The Lemon Fool

Growbags - as in a bag about 1.25 metres long, 0.5m wide, 0.2m deep filled with some sort of compost stuff that you put in a greenhouse and grow eg tomato plants in.

Nobody seems to stock them any longer - all i see o0n a search is heavier duty empty bags to be filled with "something" (potting compost?) to grow stuff in.

The nearest hit i get is a not-in-stock growbag at B&Q.


Or have they for some reason changed their name in the last 12 months?

This? https://www.diy.com/departments/westlan ... 968_BQ.prd

In stock near me.

Scott.

Last time I looked, B&Q and Homebase both sold them. But maybe it's a bit early for new stock to arrive?

Laughton wrote:Last time I looked, B&Q and Homebase both sold them. But maybe it's a bit early for new stock to arrive?

Yup - usually appear nearer easter when the toms are ready to move on. Personally I always found them a bit thin and quick to dry out, and double stacked them and cut through the polythene between the bags.

Paul

Our local B&Q had several pallets of them the last time I looked, at the end of January. They looked like last year's leftover stock.

Unfortunately, though, the price of all compost seems to have shot up this year. I suppose it's the heavier transport costs?

BJ

bungeejumper wrote:Our local B&Q had several pallets of them the last time I looked, at the end of January. They looked like last year's leftover stock.

Unfortunately, though, the price of all compost seems to have shot up this year. I suppose it's the heavier transport costs?

Fertiliser ingredients like potash were/are a major export of Ukraine.

I recently got 15 good quality ones from B&Q. They were on sale half price at £3.50
I guess they were last year's but they're fine

Perhaps this year's don't arrive for a while. It's rather early to plant anything in them

DrFfybes wrote:
Personally I always found them a bit thin and quick to dry out, and double stacked them and cut through the polythene between the bags.

Paul

Another way, if you have any suitable but otherwise unwanted plastic plant pots, is to cut the bottoms of the pots out and make a similar sized hole in the top of a growbag. Put the bottomless pot on the hole in the growbag and push it in a bit, fill the pot with compost and tomato plant...

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:
Personally I always found them a bit thin and quick to dry out, and double stacked them and cut through the polythene between the bags.

Paul

Another way, if you have any suitable but otherwise unwanted plastic plant pots, is to cut the bottoms of the pots out and make a similar sized hole in the top of a growbag. Put the bottomless pot on the hole in the growbag and push it in a bit, fill the pot with compost and tomato plant...

RC

Traditionally people cut 3 openings in a growbag, which lies flat on the ground. I recall seeing another suggestion which is to partially cut the bag in half and up-end it, so making 2 much deeper planting spaces.

I use these https://www.amazon.co.uk/Selections-Tom ... B007VOG962 with growbags.

Works well with toms as it allows me to plant my, inevitably leggy, plants deep. Also makes watering easy.

Could the shortage of grow bags be due to the move over to entirely peat free composts - most of which I have found pretty dreadful for one reason or another. I wasn't using grow bags - but last season I was trying out multi-purpose and all-purpose peat free composts. I disliked the (slightly) shredded-up rubbish and wool types, while the finely shredded wood type grew crops of fungi of their own volition. And the result was very poor seed germination. I don't know if tomatoes will be less fussy

scotia wrote:Could the shortage of grow bags be due to the move over to entirely peat free composts - most of which I have found pretty dreadful for one reason or another. I wasn't using grow bags - but last season I was trying out multi-purpose and all-purpose peat free composts. I disliked the (slightly) shredded-up rubbish and wool types, while the finely shredded wood type grew crops of fungi of their own volition. And the result was very poor seed germination. I don't know if tomatoes will be less fussy

https://lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=520525#p520525

I subsequently discovered that the growbags were Levington Tomorite peat-free. Worst crop of tomatoes ever

--kiloran

I get mine from Aldi or LIDL when they have them
they do seem to fly off the 'shelf'
aside from a decent (relative speaking) price, they appear to give good results

i give credit to the bags as opposed to my gardening prowess

Actually, the best compost I have used is ordinary decent black garden loan to which you add a copious amount of leaf mould. The trouble is you need to be patient, as it will take at least a year to rot down depending on what sort of leaves you use. A neighbour of mine assiduously grinds down his leaves over the autumn and claims that by the next Autumn it is ready for use. My father and I when I was a young lad used to go into woods and bag leaf mould from the forest floor.

