I have looked high and low for a Canadian supplier of Grow Bags.
I can't have a regular plowed garden here. Not yet anyway. It will cost thousands of dollars to clear the land and put fill and then top soil down. So, most of my garden will be in 12 foot long and 2 1/2 foot wide boxes.
I have about 80 Tomato plants to plant, 60 bell pepers, etc., and want to put them in 5 gal. grow bags and although I found places in the states to get them, the shipping would not make it possible for me to get them from there. For $400.00 worth of grow bags, it will cost about $600.00 to ship them here. Shipping is rediculous.
Anyway......if someone knows where I can find them here in Canada, I should would appriciate knowing.
Thank you.
Darrell
In need a Canadian Supplier for 5 gal. Poly Grow Bags
, I used shopping bags and garbage bags. Poke holes in then, fill half way with growing medium and there you are. Probably not a good idea if you do this in front of your house.
Inanda
Any restaraunts around with 5 gallon pails from the pickles and mayo, etc...
Inanda,
I do have a supplier for grocery bags. (plastic T-Shirt type) I suppose if worse comes to worse, I can order a couple more thousand and use them instead of the grow bags this year. My concern would be that they would split open from the weight of the dirt and then the weight of the plant on top of that.
Did you have any problems using grocery bags?
Joelle,
we have restaraunts around, but i need right around 2,000 to 2,500 5 gal grow bags/buckets. I suppose if the restaraunts put them through their dishwasher, I wouldn't turn them down. But, washing that many conatainers makes me want to pull the covers over my head as in a nightmare. LOL
Thanks to the both of you. I appreciate your idea's.
There "has" to be a supplier in Canada, somewhere!
Talk to you later.
Darrell
After more thought, I don't see any reason why I couldn't use grocery bags and garbage bags. They are a lot cheaper than the grow bags.
For as many as I need, I think I'll take a board and put a couple nails in the side of it on one end. Walk down the row and puncture the bags as I walk along.
Fill them up
Walk down the row and put holes in them.
Go back down the row and plant my plants.
Sounds like a plan. :)
Darrell, try checking with some of the nurseries to see what they use and where they get them.
Also, Lois Hole (the family's nursery is in Alberta) talks about using containers in her excellent book "Tomato Favourites". Here is what she says:
"When we first started growing tomatoes.....we planted them in old, 5-gallon plastic buckets collected from various fast-food outlets in the city. One year we even grew tomatoes inside large, black plastic garbage bags, doubled-up, punctured at the bottom to allow for drainage and filled with soil mix."
:I've tried the garbage bags (heavy duty) and they worked just fine, a bit better than the 5-gal buckets that I'd previously used. In selecting containers remember the "1-cubic foot per plant" rule, which I'm sure you already know.
Good luck!
Thanks Chilco.
No I didn't know about the cubic foot thingy.
I'm going to get garbage bags and if it looks ugly, then so be it.
I can't afford to put in boxes for all this stuff. I can't afford to have all the tree's cut down and the fill dirt and then the 14" or so top soil put in. We're talking about $12,000.00 to have a conventional garden where you plow or hoe between the rows. And that's how much it will cost to have a garden.
So, the alternative was to use boxes and grow bags. Set them on the ground using only good soil in the boxes and grow bags.
Many Thanks.
Talk to you later.
Darrell
Garbage bags work well. You just can't move them easily, so make sure you fill them where they are to remain till end of season.
inanda - hating to say adios to Victoria tomorrow.
Oh Inanda, I'm sure you do hate to say goodbye. I would too, I'm sure of it. Those gardens were and are beautiful. Darn it. I would never be able to afford going to something like that. God love ya. I'm glad you enjoyed your stay there. I know I enjoyed seeing the pictures.
Jan and Darrell
Inanda how long do you think it will take for you drive to Moose Jaw?
Darrell, your boxes and grow bags will work just fine, and a far better solution than working up a bunch of land that you won't fully utilize. I went to raised beds for the same reason--my soil is solid clay, so I wasn't about to amend areas that wouldn't be planted!
I've had success putting garbage bags in milk crates, but of course it isn't legal to have those; mine were broken ones from the dump. Or so I'll say on the way to jail!!!!!! They just happen to be about 1 cubic foot.
Rosemary
I have a few of those "broken" milk crates around here. lol
Ok, do I want half peck bags? Peck size bags? Half Bushel Bags? or ???
