Growing Food in Grocery Bags

• Seeds: We recommend you try growing lettuce, cabbage, Swiss Chard, kale, basil, radishes, turnips and even potatoes. If you grow a plant that is top heavy like tomatoes, cucumbers, or beans.  Note: Blooming plants (as I just listed) require far more care including trellis care and far more water than growing basic greens.
• Grocery sacks (the thin plastic bags used in many stores to bag groceries).  A second grocery sack to wrap around bottom of the first bag with soil or a cheap (hotel style) shower cap you can get a dollar-type-stores.

• Table must have slats (space between boards) for the water to drain out of the bag. The table shown in the picture is 3’x4′ and will hold about 20 grocery sacks.
• Potting soil or slightly sandy garden soil.
• 6-hours of direct sunlight per day. In the spring, fall and winter, you can extend the day length from 4pm to 7pm with the use of LED (red/blue spectrum) grow lights. Or you can grow in your garage by using a grow light 18 hours per day. Example, here’s a $20 grow-light strip from Walmart.
• Shade cloth in extreme sun exposures. Last week, the farms (pictures below) on this page needed shade to protect the young plants and seedlings from 100-degree F. we are currently experiencing here in Central Virginia. On the first day of the heatwave, Colle and I got up before sunrise and searched the basement for a box of gauze drapes we had stored there. We used the drapes as a temporary sunshade to protect our gardens during this intense heatwave. The plants responded immediately and perked up.
  • During our mild Virginia winter months, we are going to wrap our new ‘grocery bag structure’ in clear plastic to protect it from the cold.  We will also use a space heater on the ground (on a timer for intermittent power) underneath the table if the temperatures drop.
• We also sprinkled our world-famous FF Mineral Rock Dust on the seedlings and the plants to provide them with ample amounts of calcium, magnesium, potassium, and iron.

The grow table in the foreground was built 40-days ago and the plants are already near harvest as you can see from the image below.