOUSLY tasty and we want more of them.
Things like peas and peppers we dont eat, and tomatoes I do indoors.:D

A._Badger

I've real sympathy for decrepitude (I'm almost there, myself!) so I suppose that's as good a reason as any for using bags.

All the same, they are monstrous consumers of compost and anyone thinking of buying it in ought to consider the overall cost of such a project. Your garden compost might work as an alternative and would cost you nothing, but it's hard to say without seeing the actual compost itself.

As for lettuces, that's a puzzle as they are usually OK. Have you tried growing bags? Lettuces use such small amounts of feed that you can sow and crop and sow and crop multiple times. Or (and this works a treat!) you can use 10" pots and sow one of the cut and come again leaf mixes. Last year I used both T&M and Fothergill's varieties and both produced more leaves than we could keep up with. They aren't quite the same as lettuces but they are close in taste, easy, prolific and enormously rewarding.

A final thought (and back to that problem with digging) - have you considered raised beds and a no-dig system? That might solve all your problems in one go.

Hope that's some help.

Lotus-eater

I'd go along with what everyone else says, but you could get some stonking parsnips, long carrots or mooli from the 1 ton bags. but the cost of filling them would be crippling.
Like Badger says, raised beds and a no dig, or an almost no dig system works very well.