I'm trying to picture in my mind how big a Peck is and how big a Bushel is. I know I don't what a Bushel size bag if all I need is 1 cubic foot of soil.
So, would a Peck sized bag be about right?
Darrell, a bushel is 1.2 cu. ft. I think a peck is about 1/4 of that. There's 2 gallons in a peck, 8 gallons in a bushel. That's dry measure.
Do you think I could get away with using a Half Bushel? My original intention was a 5 gal. grow bag. 8 gallon is over kill. 4 gallon might be sufficient.
I'm using these for 1 tomato plant per bag and 1 pepper plant per bag. I think I should be able to plant cucumbers, summer squash, zuchinni, and cantaloupe in these bags too.
Some people are putting 2 tomato plants in each bag, but they are using 5 gallon grow bags.
If I thought I could get away with it, I'd plant one corn seed in each bag too. The problem, I think, might be that they won't stand up when they get big. The wind would knock them over.
Darrell
After reading in several places that pepper plants like to be confined, I recently switched to growing my peppers in pots, rather than in my g.h. growing bins (I just buried the pots) and got tremendous results--and I was using just 8", tall, black pots. So you wouldn't need the big bags for them.
If you go by the 1 cubic foot of medium per tomato plant, would your 1/2 bushel bags be big enough? I can't see putting 2 tomatoes into one 5-gallon bag, unless you fertilize with every watering. Tomatoes are heavy feeders. Are you growing determinate or indeterminate? It's difficult to stake indeterminates when they're in bags--perhaps build a frame above and train them up strings.
What kind of bags are you buying that come in peck and bushel measurements?
A 5-gal bag with a couple of cukes and one corn might work well (the cukes can twine up the corn). If the bags are jammed close together, the wind shouldn't bother them.
Here is a container size chart you might use as a guideline--sorry, I don't remember what it's from. My experience has been that they have underestimated.
Cabbage: 1 gal
Cucumber--2 plants in 1 gal
Eggplant--1 gal (I found this wasn't enough)
Green beans--2-3 plants in 1 gal
Leaf lettuce--4-6 plants in 1 gal (only if you're eating it when VERY small)
Pepper--2 plants in 2 gal
Swiss Chard--1 gal per plant
Tomatoes--1 gal (I found this way too small--the plants starved)
A rough conversion table from the same source is:
8" inside pot dia. is 1 gal
10" is 2.25 gal
12" is 3.5 gal
14" is 6 gal.
Trouble is, they don't say how tall the pots are!
If anyone has a better chart, please post it. As I said, I'm not sure how accurate this one is but it's somewhere to start. I haven't done a 'Net search but I'm sure you'll find all sorts of info on container growing.
Here is a Cornell University site that has a chart for vegetable container sizes.
www.gardening.cornell.edu/ factsheets/misc/containers.pdf
That helps a lot!
Well, I'm not sure what kind of tomato I'm growing. I know that sounds sorta stupid, but I can tell you that before I purchased the seeds, I wrote emails to the people I got my seed from to make sure I could make a trellace for them to climb up.
My idea at that time was to take an 8 ft. x 3/4 inch galvanized pipe, burry 18 inches of it, (hammer it down into the dirt or use a post hole digger and put the pipe in the hole followed by cement), put an elbow on the end sticking up in the air and attach a 4 foot pipe to that, then a "T" so that I had another stake comming down into the ground and another pipe going off to the side of the "T", untill I had a frame built that was 20 feet long and 6 1/2 feet high. I have nylon netting that is 6 feet high and 20 feet wide. I'm attaching the netting to the frame I built.
I have enough materials for 6 of these trellaces. On them I'm growing cucumbers, summer squash, zuchinni, and tomatoes.
I was going to take the plants and sit them just under the lower edge of the nylon netting and begin training them up the net and tie them in place with strips of cloth.
For some reason, I had the impression I needed containers that were around 5 gallon each in order to accomplish this. But I'm finding that smaller will work in some cases.
The peppers I'm growing are Red and Green Bell Peppers.
I hope I explained that good enough for you to understand it. I sometimes don't explain things real good.
Darrell, you're explaining things just fine!
Summer squash that vine need a growing space of 1' wide 16" long; that is, 3 plants to 4'. 12" deep is okay; make sure it is well composted. I grow a lot of different zucchinis but they are all either bush or semi-bush and need about 3' between plants because they are so wide. I think the crookneck are vining and would fit in the 16" length.
