Today, we answer a simple question: what happens when you grow plants in a bag of compost directly with NO fertilizer? We all know plants love container gardening in nursery containers and grow bags, but can we plant directly into bagged compost, no garden beds or container garden required? I spent 2 months growing vegetables directly in compost bags right off the shelf of my local big box store. Let’s find out what happened!
Growing Plants In Dog Poop Experiment: https://youtu.be/4eytpYlf4gM?si=Sy3BTt0bJA_vTcnw
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Are Plant Containers Necessary?
0:33 The Compost Experiment
2:09 Planting Directly In Bagged Compost
4:46 Experiment Check-In #1
5:56 Experiment Check-In #2
7:44 Experiment Check-In #3
9:40 Experiment Results And Final Thoughts
13:05 Adventures With Dale
If you have any questions about gardening in containers or composting at home, want to learn more about growing fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!
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#gardening #garden #containergardening #vegetablegardening #compost
Container gardening. We all know how successful it can be. And we have probably all grown fruits and veggies in things like grow bags and nursery containers. But the question is, are they really necessary? Do we need these pots at all? Well, today we are going to answer that question. We are going to discover what happens if we throw away the containers and we grow plants directly in a bag of compost. If you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. And these are our two test subjects. These are both varieties of zucchini. They are Sinabria zucchini and they were both started from seed by me at the exact same time and they are exhibiting roughly the exact same rate of growth. So, these will be the perfect test subjects because they’re the same species and variety type. So, I’m going to plant them two different ways and we are going to see how they react. And this is the compost that I will be growing the plants in. Now, they are both the same brand of compost from my local Lowe’s store. They are Calmon compost. I bought them on the same day and they are the same size and from the same lot, so everything should be equivalent. The difference is in the way I will be growing them. The first one I will be growing lying flat directly in the bag as you see. The second one I’m going to stand up and grow it in the bag. So, in order to do that, I need to create some drainage in the bag. So, I’m going to take some chopsticks and poke some holes. That way, the bag will properly drain in the event of rain or overwatering. If we don’t give it enough drainage, the plants will die. Then we are going to flip that bag over and I’m going to fluff it up because you have to airrate the soil in order for oxygen to reach the roots. Now for this bag of soil right here, I’m going to sit it down on its butt. And again, we’re going to fluff it up. And just like before, we are going to poke some drainage holes because we don’t want the plants to drown if I overwater or if we get heavy rain. So, I’m going to cut a square in this bag because we are going to plant directly in that compost. And again, I want to make sure I break this up nicely. That way, the roots can easily traverse and there will be plenty of oxygen in this bag so the roots do not suffocate. And then similarly on this one, I’m going to cut out a similar square and we will plant the plant in that after we fluff it up really well. And then we are going to plant these plants directly in the bags of compost. We are going to do it without giving them any kind of fertilizer. Because if compost is as good as it’s supposed to be, well, since they are growing exclusively in that bag of compost, you would think one entire bag of compost would have enough nutrients for the plant to grow at least uh for 45 days or so. So, I’m going to take my hand and I’m going to move that compost over and I’m going to plant this root ball directly in that compost. Just like that. And similarly, we are going to take the other bag of compost and it’s actually going to be a lot easier to plant this plant in this bag of compost because it’s much deeper since I have it sitting on its butt instead of laying down on its side. So, we’re going to see if there’s a difference between these two planting methods. Just like that. And then the last thing I’m going to do is I’m going to take the chopstick and I’m going to poke some holes in the sides of this bag because the last thing I want is a lack of arration. This isn’t a real potting mix, which would have things like perlite and possibly vermiculite in it to help airrate, as well as things like pine bark fines and things like that to provide drainage. So, I’m concerned if I just plant in pure compost, it’s going to be too heavy and dense. So, that’s why I’m adding the extra holes for drainage and arration. But that’s why we run these experiments. We want to find out, can we actually do this? And the very last thing we need to do is water in these transplants very well. And then we sit back and play the waiting game. And now all that’s left to do is to periodically check in on them. In about a day or two, they should start standing up straight and orienting themselves towards the sun. Within 3 to 5 days, we should start seeing some noticeable growth. So, I will be able to check in on them roughly every 7 to 10 days with an update. This is a fast fruitruing variety of zucchini. So, I expect to see fruit production probably within 30 to 40 days. It’s September 27th and it is time for our first update for our zucchini plants that are growing in bags of compost. Let’s start with the zucchini plant growing in the