How To Start A Grow Bag Victory Garden

How To Start A Grow Bag Victory Garden

by | Apr 25, 2020 | Gardening, Indoor Gardening

How To Start A Grow Bag Victory Garden

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Our latest project is indoor gardening. Our initial attempt at a green thumb was trying to give our kitchen scraps a chance at a second life. We’re still doing that, and in addition we’re also planting seeds.

Since Corona Virus is forcing a ton of people into self-isolation, many have taken on new hobbies. With the news now saying that there may be shortages in fresh produce this summer, it came as no surprise that we weren’t the only ones that chose gardening as our new hobby.

So much so that the trend was even given a name, they’re calling them victory gardens.

We would have loved to grow our victory garden in the yard but in our community the HOA doesn’t allow gardens. 🙁

As an alternative, we started using grow bags. We bought a couple of different sizes to accommodate the different types of plants we were thinking of planting.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase any of these products, we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We recommend these products only because we have experience with them and use them for our own projects. As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.

What You’ll Need To Start Your Grow Bag Victory Garden

You don’t need very much stuff:

  • grow bags
  • potting soil
  • and maybe a bag of seed starter mix if you prefer to start your seeds in a start mix

The Grow Bags

We bought the grow bags in a couple of different sizes, to give us flexibility in what plants we could grow.

The grow bag size you’ll need will, of course, depend on what you plan on growing and how much of it you plan on planting. 

We figured we’d use the deeper bags for plants that needed the depth, like potatoes, carrots, and beats. Basically, anything that required a deeper root system.

We also got shallower and wider grow bags, giving us more planting surface for with plantings that don’t have deep root systems. Things like lettuce, scallions, onions, garlic, herbs, etc…

The Deep Grow Bags

For the deep grow bags we purchased a couple of packs of 7 gallon grow bags, measuring 13″ diameter x 12″ high.

Each pack has 8 bags, that’s a whole lotta bags to plant veggies in. 🙂

You can click the picture of the bag to get the same deep grow bags.

The Wider Grow Bags

With the wider grow bags we purchased 3 grow bags, each measuring 24″ diameter x 8″ high. It didn’t indicate how many gallons each grow bag was but they are perfect for the plants with shallower root systems.

You can click the picture of the bag to get the same deep grow bags.

The Potting Soil

The potting soil we used was MiracleGro Performance Organics.

We didn’t know how much potting soil we were going to need, so we took a guess and bought 9 – 25 quart bags.

We ordered it from Lowes and had it delivered.

So far we’ve used a couple of bags and we’re using 4 deep grow bags.

Although only one is filled to the top, the others are filled about half way.

How To Start A Grow Bag Victory Garden- Potting Soil

Prepping Your Grow Bag Garden

Prepping your grow bag garden is really as straight forward as you’d imagine.

  • Unfold the grow bag
  • Fill the grow bag up with potting soil
  • Plant your seeds or transplant your plants
  • give your plants a good watering
  • Place the bags in a bright area without too much direct sunlight

One thing I did notice is that although the grow bags breath, they also do a great job of keeping the moisture.

Be careful not to over water your plants. I did that in the beginning and soon found out the plants didn’t like my overly generous watering.

Warning: The grow bags are designed to breath – which is a good thing. But as a result, they also allow moisture to permeate through the bag.  If you’re placing your grow bag on carpet, or wood floors make sure to put something underneath the grow bag so it doesn’t stain or damage your floors. I put a sheet of plastic underneath mine to protect the carpet.

Tip:  When using the deeper grow bags you don’t need to go to the top of the bag if what you are planting has shallow roots. You can fold back the top of the bag, similar to what you do to jeans when they are too long.

That way you don’t use more potting soil than you need to.

What Do You Think Of Our Indoor Victory Garden?

That’s pretty much it. So far, we are loving our new hobby.  It really is exciting to see the progress the plants make every day.

We’re not at the point of having new veggies yet but at this rate, the veggies will be here before we know it. 🙂

I hope this post inspires you to start your own indoor grow bag victory garden and shed some light into how easy it is to start one.

What did you think? Have you ever grown things in a grow bag? How did it work out for you?

Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading.

 

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How To Start A Grow Bag Victory Garden

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5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps

by | Apr 13, 2020 | Gardening, Kitchen Scraps

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps

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First, let me start off with saying there are definitely waaaay more than just 5 veggies you can grow from kitchen scraps, these are just the first ones I tried. 

With the Corona Virus causing our vacation rental business to come to a screeching halt, we started putting our attention to other interests.

The latest project we’ve taken on is starting a garden, most likely a container garden.

During my perusing on Pinterest, I found a pin on regrowing vegetables from the kitchen scraps.

I just started this project but already have quite a few types of veggies that can be regrown from kitchen scraps.