The frame sounds pretty sturdy and should stand up to winds. If you're growing indeterminate tomatoes (they're the type that keep producing, and you should pinch out the suckers regularly) they are likely to get much taller than 6'! Mine in the greenhouse hit the roof at 8' and start to go sideways. Remember to start the netting above the level of the top of your growing bags.
Tomatoes and cukes don't need a very strong support; squashes a bit sturdier. I stake my semi-bush zucchinis with strong stakes and strips of terry towelling because the stems are very powerful.
Have you got your tomatoes well started? How long is your growing season?
I used to grow things on a trellis. Used to make bags for fruit with old panty hose. Can't remember what it was though. Do remember that luffas had strong stems and didn't need to be supported on the wires. Think it was melons and spagetti squash and other squashes.
Keep us posted as to your results, Darrell
Inanda
You're right, panty hose are a must for the serious gardener!!! I use them like you do, to support squashes, and also cut strips for tying up tomatoes and cukes.
I'm a packrat, so still have some old coloured nylons left from when I was a city gal....baby blue, sexy black; gives a new meaning to "wow, she's some tomato"!
LOL @ "wow, she's some tomato"!
I did see where and how to tie them to make a hammock, but I don't have any.
I don't know how much they cost, but maybe it wouldn't cost too much to buy a couple of them and make things for them to hang in. I'm thinking though, it will probably take a lot of panty hose to hold up everything.
I've got:
Spahgetti Squash 8 - 10 plants
Acorn Squash 8 - 10 plants
Cantaloupe 25 plants
That's going to take a lot of panty hose. Here I am trying to make money and instead, I'm spending money to dress my Cantaloupes. Speaking of Cantaloupe's, maybe I should buy Bra's too. LOL
Darrell
Old bras....what a neat idea! The thrift shop prolly has giant size, for practically nothing. You could probably pick up tiny skirts, too. Nothing like a well-clothed garden *grin*
Look in clearance bins at surplus stores (we have a Surplus Herbies here in B.C., also Zellers or Dollar shops) for really cheap, queen-size panty hose. You can often find the dark colours no one else wants. Also, ask your female friends and relatives to save you their hose that they normally toss. You'll be inundated! Cut off the feet for heavy squash holders. I find that the spaghettis have such strong stems they don't need extra support, or maybe just a sling. I grow the mini Hubbard and the butternut because I get more bang for the buck than with acorns, and just the hubbard needs support. I sometimes grow small sugar pumpkins also, because we eat it like other squash plus make jams, chutneys, pie fillings. But I haven't tried vining them...I let them crawl along between things that are trellised.
rosemary
I think I'm going to let them sprawl all out and only trellace the cucumbers, summer squash, and zuchinni's. The melons, acorn and spahgetti squash will have to be on the ground.
I don't think you can get undergarments at the thrift store. I know I wouldn't want to wear any underware that someone else has worn. YIKES!!!
Guess it depends how poor you are...I go into thrift shops all the time for old pans and dishes to use as drip trays, and you often see bras and slips. Not panties, though, TG!
Oh, and some of them have really cheap pocket books. And outer wear.
Darrell, Rosemary and Ginny,
I just wanted to say thank you so much for all this wonderful info! I have several dozen green pepper and tomato seedlins that need to be planted soon, and I hadn't yet figured out where to put them & in what. And - a way to use up the nylons and plastic bags/pots lying around at the same time. This is great. Thanks!!
Darrell, if you have any follow-up tips to share, after you've got them outside, I'd be all ears.
Shannon
Just an idea for you Darrell. Last summer I had very few squash. Think it was because we had so much rain and the pollinators were not around when needed. So.... this year I'm going to take a paint brush and make sure every squash flower gets a dose of pollen.
Inanda
Shannon,
I don't think I have any "tips" to share. lol This is my first time growing everything from seeds too. I always bought plants and started my garden that way. Well, except beans, corn, radishes and things like that. But, if I think of something or if I do something I think is different than other people, I'll sure mention it.
Inanda,
I thought about that too. I do know that you have to use a certain type of fertilizer once you start to see flowers. It makes them "set", I think they called it. Otherwise, the flower might fall off and then there isn't a vegetable there. The same thing applies to Cucumbers, and Tomatoes.
On the Peppers, I got some info from the people I bought some other seeds from and they told me to use a 6-26-26 fetilizer on the Peppers once I started to see blossoms. I couldn't find one like that, but I did find one that was close to that and I will probably use it on these when I see the bud open.
Does anyone know if you can "pinch" these guys to make them branch out?
Darrell