Grow Bag Gardening by Kevin Espiritu

Grow Bag Gardening is everything related to grow bag gardening! This was something new to me and I actually had no idea how useful this type of gardening could be.

What is Grow Bag Gardening?

Wikipedia gives a very basic definition of what it is:

A growbag is a large plastic bag filled with a growing medium and used for growing plants, usually tomatoes or other salad crops. The growing medium is usually based on a soilless organic material such as peat, coir, composted green waste, composted bark or composted wood chips, or a mixture of these.

Why Should You Use a Grow Bag

Self air-pruning is a main reason. This is a great definition from a paper on a Native Plant Production class from the University of Washington College of Forest Resources  (source here):

An air-pruning propagation system is a low-cost, efficient method of propagating cuttings, seedlings or container plants for restoration projects. Air pruning happens naturally when roots are exposed to air in the absence of high humidity. The roots are effectively “burned” off, causing the plant to constantly produce new and healthy branching roots.

Other reasons Espiritu lists are root circling, versatility and watering. There are downsides to grow bag gardening which include longevity (2 to 6 seasons), staining (bag is permeable) and mobility (larger bags become immobile).

As far as recycled or reused products, a grow bag could be anything from a burlap bag, a reusable grocery bag, or even the actual potting mix bag itself.

Book Chapters and Contents

There are 6 chapters: Why Grow Bags?; Choosing the Right Grow Bags; What to Grow in Grow Bags; Filling Your Grow Bags; Grow Bag Garden Maintenance: and Grow Bag Planting Ideas.

The projects include how to make a grow bag dolly, how to sew a grow bag, self watering grow bags, drip irrigation, creating and applying fertilizers, growing potatoes, tipi trellis, and cold frame and protection gardening.

The author put in great basic info on plants that could grow in grow bags easily with care, pruning and soil info.

There are many ideas of what you could grow in a garden bag – if you don’t have any ideas yourself, and the kitchen garden combo bag had a lovely picture with pockets with different herbs being grown.

Below are a couple of useful garden recipes that I found helpful in my own garden.

Veggie Scraps Liquid Fertilizer

• • 1/2 gallon of collected kitchen scraps (any veggies here)
  • Water

Blend all veggie scraps with enough water to make it a very smooth puree. Pour into a 5 gallon bucket and let it set overnight. The next day, add 1 quart of the veggie puree to a gallon of water and fertilize your grow bags.

Peat Moss Alternative

• • 1 part compost
  • 1 part OMRI listed coconut coir
  • 1 part rice hulls or perlite

Mix everything together.

Tropical Houseplant Grow Bag Mix

• • 2 parts peat moss or coconut coir
  • 1 1/2 parts perlite
  • 1/2 part sand
  • Handful of organic granular fertilizer

Mix everything together.

All in all, a great book for both beginners and advanced users of the grow bag method of gardening.

Book Info

• Amazon Link: Grow Bag Gardening by Kevin Espiritu
• The Book Depository Link: Grow Bag Gardening by Kevin Espiritu
• ISBN-13 : 978-0760368688
• Paperback: 176 pages

Disclosure: This book was provided by the publisher and any opinions are my own. Any affiliate links help to support the site. Thanks. 🙂