Like I said, there’s probably many more vegetables you can do this with, but this is a list of the ones I started with.

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you decide to purchase any of these products, we earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. We recommend these products only because we have experience with them and use them for our own projects. As Amazon Associates, we earn from qualifying purchases.

5 Vegetables You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps

#1 – Lettuce

This seems to work with all kinds of lettuce, so far I’ve got butter, red leaf and romaine lettuce regrowing from kitchen scraps.

Out of the 3 the romaine seems to have a head start. To be fair, I was apparently more generous with the amount of base I left on the root – I’m guessing that would make a difference.

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps - Lettuce

How To Start

When cutting the base of your lettuce head off, cut it about 1 1/2 – 2″ from the bottom. Then take the base and put it in a container with a bit of water on the bottom.

Make sure to change out the water every couple of days and in a few days you’ll start seeing new growth emerging from the center of the base. 

Once you a good amount of growth, your new lettuce plant will probably be happier in soil. I’ve read that it would do fine in water, as long as you change out the water every couple of days.

Personally, when I planted the lettuce in the ground I noticed it started growing better. Maybe its just my imagination, but I’m placing my plants in the soil once they start showing signs of new growth.

Update:  I learned recently that lettuce will shoot up right away when the temperature is above 70 degrees. Since we’re in Florida, those temps make it difficult for us to grow lettuce indoors. We keep the temperature around 75 degrees and the romaine lettuce I was testing with, shot straight up.

I’m trying again, this time with butter lettuce. As soon as the lettuce started growing new leaves I put it in dirt. Lets see if that improves things.

I’ll update this post with its progress.

#2 – Basil

We had a long and leggy basil plant that wasn’t producing many leaves anymore. So I figured I’d try to use a cutting to start a new plant.

So far, the basil I’m trying this with hasn’t made any new roots but I’m pretty confident that it will start rooting shortly.

The cutting looks like it’s doing well in the water, and from what I’ve read, basil is a piece of cake to grow from cuttings.

How To Start

You’ll want to give the cutting enough stem so that it can sit in water without the leaves touching the water. If the leaves sit in the water they’ll start rotting and the water will get cloudy and your cutting will probably die off.

So give the cutting a couple of inches of stem.

Take your cutting and place it in a container with enough water for about an inch of the stem to sit in the water.

Place it in a bright area without direct sunlight and wait. 🙂

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps - Basil

#3 – Onions

The onions seem to grow pretty easily, it’s been a week and they look like they’re ready to be put into dirt.

Not sure if an actual whole onion will grow from this experiment but the green stems that grow from it can be used in cooking. The entire plant had an onion flavor.

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps - Onions

#4 – Scallions

The scallions are the rock stars of my kitchen scrap garden! They have been in water for maybe about 5 days and have several inches of new growth already on them.

How To Start

Similar to the lettuce cuttings, when you cut the base of the scallions off cut it a bit higher than usual. About a couple of inches of the plant from the base.

Put them in a container with water on the bottom and you are all set.

Since they usually already have some roots, these guys didn’t waste any time growing.

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps - Scallions

#5 – Garlic

Ok, so this isn’t exactly using kitchen scraps, since you’re taking the entire unused clove and sticking it into the ground.

Maybe it’s more like a garden tithing. 🙂

I took a few small cloves of garlic and planted them in the dirt next to the tomato slice. They were in the dirt about 3 days and I’m starting to see some green on the tops of a few of the cloves.

I’m guessing they could have also had the base of the garlic sitting in a little puddle of water to get it to start growing but I tried sticking it directly in the ground and that seemed to work like a charm.

5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps - Scallions

Caring For Your Kitchen Scrap Garden

It’s pretty straight-forward to care for it. Place them in an area that is bright but doesn’t have direct sun.  For the scraps that are in water make sure to swap out the water every day or other day and for the scraps in dirt make sure their dirt stays moist – without over watering.

Before you know it you’ll start seeing new growth and your kitchen scrap garden will by off to the races! 🙂

Once the kitchen plants turn more into plants (either they grow roots are start growing new leaves) I’ll transplant them into grow bags.

Tip:  When cutting the vegetable it seems to help to leave a bit of “meat” along with it. The lettuce and onions that I cut short didn’t seem to grow as fast or well compared to the ones where I left some more “meat”.



That’s My Kitchen Scrap Garden List

There are probably dozens of other veggies you can try this with, these are just the ones I’ve started with. I’m sure I’ll be adding other scraps to the list as I come across new ones.

Once the veggies grow a bit I’ll be transferring them to grow bags.

 What did you think? I know I personally will never look at kitchen scraps the same way again. 🙂

Have you ever tried recycling your kitchen scraps? If so what veggies did you try? Did it work for you?

Lemme know in the comments below.

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5 Veggies You Can Grow From Kitchen Scraps