This is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com, we’re here at Swank farm today and we’re
going to have some fun walking around here Swank farm and showing you what they’re
growing not only in the shade house but also outside the shade house in grow bags.
So, they have a hydroponic set up, hydroponics can get very expensive to buy all the equipment
and everything, nutrient solution but they also grow in grow bags here and, they’re
probably doing that for a reason because some things actually grow better in grow bags than
in the hydroponics and some things actually grow better outside than inside the shade
house.
So, let’s walk around and check out what they’re growing in the grow bags and these
are seven gallon grow bags so, that’s a lot of space and what I want to say is you
know, you could use these grow bags they’re really easy to ship and buy or you could use
like a five gallon bucket or a large container to grow food in so, let’s walk around and
check it out.
So, here is what they’re growing in the grow bags, this looks like some cauliflower
and it looks like about one plant per grow bag and some plants need to have some space
to grow especially, if they’re going to form the flower like the cauliflower does,
not yet in a flowering stage.
So, here in Florida it’s a little bit shady inside the shade house and also, they need
to have some bees, some honey bees to pollinate the melons so they’re growing outside and
it looks like in each seven gallon they are growing one melon plant.
Looks like they got cauliflower and melons outside the shade house right now, and there
are some other things starting over there so let’s check it out.
So here are all the beets growing, looks like they have about ten beet plants per grow bag
and once again these are seven gallon grow bags it’s getting real hot for me here in
the Florida sun, let’s go inside that shade house, get a little bit cooler and see what
else they’re growing.
So, we’re here in the swank shade house and we’re going to talk today about one
of the other techniques they’re using, so they’re using hydroponic growing, you can
see here the nutrient film technique, here with the water coming out constantly flowing
down on the plants to get them all water but beside that, they’re using standard grow
bags.
So you too can grow in grow bags, it’s very easy and they just basically have a drip tape
here with an ometer every four inches and in different bags they’re growing different
products for example, in this bag here they have carrots and in one grow bag they have
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten carrots growing and then they have
many many grow bags it goes on and on to grow lots of carrots.
And then, if we go down over here to the next set of bags they’re growing radishes and
you can space radishes fairly close together let’s see how many radishes they’re growing
in a grow bag, and you can see they’re kind of popping up right there one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight, nine looks like ten radishes per one grow bag.
These grow bags are basically like your basic trash can made out of plastic, they got holes
in them and they’re using a peat and a pearl like mixture in the grow bags or you could
also grow on soil and so you could buy these grow bags relatively inexpensively and start
growing no problem once so ever.
Let’s check out what else they’re growing in some grow bags.
Here’s some more radishes let’s see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine looks like ten radishes and these are just the standard red radishes, they have
the white radishes so, it’s ten radishes per grow bag and now let’s continue on.
Here’s beets, and these happen to be I think yellowish kind of beet one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten alright ten beets per grow bag.
Here’s red beats, guess what?
Ten red beets per grow bag.
Let’s continue on and see what other things they’re growing in grow bags, so here we’re
looking at the beans and growing once again in the grow bags and they got all this string
coming from the top of a line actually this is like a stainless steel cable at the top
and then they run the string down right here, you can barely see the string here and they
have all these strings like four strings per grow bag and actually it’s funny, the strings
are just wrapped underneath the grow bag and the weight of the grow bag, which is fairly
heavy, keeps it down and there are fourteen bean plants in one grow bag.
So, you can grow a lot of beans in just one grow bag but make sure you’re able to have
some string to support your pull beans.
More growbags, you can grow a lot in grow bags so they have the peppers here growing
in grow bags and they basically offset them diagonally and there’s two pepper plants
per grow bag and they have lots of them so you can even grow leafy green vegetables in
grow bags.
It’s probably a good idea to grow arugula like this in grow bags, this arugula tastes
amazing and check it out their drip system is on and here’s the drip tape and you can
see every four inches the water’s coming out so they got some arugula here.
You know arugula, if it does go to seed it can spread and be literally like a weed and
next, over here they have some cress growing, another great leafy green to grow and eat.
The cress’ and the arugula actually have a fast turnover rate and what I mean by that
is that you could grow it and they’ll sprout up really quickly and then you can harvest
and eat them really fast so, if you want food really quickly you know grow some arugula
or cress.
Then, there’s some other leafy greens possibly sorrel growing in the grow bags so, here are
all the eggplants in the grow bags and they are tied to a string to grow up, trellis them
up.
You maximize the use of the space and let’s see they have basically two eggplants per
grow bag, they have this string and they have this cool little collars here that basically
train the stem and don’t pinch the stem to grow vertically and so two eggplants per
grow bag and once again they have lots of them here.
So here’s more grow bags and they’re growing cucumbers in the grow bags and it looks like
there’s basically two cucumber plants per grow bag and these are relatively small, they’re
just starting to get growing here and they do succession planting and what that means
is they grow in these now and they started some other ones even more long ago and let’s
go over to those next and see how much taller and if they got any fruits on their cucumbers
yet.
Yet more grow bags and here’s their drip tape system watering their grow bags and we
have here are cucumbers trellised up vertically in grow bags, look at those nice cucumbers
right there, I bet they’re really delicious but lots of flowers and lots of cucumbers
very excellent way to grow cucumbers in grow bags.
So, let’s check out the grow bags, we’ll go down to the grow bags and it pretty much
looks like there’s one, two cucumber plants per each grow bag.
There’s a long cucumber so yeah basically two cucumbers per grow bag and then they just
basically trellis them up and it looks so nice trellised up, I wish my cucumbers were
that well trained, more fruit growing on grow bags.
I’m beginning to like these grow bags but you know what?
You could use anything that would contain soil to grow in and you don’t need to buy
the grow bags, how about a five gallon bucket?
It looks like they have two collard plants growing in grow bags and once again, collards
grow really well here, in the winter time here in south Florida and I love my collards
they’re so delicious and so sweet when you pick them fresh.
Check this out, what else do they have on a grow bag?
Here’s just another grow bag and this looks like a pomegranate tree to me so they even
have a pomegranate tree growing in a grow bag you could grow a lot of things in grow
bags they’re really inexpensive and economical to use especially if you don’t have anything
else, they don’t take a lot of space and can be moved really easily but you know what?
You could also use pots.
So, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing what’s growing in the grow bags here and you know
you could grow in grow bags they’re really easy, you can order them online they’re
really inexpensive to ship because basically they’re like garbage bags.
I mean you could probably take, this probably wouldn’t be too good of an idea, to take
a grocery bag, pop some holes in it and put dirt in there and it would probably last a
couple months before it broke down but these grow bags are special plastic that are basically
commercial quality to grow in for a long time.
You could also grow in any other containers so you know an old pot, a five gallon bucket
but, it’s really easy to grow and hopefully you’ve been motivated and see how easy it
is to really grow in a grow bag using the drip system or even just hand watering.
So once again, this is John Kohler with GrowingYourGreens.com, keep on growing and grow in some grow bags
or at least a pot or a five gallon bucket, we’ll see you next time.