I recently read an article about a woman in Africa who used bags that were discarded to grow vegetables in her small yard. She was so successful at it that she also brought in added income for her family. I later learned that many ladies in Africa have cleverly created gardens  using bags. As they realize, a container is a container is a container so that as long as the vegetable roots have space to grow, the plant will thrive.
I have always wanted to try planting potatoes in a black plastic bag. You can use any black bag as long as it is not transparent. For directions check out the YouTube video above. This is a fun project for kids to try.
If you want to be an even lazier gardener, you can buy a sack of gardening soil and cut out a hole and plant your tomato plant in it. You will need to use fertilizer in the garden soil you buy if it doesn’t have any added and a tomato cage for the tomato plant to grow and not topple upright. (see here) You don’t have to only grow tomatoes and potatoes in the bags, you can grow beans or peppers or experiment with other vegetables or flowers.
If you live in an apartment and only have a deck or patio that is in a sunny location, try “farming in a bag.” Â Or if you are limited in space, you can garden without doing any building of raised beds or buying fancy containers.
Have fun. And let the readers of TheGardenLady blog know how you succeeded with your bag garden.
As catalogs keep coming to the mailbox to be read and as this GardenLady scans the Internet for new and interesting plants for 2015, I thought it might be fun to write about some exciting and unusual vegetables to be considered for this summer’s gardens.
The most unusual plant I have seen this year is a tomato/potato plant called “Ketchup ‘n’ Fries“Â Â or “Tom Tato” (see here). These plants grow cherry tomatoes on top and white potatoes underground on the same plant so that if you have limited space to grow vegetables or you want to grow one plant in a pot on your deck, this is the perfect plant.
Famous Rutgers Ramapo tomatoes by Chester Garden Club
If gardeners are interested in getting the Rutgers Ramapo seed to plant in your garden in 2012, a tomato that is supposed to give you a taste of what tomatoes had tasted like when I was a child, check out the Rutgers website.
I believe that the tomatoes my parents raised were some of the best tomatoes ever grown. The taste was incredibly delicious. My mother would can them whole and they were delicious right out of the jar. I always joked that my husband married me because of my parents’ tomato crop. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke…..
Bell pepper, with both green and red colors, natural color by Martin LaBar
My parents’ farm was small. They raised the usual crops that everyone in the area who wasn’t a chicken farmer raised. And some of the chicken farmers also had small farms that raised the usual crops – tomatoes and strawberries were the basics for sale. These were called truck farms because farmers could truck the produce to the big cities- in our case it was Manhattan or Philadelphia- to try to sell. Or we would truck the produce to the canneries that were in our county. Ritters and Seabrook Farms were the two big tomato purchasers. These companies made ketchup and canned tomatoes.
Canned tomatoes by Unhindered by Talent
There were a lot of truck farms. That was why New Jersey was given the name The Garden State. Competition was fierce so the prices for the harvest was usually low. If everyone raised tomatoes and the season was good, the tomatoes were plentiful and the price the farmer got was low. Those years we had tomato fights. My mother canned a lot of tomatoes.
strawberries by Donald Lee Pardue
My mother started her own farm stand. Mostly she sold strawberries and flowers. Neighbors copied her. There were so few cars on the road in those early days that the farm stand did not bring in much money. What little was brought im, though, was greatly needed and appreciated. What didn’t sell became strawberry jam.
It may be winter here and across most of the US, but I think back to the terrible drought that Texas and other parts of the Southwest had this past summer and the potential for water problems in these areas and the West in the future.
I recently read an interesting article about new desert technology that is coming out of Israel. There at the Center for Experiments in Desert Farming “researchers joined with scientists from the Ben-Gurion University, the Vulkani Institute, and the Hebrew University to figure out how to grow tomatoes using brackish water. At the experimental station, organic tomato plants are all irrigated with salt water mixed with floodwater and recycled waste water. Using sophisticated technology, researchers carefully monitor the plants to determine the correct percentage of salt needed for each species to thrive. ” Israel produces “15,000 tons of ‘Desert Sweet’ tomatoes in 250 acres of hothouses in the desert, ranging from organic tomatoes to especially small strains of cherry tomatoes that are sold at a high price to restaurants and hotels throughout the world.”
“In addition to preserving precious freshwater in this thirsty desert region, growing tomatoes with brackish water has a pleasant, if unintended, side effect: as a reaction to the pressure that the salt exerts on its cells, the tomato plants produce more sugar, making their flesh even sweeter than those grown in central and northern Israel.”
At the Yair Agricultural Research Station in Israel’s desert they are using what they call “popcorn” soil which is ” actually a stone that gets heated to 5,000 degrees, causing it to pop and act like a sponge. When wet, it can irrigate the plant continuously and is therefore much more efficient than sand.” In Israel’s desert, “an area with an average rainfall of only 20 millimeters a year, farmers manage to raise 60%” of Israel’s produce for export.”
I think it is important to learn from other country’s successes in agriculture so that we can improve our growing methods. If readers read about new agricultural improvements coming out of other countries, please let the readers of TheGardenLady blog know about them, too. We learn by sharing ideas.
I am very new to gardening, but would love to grow my own veggies. I have a starter set with lettuce, tomatoes, and peppers. I have a large space in my backyard, but it is full of wood chips. Can I plant here? If so what is my next step. Do I need a fence so animals do not get to it?
To have success with vegetable gardening, because vegetables love good friable soil with excellent drainage, you will have to do a lot to prepare your large space. Space alone is not enough to have a vegetable garden. The space for vegetable gardening must be in the sun. Vegetables, especially tomatoes, need all the sun they can get.
My Tomato Patch by freddyfoyle
Without the proper preparation, you are setting yourself up for frustration and perhaps failure. So this year, you might consider planting vegetables in pots while you get the space in your backyard ready for planting. Buy good potting soil that says it is for vegetables. Some of these soils have fertilizers added to help the plants. Buy or get large pots and plant your vegetables in them this year. You can use either clay pots or plastic pots so long as there is a drainage hole in the bottom of the pot. Then you can start doing the hard work for next year’s vegetable garden in your allotted space.
