…ato Towers in them and all survived Hurricane Irene!” PJ Benoit, customer service, gardens intensively in her small urban yard. She’s been growing potatoes in eight Potato Grow Bags for several years. “I use 100 percent of my own compost and add our organic All-Purpose Fertilizer. I have wonderful results and haven’t had to buy a potato since I began using this system.” The garlic on the left spent the winter in its…
…us harvest, you can plant several Grow Bags, one each month until midsummer. Planting Technique Fill the bag with potting soil, such as Organic Container Mix. If you are using the new Carrot Grow Bag, you’ll need about 35 quarts of soil. Add 1/4 cup granular, orgranic All-Purpose Fertilizer, mixing it thoroughly into the soil before planting. Scatter seeds on the soil surface so they are about 3″ apart and cover them with about 1/4″ of Co…
Curzio Caravati with some of the 300 Potato Grow Bags at the Kenosha Potato Project. As founder and curator of the Kenosha Potato Project Curzio Caravati has grown and catalogued more than 300 varieties of potatoes in his collection. Why? Because he is passionate about preserving the genetic diversity of heirloom potatoes and saving varieties from extinction. “Preserving a storehouse of information helps protect against diseases of the fut…
…Maybe you’re not ready to jump into vegetable gardening just yet. But what about a small adventure? How about growing some potatoes in a bag? The Potato Bag allows even first-time gardeners to get a good harvest — up to 13 pounds — without the need for digging or weeding. The Potato Bag is actually a 15-gallon fabric “pot” that measures 18″ across and 14″ tall. The porous fabric makes the pot lightweight and e…
nts been able to put all their energy into making tubers instead of producing new leaves, our yields would surely have been higher. Here are the results: Bed 1: 10″ Grow Bed: 13.4 lbs. Bed 2: 10″ Grow Bed: 12.96 lbs. Bed 3: 20″ Grow Bed: 20.76 lbs. As you can see in the photos, the plants in the 10″ deep beds were crowded and most of the tubers they produced were intertwined and underdeveloped. For that size bed, two plants would have been…
We keep coming up with new ways to use our Grow Bags. Sarah, our display garden manager, wanted to try growing melons in the Potato Bag. Melons love heat, and she thought the black fabric of the bag would warm the soil. July 13: A melon ripens in the Potato Grow Bag. We keep coming up with new ways to use our Grow Bags. Sarah, our display garden manager, wanted to try growing melons in the Potato Bag. Melons love heat, and she thought t…
Wow! The largest tuber weighed in at 4 lbs., 7 oz. Do you grow sweet potatoes? Until this year, my answer would have been “no”. As heat-loving plants with a long growing season, they didn’t seem well-suited to my zone 4 garden. This year, we tried growing sweet potatoes in the Potato Grow Bags. The result has been a sweet success. The largest tuber weighed in at 4 lbs., 7 oz. Total harvest from the two Potato Grow Bags was 19…
wing, it sends its roots down into the soil. The sweet potato tubers form on those roots so there’s no need to hill up the plants. With this in mind, I assembled four Mini-Grow Beds; raised beds that measure 18″ wide x 3 ft. long x 10″ deep. I stacked two of the beds on top of each other so I would have one bed that’s 20″ high and two beds with 10″ high sides. Three plants went into each raised bed. I am curious to see if having extr…
…h of my investment in seed potatoes. The crop also kept my family in potatoes for most of the winter. Every pound of seed potatoes I planted yielded about 12 pounds of harvest. In other words, we dug up nearly four bushels or 200 pounds of spuds from just 18 pounds of “seed”. As these Flowering Potatoes show, the plant is especially beautiful when in bloom. The term “seed potato” is a bit of a misnomer. Although you can grow potatoes from…
…wo types of basil, two types of chives, red and white onions, and two types of oregano. At harvest time, we made miniature pizzas in our solar ovens They made the “slices” of pizza by using only three sides of the 3 X 3 Grow Beds. A Tomato Grow Bag is placed in the middle and the six “slices” are evenly placed around it. The children have experimented with all sorts of shapes and use Grow Beds throughout the garden. Somet…