Recycle Bags in the Small House Garden - The $10.00 Experiment

White Oak Studio Designs
by White Oak Studio Designs
I saw on the Back to Eden garden site where a gardener was using buckets and burlap bags to grow his plants in. This gave me the idea to use our old $1.00 recycle grocery bags in our garden. We bought ten new bags, at $1.00 each and swopped out the four-year-old bags for new. The old worn bags have now become a temporary extension of our raised-bed gardening system.
I figure these cloth bags will not leach plastic like 5-gallon buckets could and will give me more gardening space until we get the rest of the weeds killed off in our fenced in garden area (most likely not until next year.)When I told my husband I wanted to have a good size garden as well as chickens-coop and run THIS SPRING we had what I am calling “The Talk.”
At age 69 the hubby is starting to slow down a bit, has neuropathy in his feet and sometimes balks at the amount of physical labor I ask of him. One of the compromises we agree on was that he did not have to physically dig up the large area of nasty weeds and we would use plastic to smother them instead until the chickens can eventually do the job for us. (We do agree on having a no-till organic garden, thank goodness.) I agree to make our raised beds using logs from the woodpile and together we filled them with free, well- composted horse manure as our soil. Tomatoes love acid, so this soil should be just fine.
Hence the recycle bags for our 2014 garden! I have 24 organic tomatoes on order from our old CSA and just room for 12 of them in our raised beds. The 12 new recycle bags will soon be growing those extra 12 tomatoes! (More pictures to come after planted.)
Grow bags (recycle bags, recycled a second time around) in my fenced in vegetable garden. These bags will hold tomato plants and can be moved to capture more sunshine as needed. Being cloth, they should perk out the rainwater just fine.
Well-rotted horse manure in buckets and bags in the back of our truck. We are lucky to have a horse ranch nearby where I volunteer. I can have all the manure I can haul home. Now that's a gift a " gardening gal" can get excited about!
Thank goodness for a 4-wheel drive truck and a great sturdy garden cart!
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 4 comments
  • Douglas Hunt Douglas Hunt on May 17, 2014
    What keeps the soil from shifting around in the bags when you move them? Isn't that tough on tomato plants?
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    • Douglas Hunt Douglas Hunt on May 18, 2014
      @White Oak Studio Designs Keep us posted!
  • Amy Ogden-Paparone Amy Ogden-Paparone on May 18, 2014
    Yes, please keep us posted, i'd love to hear how it's going along the way and see pictures!
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