hanging veggies in reusable fabric grocery bags

MUST. SLEEP. NOW.

Wrote this earlier to post in a forum where I'd asked about growing veggies in grocery bags. Thought I'd copy/paste it here as well:

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Well, the experiment is underway!

I now have 2 bags of potatoes kind of suspended from the gate across my driveway competing with 2 very large pots of potatoes (the ones my emerald cedar came in a few weeks ago).

Plus, one commercial hanging tomato planter (Vesey's Revolutionary Tomato planter) competing with a homemade hanging-grocery-bag planter.

For the potatoes, I used the large President's Choice large-size ($1.99) black bags. The tomato is in one from a health-food store in Ottawa, about the same size.

The soil in all of them is kind of a mix of PC planter soil with peat, vermiculite, home-grown worm castings, PC composted cow manure, city compost, and whatever other good stuff I could get my hands on.

So not really a good experiment, as there are no control groups. But let's see how they all do!

ADDED Thursday May 21 BY POPULAR REQUEST (ie the one reader I’m not married to), here are a few pics:

Children’s Garden Purple Plum tomato seedling in “Rainbow Foods” grocery bag, and a close-up of the built-in wicking reservoir I created above the soil:

(there’s the teensy tomato plant, peeking out!)

(yes, I worry about the weight of all that soil on its tiny roots…)

Hanging potatoes (my worry here is that not enough light enters the bag to start the potatoes growing well…and also that they will dry out too easily):

And the REAL DEAL:  the store-bought (well, mail-ordered) Vesey’s revolutionary hanging planter with a storebought (okay, farmer’s market) Chocolate Stripes tomato.  I’m a sucker for any produce with the word chocolate in it.  Hey, why don’t they make a chocolate broccoli???