Vegetable


gardening in pots and bags


Potatoes in bags can give you about five pounds a bag. T


oday, everyone is concerned about the food they eat. How many pesticides were used in the growing? How many nutri- ents had been leeched out in the exercise of finding a com-


mercially satisfactory product? How much energy was consumed in bringing the product to market? All these are considerations that go through the minds of con-


scious consumers when they shop. It’s no wonder people are look- ing for alternative sources for produce. Grow your own, is the new mantra, but small spaces in urban


centres have always been a deterrent. Nobody wants to dig up the backyard to have a field of potatoes, or indeed, the front boulevard as used to happen in some immigrant communities of yesteryear. Today, we have learned that you don’t need acres to garden or


grow vegetables. You can put up a very nice plot in a very small space using bags and containers, even growing veggies in hanging pots to use the vertical space in the yard. There are commercially manufactured produce bags, but you can


devise your own with a bit of ingenuity, because it isn’t about the bag, it’s about the method and the crop. Potatoes are a case in point. Growing this once space consuming vegetable in a bag is a natural, because potatoes, like their cousins, tomatoes, produce roots and in this case tubers near the surface of the earth; hence


22 • Early Spring 2012 www.localgardener.net


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