flat bag. It’s looking healthy. The leaves look very good and it’s starting to produce its first flowers. We have a male flower that is opened at the top. And then we have a zucchini. We have a little zucchini fruit at the bottom that you can see right there. So, we have our first zucchini fruit that is set on this plant. Now, let’s look at the other one. This one looks like it’s it’s growing in a different orientation. The bag that is standing straight up has a plant that is growing more standing straight up. This one seems to be crawling more along the ground, and that just makes sense to me. So, this is also doing very well. This has a female flower that’s open and wants to be pollinated. There is another zucchini over there that looks to be pollinated. Here’s a male flower right here. So, overall, both zucchini plants are looking very nice, and we’ll check in on them a little while later. Here we are on October 2nd. We just got hammered with 5 days of rainfall. We got over 6 in of rain, and the zucchini plants are a little bit beat up. However, they’re starting to show some progress still. The zucchini plant in the bag of compost that is standing up is really doing well. I mean, look at it. We have one baby zucchini right here that did unfortunately abort. So, we’ll break that off. However, we do have one that is going to hold on to maturity. That is a properly pollinated zucchini. And I’m feeling optimistic about this one as well. We have another female flower forming here and a male flower forming here. So, we can use that male flower to pollinate the female zucchini. Hopefully, as time goes on, now that we’ll be in a dry pattern for a week, hopefully this zucchini plant will continue to grow healthily. The zucchini plant in the bag of compost lying flat clearly is not doing as well. And I don’t know if that’s because the other bag, it’s more elevated and it keeps it off the ground so it gets better air flow or what, or if it can grow its roots more deeply. Whatever it is, this zucchini is not doing as well. We have a fruit right here that aborted unfortunately. I’m hoping this one right here holds on. In order to hedge my bets, I’m actually going to break open this male flower right here. And I’m going to manually handpollinate this female flower right here in hopes that I can at least get this zucchini to hold because I’m not liking what I’m seeing. Maybe this uh maybe this compost just isn’t as good, but it all came off the same batch, so it’s identical compost. It’s got to just be the way things are growing now that we’ll be in a dry pattern for a week. Hopefully, this plant can catch back up and recover and catch its breath. Well, it’s October 9th and I think it’s time that we officially call the end to this experiment because I think we got our answer. Here is the zucchini plant that is growing in the flat bag of compost. This one was basically a total dud. It’s lost most of its green leaves. It’s starting to look kind of funky and beat up even though we’re having ideal temperatures for growing zucchini. And it has never produced an actual zucchini. All of the squashes have aborted even with handpollinating. This bag that is sitting straight up has done considerably better. And it does have a zucchini growing on it. But I’ll tell you what, it’s clearly not a happy zucchini. There’s something kind of wrong with it. It is deformed. And if you think, well, now that it’s going on the middle of October, conditions just aren’t right for growing zucchini. That must be the problem. Well, these zucchini plants right here were all grown from seed in the same batch and started at the exact same time to run a simultaneous experiment. So, these are effectively the exact same zucchini that were all started at the same time, grown under the same atmospheric conditions. The only difference is I grew these in grow bags. They weren’t grown in straight compost. And although there is residual compost in the grow bag, well, they’re actually growing in a proper potting soil mix and these just did absolutely fantastic. So, we know it’s not the conditions. We know it’s not when we planted our plants because these did great and they’re reaching end of life. They’re getting kind of old at this point, but I’m still getting delicious zucchini fruits out of them. And by the way, if you’re curious about what this experiment was, well, I ran an experiment where I grew one plant in regular old fertilizer and another one in my dog’s poop. And if you want to watch that video and how it turned out, I’ll link to it both above and down in the video description. Pretty interesting results. Wait a second. Looks like I was wrong. We did have a small zucchini back here. It’s pretty pathetic looking, but there was a little one that grew. So, let’s pick them both. Look at them side by side. I mean, this is all I got out of two entire plants. And as you can see, they look sickly and terrible. And I have to say, I’m very surprised with the results of this experiment. I thought that they would actually do pretty well growing in these bags of compost. So, this should go and show you that none of these experiments are rigged. They are what they are. I don’t set these things up to produce some kind of result. This is just what happened. And I’m I have to say I’m really disappointed with the results. But now we know what happens if we grow zucchini plants just in a bag of compost. And I would say nothing good. And so the question is why did this happen? What could be the cause? And there could be a few different causes. Uh number one, it could be that commercial compost like this, maybe it’s just too depleted. Maybe it just doesn’t contain enough nutrients to grow the plants in. And had I added supplemental