GrowBags - Choose by price or brand?

Lisa46

Hi all! For veg growing would you recommend any old growbag or do you really get what you pay for? Thanks in advance :-)

starstella

Hi Lisa46 I would definitely go with the name.John Innes etc.You get out what you put in.Earlier in the year I bought some compost from Somerfields it was rubbish.Really coarse and my plug plants didn't do well.I re-potted them with John Innes and they are doing much better and you don't need to feed them straight away,so you are saving on feed.Hope this helps.

alanobrien

When i use them which isnt often i get the cheapest available. As long as you fertilise and water well they will perform just as well.

Kay_Peel

I bought a good one and a spare one (because it was so cheap) last year.

The good one was a brand called Westland and looked like soil. It was 50% John Innes loam and it was firm and substantial enough for me to put stakes in without them keeling over. The spare one was from Asda or Aldi (I can't remember) but it was more lumpy: it was compost mixed with recycled green waste, twigs etc. The good one was deep and heavy, the spare one was shallow and light.

The Westland one produced abundant tomatoes - but then so did the spare one, eventually. It just took a long time for the spare one to get going. The Westland one needed less water and less feeding than the spare one

An old boy on the allotments near me says that he uses B&Q grow bags because they are similar to Westlands. If he uses a cheap one then he packs it with John Innes Potting Compost, to firm it up and make it deeper.

Really, there's not much in it unless you are a serious tomato grower. (Which I'm not).

Sally_A

Personally I'm not a fan of growbags, much better to plant your crops in large pots or buckets (builders buckets, cheap in B&Q, even cheaper out of a skip when they have split ).

It's easier to support plants in a deeper bucket filled with a mix of multipurpose compost, garden soil and a shake of Growmore halfway down the bucket, than try to knock up a framework when your toms get too big and top heavy.

Alternatively, cut the growbags in half, and stand them on end. Much more depth for the plants' roots.

A._Badger

Some cheap growing bags are complete rubbish. IME, it's worth buying a decent one, but that doesn't have to mean the most expensive. I've found B&Q's to be good as well as cheap.

billycasper_2

i have to agree with "sally a" in a way. the normal cheap growbags are simply too slim to offer the roots anywhere to go. the dearer ones are thicker and retain the moisture better but you could stand them up as sally a suggested or plant them in a pot in a grow bag(with the bottom cut out of the pot)

N9eav

On the last... I have many large plant pots (bought from the Police who seized them in a cannabis raid I guess)

Anyway. Filling them up with compost makes each plants quite an investment. Can I make my own compost, or shall I buy cheap growbags and put the contents in to a pot.

I remember at school many years ago we had a heated soil sterilizer and made our own....

billycasper_2

I guess if its plausable to make the amount of compost you need in the time you have then that would be great. you could fill it with a mixture of compost and soil from your garden.
in my area top soil is quiet cheap. rather than buying loads of compost or digging up the garden, look in the local paper to see how much it is. could be cheaper.
i wouldnt recommend the big cheap b and q type compost bags, very cheap but very dry with no nutrients or substance.
how big are these pots anyway ?

Lisa46

Just been to Wilko's and bought 4 x J Arthur Bower's Grow Bags @ £1.27 each. They were also selling 15 litre bags of own brand compost for 80p each.

[Deleted User]

I use big black buckets rather than growbags and I am using b and q compost with great results. I have never liked growbags