Kitchen Garden Forum

Has anybody any views on adding the contents of last years growbags to beds/compost heaps?

I certainly spread them out onto the vegetable beds when the crop has come out, and then dig them in as a soil improver. That seems to be the best use for the compost.

I reuse my growbags for a different crop. First year tomatoes, second peppers or aubergenes. Never have any problems.

It's not necessary to compost it, just add it directly to the soil where it will do the most good eg where you're growing peas, lettuce, courgettes and so on.
If you have enough of it, trying filling a deep container or barrel and using it to grow carrots in. You should get some super long roots.

John

They're great on flower beds too.

realfood - do you add any nutrients to your growing bags when you use them for a second time?
Last year I emptied out the new compost in Growbacks and mixed it 50/50 with the previous year's compost used for peppers and aubergines, mixed in some chicken manure pellets for the new season's crops and had the best yield of peppers and aubergines I've ever had. What this proves I don't know, except that if there are no diseases in your compost and you add fresh nutrients it's possible to continue growing things in it. I wouldn't carry on beyond a second season's reuse though and after this either empty the pots out onto borders or mix in with vegetation in the compost heap.

thanks for all the replies

Primrose, during the second season of using a growbag, I feed it regularly with liquid tomato fertilizer, just as in the previous season. I "fluff" it up a bit as well.

If your soil is lumpy you can use them in seed drills, take out a deeper than normal drill and line it with growbag compost.

another good idea - thanks

My growbags had tomatoes in them last year and they got blight. I know I can't grow tomatoes in them again this year, but was wondering about using the soil for salads. If the blight is still in the soil could the spores migrate to this years tomato plants if they are growing in new growbags nearby? It seems wasteful to throw the soil away but I don't want blight again if I can help it....

When I grow toms in growbags, I only cut a small hole in the plastic to plant the tomato through. Therefor, even if the toms had blight, most of the spores would not be in the compost. Most of the blight spores travel in the air to infect the new crops. Therefore I would no worries to use the same compost on different crops.

Hi Realfood,
The mycelium for blight lives and and emanates from the potato. There is nowhere for the spores to live on anything other than a stored or undug potato tuber so for a different reason than yours I would deem the growing medium as unlikely to be the source of an outbreak of blight the following year. Without a host the blight spores are short lived.
JB.