If you’re eager to get planting but just don’t have the time, space or ability to work a garden row, a potting soil bag garden may be the perfect solution for you.

Soil bag gardening has pros and cons as do all gardening methods. But in the garden, there’s no perfect one way. Rather, it’s what works best for you and your circumstances at any given time and place of your life.

Our Soil Bag Garden Bed

Once we cleared out our summer garden beds, we noticed that once again, the nearby tree roots had grown all into our garden bed. Rather than fighting tree roots, we simply placed soil bags out over the raised garden bed.

Subsequently, that raised bed is also already equipped with row covers and drip irrigation, so it’s a perfect solution for the situation. However, you can certainly set up the soil bags without all the extra accoutrements, and depending on your climate and growing conditions and season, you may not need frost covers.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Soil Bag Garden

Some love them, some hate ’em and others are neutral. But potting soil bag gardens are perfect for a number of circumstances, and are often a great short-term work-around for those who can yet plant traditional garden rows.

Potting Soil Bag Garden Pros

• Improves poor soil conditions, such as rocky, clay, nutrient deficient soil
• Quick and easy to set up
• Raised beds – easy to create virtually anywhere and on most any surface
• Rental property – if you’re renting a home, a soil bag garden can be a way you can grow food
  Saves –
  • money
  • space
  • time
• Work-around – when you can’t plant a regular garden bed because of location, soil, etc.

IMPROVE Poor Soil With Soil Bag Gardening

Soil bag gardens are great for those with poor soil or no soil at all to work in. It can help prep future garden space by killing the grass and at season’s end, the remaining soil can be worked into the ground beneath towards preparing it for a future in-ground garden

The soil bag garden provides a medium for starting growing, and invites the beneficial earthworms and microbes to take up residence in the ground beneath as well as in the bags of soil.

Then at season’s end, you can remove the plastic bags and disperse the residual soil and work it back into the ground.

QUICK and Easy Way to Start Gardening

If you haven’t yet established a garden space, the soil bags are a great way to begin establishing your garden space. The bags placed over grass can serve to kill the grass while providing growing space to the new seeds and garden plants above.

We use soil bag gardening for quick and easy addition of fall and winter vegetables.

RAISED Bed Garden Using Soil Bags

We’ve seen these placed on a board across saw horses, in wagons or wheelbarrows, and even in the truck bed of a pick-up truck!

If you have raised beds of any kind and not the time or space to have soil trucked in, you can build one bed at a time using bags of soil. Just place them in your raised bed, cut an opening in the top, punch a few holes in the other side of the bag for drainage and plant your seeds.

RENTERS: Soil Bag Gardens Can Be Good for Renters

Renting? If your rental residence has any yard or patio space, you can use bags of soil to build a garden on a section of patio, sidewalk, driveway, deck or landscape bed. Heck… some folks have even grown veggies in the back of a pick-up truck!

Best not to place bags on grassy areas, else your landlord may not like how it kills the grass!

SAVES: Soil Bag Garden Saves on Time, Space and Money

Soil bag gardens are great for those who are rushed for time and want an instant garden, or if you’re in the process of preparing a spot to garden and need something quick and easy in the interim.

Planting in soil bags saves money on pots and on additional soil amendments. It saves time in not needing to work the soil, and it saves space in that you can even place the soil bag garden on surfaces such as patios, sidewalks, driveways and other raised surfaces.

WORK-AROUND: For Locations Where Garden Beds Won’t Work

We live in the woods and part of our garden is under a huge tulip poplar tree. We’ve renovated the beds several times to remove tree roots from the garden beds, but they (naturally) just keep coming back. In fact, that tree is thriving more than ever thanks to all the garden nutrients!

So when we cleared out our summer crop and saw all the tree roots that had invaded yet again, we chose the soil bag garden bed approach as an easy work-around.

As indicated in the section above, soil bags can be a work-around for other challenging growing conditions such as poor soil or not enough dirt area for growing.

Soil Bag Garden Cons

• Plastic – many people try to avoid plastic
• Unattractive – plastic bags on the ground in the garden isn’t that attractive
• Shallow dirt – doesn’t work for all crops
• More cleanup at end of season with the plastic to remove and dispose
• More care for maintaining proper moisture; even with holes in bag bottoms, the plastic retains moisture

7 Steps in Soil Bag Garden Preparations

1. PREP: Prepare your site. One 40-pound bag will cover a 2’x 3′ foot space
2. PLACE: Lay bags out end-to-end or side-by-side, and according to your garden space. 1-2 bags wide by 3-4 bags long need to fill your space.
3. CUT: Cut out a large window on the front of each bag, leaving a 2 inch frame around all sides
4. FERTILIZE: Blend in a trowel of organic fertilizer and mix it in.
5. DRAIN HOLES: Poke through the soil to created multiple drain holes at the bottom of the bag
6. PLANT: Plant seeds or seedlings according to plant instructions.
7. WATER: Water well but gently, so as not to wash seeds away.

For organic fertilizer, we use Milorganite, which also doubles as a deer deterrent.

Our Soil Bag Garden Plants – Fall Salad Greens

Soil bag gardens are especially good for growing salad greens. This is our current fall salad crop.

• Broccoli
• Chervil
• Chijimisai, we got seeds from RareSeeds
• Endive
• Perpetual Spinach
• Swiss Chard

See what to plant in fall and what vegetables to grow in winter.

Also, consider soil bag gardening.

Growing Potatoes in a Burlap Bag

We tried the vertical method of growing potatoes above ground in a burlap bag of soil. Our crop yield was poor but only because we simply didn’t have enough sunlight. If this had been in full sun, and based on what our readers have shared, the burlap bag method would’ve been a success.

See more on growing potatoes in bags and containers.

Indoor Soil Bag Garden

If you’re liking this idea, you’ll also enjoy this short video on growing a soil bag garden indoors!

So that’s a wrap folks… and it’s “in the bag”!