About a month ago, we discussed the fact that a) we’d gone past any growing space in the garden, b) I had huge numbers of basil plants that needed to go someplace, and c) what to do. The DH created ‘grow bags’ (which is a product which seemed to exist about 20 years ago but is not out there now) out of old chicken feed bags and really good compost. After I transplanted the little plants, things looked like the picture at the top.
Today, things look very different. The bags were a complete success, but they could have been a disaster, given the horrible hot and dry weather the Mid-Atlantic states had while we were away. Like any container planting, these needed attention, which was provided by our intrepid son, who stayed at home to work, take care of the chickens and turkeys, interface with Septic System Man and his evil minion, Electrical Pump Person, and water what needed watering.
He watered the basil-in-a-bag every couple of days during the hot spell, and saved it all. Thank goodness for him.
Now, I have to admit that the first thing I had to do was pinch back the incipient flowers at the tops of the plants when we got back, but I will be able to start harvesting very soon, and turning this into dried and frozen herbs and also pesto. Also, another advantage we had in saving this was that the bags were located in an area which gets shade from a maple tree during the hottest part of the day, which helped keep the contents of the bags cooler.
So, next year, if you buy the super-gigantic-hugey-anything larger and it’s going into a truck size of bagged grow mix or peat moss or even chicken feed, save…the….bags. Just roll them up and tuck them away so that if you end up in the same situation we did (too many seedlings and no place to put them), then you can get some compost and turn your bags into grow bags.
This works.