fertilizer to it, maybe then they would have done a little bit better. But unfortunately, we will have no way of knowing unless we rerun the experiment next year and we do a couple of bags with additional fertilizer added in there too. Uh I think the most likely scenario as to why these plants did poorly was because the compost itself was just too heavy. it was too dense and as a result the plant roots probably couldn’t get enough oxygen and it struggled to grow and send roots and uh also uptake the nutrients that were uh in these bags of compost. And I think that you could kind of see that in the fact that the bag that I plopped standing straight up uh the roots probably had an easier time traversing the soil here than the pl than the uh the bag that is just laid flat. So without using multiple different brands of compost, without adding additional fertilizers, again, there’s no real way to tell. But it was pretty clear to me throughout the course of this experiment that the plant that was growing straight down did do a little bit better. But other than that, I would call both of these a failure. And based on the results of this experiment, I would not recommend that anybody grow a plant strictly in a bag of compost. uh you’re definitely going to want to put it in a legitimate container to facilitate better drainage, uh better aation, and probably add more than just compost because that would be too heavy of a growing medium to grow a plant in. So everybody, I hope you found this video helpful, informative, and ultimately entertaining. If you did, please make sure to hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring the notification bell so you are notified when I release more videos like these. For any of the products that I featured in this video, I place direct links down in the video description for your convenience. For everything I use in my yard and garden in real life, that’s all linked in my Amazon storefront. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you will see everything that I use in real life. And while you’re down there, please consider checking out my new website, the millennialger.com. I just launched it. It’s going to have all kinds of helpful gardening information for you, as well as custom merch that you can purchase if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. It is an absolutely beautiful day and Dale and I are going for a walk around the pond. And look what we have here. We have a little baby alligator. He’s just a little guy or a little girl. Look how cute. Dale, you’re pulling me too fast, buddy. Dale is really invested in his sniffs right now. But look at that cute little baby gator. A let’s not get too close so we don’t disturb him. That’s just a little baby. Dale, remember when you were a little pup like that? Dale don’t care. He’s so invested in these sniffs. It has been raining here so much over the last week that everything is damp and all of the sniffs are really good. So, he’s just been going absolutely crazy with the sniffing lately. So, we’ll leave the gators alone and get back to our beautiful walk. We finally have some great sunny
37 Comments
Have you ever tried growing plants in pure compost? What happened? Let us know in the comments below! TIMESTAMPS here:
0:00 Are Plant Containers Necessary?
0:33 The Compost Experiment
2:09 Planting Directly In Bagged Compost
4:46 Experiment Check-In #1
5:56 Experiment Check-In #2
7:44 Experiment Check-In #3
9:40 Experiment Results And Final Thoughts
13:05 Adventures With Dale
What soil mixture did you use for your grow bags? Did you use same compost?
Glad you had the control plants growing at the same time!
On top of everything you noted, I think a lot of it has to do with the plastic wrapping around the roots, killing the oxygen (as you mention) and unnatural temperature.
Interesting
Great experiment!
Good experiment! My take away is resist the need to over compost my raised garden beds. ❤
I find that the second season of used compost has the highest performance – the next crop grown in that compost will do the best I think
Store bough compost is always bullshit. The woodchip content is always wayyyyyyyy to high, even mushroom compost can be way to high in woody materials. Home made compost would have made huge zucchini plants
What an interesting experiment! I make all my own compost in 18 gallon totes. I wonder how that would work if mixed with some perlite . . .
I tried the same compost in my Fall garden. Five Bell peppers and nine tomatoes. They all appeared stunted and lagged behind everything else in the garden. I use custom blended fertilizers for each growing stage delivered through the drip system daily. I think the Nitrogen was locked up by the compost. I provided additional Calcium Nitrate multiple times before the plants progressed. The Bell peppers had some modest production but the tomatoes while tall and thin have good production. My belief is that Timberline is the problem.
When I saw Timberline compost I already knew the result. They have gone really downhill in the past couple years and I stopped using them entirely. I got next to nothing out of my garden last year when I last used them and I was finding paint, pieces of pallets, uncomposted bit of wood and cork, and other unnatural stuff mixed in and not even supplementing helped the garden deal with all the extra garbage and uncomposted material. Even outside timberline I imagine they'd not get anywhere near enough oxygen and create anaerobic environments inside the bag. Pretty interesting to see the results!
I splurged on much better compost this year so here is hoping it will work better AND the weather will cooperate, although 30s already in florida is not a good sign for that!
