Kevin Espiritu - Grow Bag Gardening

When I wrote my first book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, my goal was to take you from a complete beginner in the art and science of gardening to successfully growing your own food, no matter where you live. I wanted to convey the underlying principles of gardening, so that instead of being a cook following a recipe, you could become a true chef, creating beautiful, productive gardens from scratch using nothing but your own experience and knowledge.

Grow Bag Gardening takes a slightly different approach. In this book, well explore the world of grow bags in depth, squeezing every bit of practicality, creativity, and yield out of them as possible. Grow bags offer incredible benefits and customizability for gardeners in any living space, but grow bags find particularly strong applications in the world of small-space gardens.

This book assumes you have some basic gardening knowledge and seeks to provide you with as many options for practical grow bag gardening as possible. That being said, many of these topics are transferable to container gardening in general, as well as the wider world of gardening. If you distill the knowledge within these pages and connect it to your broader understanding of how to grow plants, youll get much more out of this book than how to grow amazing, healthy, vibrant plants in grow bags.

In , well cover the wide range of options available, including making your own bags or repurposing found materials.

In , well dive deep into the best plants to grow in grow bags, including plants youd never consider, like shrubs, bushes, and even fruit trees. More importantly, well discuss many different soil, watering, and support methods to grow perfect plants.

High up on an urban balcony, a small amount of green space is still being cultivated.

Drip irrigation is the best way to keep your grow bag garden well watered.

Natural trellis and support options abound when you use bamboo designs.

Turning a concrete patio into a productive garden space is simple with large grow bags.

A makeshift grow bag made from a sack can be used to grow potatoes.

Even a small urban balcony can be filled with grow bags producing a ton of food.

A large 100-gallon (380 L) grow bag functions almost like a portable raised bed.

A variety of herbs and flowers in bags with folded lips to add stability.

Letting plants sprawl out of your grow bags gives a more natural look to the method.

Grow bags might seem like yet another type of container to grow plants in, but that couldnt be further from the truth. Their portability, flexibility, and air pruning benefits effectively delete the downsides of growing in containers that many gardeners face. For this reason, theyve become a mainstay of my urban garden, even as I grow in the ground and in raised beds. In this chapter, youll learn what makes grow bags so special as well as a few considerations on safety and portability.

Grow bags are one of my favorite methods for creative small space edible gardening.