I noticed in the newspaper recently that the RBGE (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) were claiming that they have successfully been using peat free compost for some years. Maybe for those of you in the south you could seek advice from Wisley.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:A neighbour of mine assiduously grinds down his leaves over the autumn and claims that by the next Autumn it is ready for use.

Monty Don is not widely renowned for the quality of his tips**, but one of the better ones was to run a motor mower over your loose leaves and soft cuttings (at a high setting) before you consign them to the compost heap or the leaf mould bags. It speeds up the decomposition quite remarkably.

BJ

** Anybody remember Monty's sage advice that, whenever you brought a tree back from the nursery, you should bury its bucket-shaped rootball in the ground without teasing out the roots? It took him all of seven years to admit that his trees were falling over. And only last night, he was seen planting out petunias in his garden without removing them from their plastic pots. Shock horror.

kiloran wrote:

scotia wrote:Could the shortage of grow bags be due to the move over to entirely peat free composts - most of which I have found pretty dreadful for one reason or another. I wasn't using grow bags - but last season I was trying out multi-purpose and all-purpose peat free composts. I disliked the (slightly) shredded-up rubbish and wool types, while the finely shredded wood type grew crops of fungi of their own volition. And the result was very poor seed germination. I don't know if tomatoes will be less fussy

https://lemonfool.co.uk/viewtopic.php?p=520525#p520525

I subsequently discovered that the growbags were Levington Tomorite peat-free. Worst crop of tomatoes ever

--kiloran

I used those last year and had a very good crop. Did put plenty of extra Tomorite on them

scotia wrote:but last season I was trying out multi-purpose and all-purpose peat free composts. I disliked the (slightly) shredded-up rubbish and wool types, while the finely shredded wood type grew crops of fungi of their own volition. And the result was very poor seed germination. I don't know if tomatoes will be less fussy

Oh yes, I've had most of that. I posted last year (I think?) on bags of chain store compost that were probably 50% wool. The stuff smelt of sheep, it was as heavy as a bag of rocks (water?), and (unexpectedly!) it didn't retain water well when in situ. Germination was bad, plant nutrition was questionable. I read somewhere that there's nitrogen in wool, but it takes years to release. And I want my beans in twelve weeks!

Fungi in wood type compost, ditto. Of course, I realise that natural composting involves micro fungi, but the joke stops when the toadstools in my seed trays are bigger than the plants. On the plus side, I haven't had broken bottles or big chunks of black plastic bags for a few years - I gather that the compost manufacturers are getting a bit more picky these days about the so-called green bin rubbish that they take on.

But to call the commercial compost quality variable is something of an understatement. Sometimes they mix the bins properly, and sometimes it seems that they tip in half a tone of chemical fertiliser and dig it about for half a minute with a JCB and then call the job done. Or sometimes, as this relatively upbeat Which? report admits, the green waste they use is carrying long-term weedkillers that will can damage your seedlings before they can properly get started. https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/compost ... oem9L4NI04 (Scroll down to the section on Green Compost)

The amount of woody prunings. While these are chipped and graded before being composted, it’s not unusual to find large chunks in your compost. These make it hard to use for sowing seeds and potting on seedlings and plug plants.

It usually contains large amounts of grass clippings that may carry lawn-weedkiller residues. These don’t break down when composted and may harm your plants.

It’s not unusual to find bits of plastic, glass, stone and metal in the compost, despite attempts to filter them out in the composting process. Microplastics are often found in green compost.

Hey, not so fast with the blame, BJ. I've had only 50% germination from this year's sweet pea seeds, although I'd chipped the seeds carefully. I was about to blame the compost when I discovered a fat slug nestled among the roots of one failed seeding, and I daresay there are others still in there. It doesn't seem to be so much of a problem with my tomatoes. I've heard somewhere that slugs just don't like the taste of the plants?

BJ