In my opinion, commercial compost is 💩 !
We grow mostly in huge grow bags. I have always used top quality compost and never had an issue with it. I just give it a large root space in the 25 gallon grow bags.
Compost and most of the bagged "soil" eventually compacts and suffocates roots. This and/or the compost rots and causes root rot. Even Gardening Fundamentals on Youtube recommends no more than 20% compost in a container and he recommends adding organic material to your soil (I promote the idea of never mixing compost into your growing medium). I live in the tropics and it is very difficult to grow things in bagged potting mixes because it has materials that compost and rot (specifically wood). Not only does this kill roots, but it also attracts grubworms that eat the rotting material and the roots. I do a simple 50/50 peat/coir and perlite mix. I used to use sand, but it makes containers too heavy.
As someone that has a degree in turf and ornamental, I did enjoy this and did learn something. Keep em coming please. That was great
check Gary's best gardening and he will explain why plants don't like growing in rotting material.
I would be interested to see does experiment repeated but with added perlite
This was fun. Yes, compost is a low nutrient matrix. I'm surprised you didn't get blossom end rot, but I guess soil moisture was consistent inside the bags
Video yang sangat bagus dan menarik,,,…..Senang menyaksikan vlognya….❤👍👍.
Confounder: grow bags were, fabric bags. Compost ones were plastic. A fair comparison would have been identical growbags filled with 100% compost. Looked like volume of grow bags was more than the volume of one bag of compost.
Here in the UK you can get bags designed to grow tomatoes and cucumbers; they sit flat on the ground and can work really well. The mix isn’t only compost, but some fibrous material and some additional nutrients. So it is possible to do without a container. You do need to feed them as usual – liquid every couple of weeks. The problems you experienced may be about the heaviness of the compost, as you thought, and not about being in a plastic bag: this can be fine. Greetings to Dale from our dog Freya, and thank you for your videos!
Say hello to Dan.
We grew volunteer pumpkins out in our compost pile. One of them weighed 40 lbs.!
Commercial "compost" is just a dead material. The biggest scam in the whole gardening industry that's why….. also the fruit needs to be pollinated correctly (by hand) to know for sure.
Allan Titschmarsh shows how to grow tomatoes in bagged soil. Apparently companies in England make bags just for this purpose. I was stunned when he showed how beautifully the tomatoes grow (in UK weather, of course).
Thank you!!! I just thinking trying to grow mini napa cabbage in compost.
Very interesting… Thanks
Thanks for the tips! I'll try this too👍
Now do the test with a homemade compost. The bagged stuff doesn't have any of the fungi and bacteria that a homemade compost has. William at The Permaculture Consultant does soil and compost tests under a microscope and he said not a single bag you buy has the fungi and bacteria you need or get from homemade compost. I find it to be better than nothing but it isn't the powerhouse that homemade stuff is.
The reason why the plants did poorly is a two-fold situation. The compost itself being wet and decomposing, replaces the oxygen in the soil with toxic sewer gases, and that alone can kill many plants. This also leads into the plants not having enough oxygen to outgrow the toxic environment. Some plants like this environment (tomatoes/peace lily) but many, if not most, do not grow well in it.
Gary Matsuoka from Laguna Hills Nursery is the only garden person talking about the "compost problem"
07:52 Lets ignore the zucchini hanging from the plant.
I once put a small 25cm seedling of Cannabis sativa into pure compost behind a large composting area of pig manure. The compost there was older, quite disintegrated, dark, it looked right to put it there. I remember it was behind a small wall of the composting area on its west side. I left the baby plant there to grow completely by itself. Unfortunately, I never saw it again but a person who went to get in in autumn described to me how it looked: a huge 4 to 5 meters bamboo-like plant, trunk at base was more than 10cm in diameter. He had never seen such an otherworldly plant nor he will probably see such a thing again.
Funny that this video came up on my time line as I'm preparing something similar.
I have a bin of compost I started in the spring. I want to empty it because it's hard for me to turn it properly, it's hard for me to get to the bottom. I'm just going to put it in grow bags, plant potato scraps to see what happens.
Perhaps the compost bags needed to have microbials added to them. More than likely the compost was completely sterile.
What happens? You go broke. Gardening on a practically zero budget anyone? I am so frustrated with the cost of gardening. Containers, grow bags, compost, special potting soil, raised beds, $$$$$. When I was 60 years younger we just put plants in the dirt. A six pack of tomatoes was about 75cents.
More updates on your fig experiments please your the fig og thanks 😊