What’s a good way to grow vegetables organically in a plot that’s just a bog? Is it even possible? This was the true quandary of a lady who lived in County Mayo, Ireland. Half her vegetable garden was water-sodden for most of the year.

She had read about such water-tolerant plants as… lovage, angelica, celery, water chestnuts, rhubarb, water caltrop, comfrey, water convolvulus, jerusalem artichokes (sunchokes), spirulina and water cress. But only gnomes will flourish in a peaty acidic bog. Not even water cress will.

Giant GrowSacks: the ideal way to grow more organic vegetables in damp soil

So here’s a simple way to turn even the worst boggy or acidic soil into a sustainable organic garden. Get hold of a giant rubble bag, the kind that contractors dump on building sites. Or a large plastic animal feed or cement bag. Fill them with a mix of aged manure, topsoil and grit.

Make several large holes in one side and roll the bags over so the holes rest on your boggy ground. Then the plant roots can reach the damp soil beneath. Plant several small pre-germinated potatoes in that sack.

Potatoes are a good first choice because, of all edible plants, they produce the maximum nourishment from a limited space.

As they develop, the potatoes can root down into the acidic boggy soil for water, and their tubers – shielded from light – will expand throughout the bag. And the haulm will grow out gratefully from the flaps.

One rubble bag will feed half the county

A small cement or manure bag will not give you a large crop. But one builders’ rubble bag should feed half the county. And potatoes need mildly acidic conditions anyway, lest they get scab.

You can use the same GrowSack approach for other vegetables and fruit that like moisture, like squash and tomatoes, if you have no choice but to grow food above bad soil. You can raise plants, by this method, even at the base of leylandii and other conifers which have turned the soil beneath their branches into a dark sterile wasteland.

If you choose soft fruit like strawberries that prefer shade and fairly acid conditions you’ll find they do very well in shallow GrowSacks beneath conifers.

At worst, if you have no giant durable sacks, you can use common plastic garbage bags. They’ll decay into fragments by fall. But this is no matter because then, in any case, you should tip the bag contents on the ground in the place where the bag was.

GrowSacks renew the soil

If you use GrowSacks in the same place year after year and throw out their contents after use you’ll find, of course, that the soil surface gets slowly higher. Result: your waterlogged or awful soil will become drier and more healthy. You can then plant acid-tolerant vegetables in the garden soil itself.

A tip: if you plan to grow potatoes in that acidic soil, it’s a bad idea to spread lime on the ground to sweeten it. They hate lime, and grow scabby. But if your ground level has risen after several years’ dumping of GrowSacks, lime would be a good idea for most other vegetables – especially swedes, cabbages, turnips and other related roots.

Is it not dangerous to grow potatoes in the same place year after year? In theory, yes. But when you use GrowSacks you are raising them above ground, in a fresh soil mix each year. Any disease or insect problems that lurk in the ground below are less hazard to plants grown in bags.

Of course, potatoes are not your only option, even at the start of a garden-renewal prroject. Any water-loving plant should do well in a giant GrowSack, if it can get its roots into the damp soil beneath. Unless the pH of the soil below is below 4 – ie. very acid – you should at east get some crop.

You can also grow watercress in giant GrowSacks

Watercress also grows well in giant GrowSacks on boggy soil – provided the bag is not perforated. Despite myths to the contrary, water cress does not have to grow in running water. It will flourish in any moist soil with a neutral pH or an inert porous substance. Pull back the sides of a rubble sack to make a shallow container. Add a few inches of grit or gravel, plus some compost, and water it very well.

Then buy some watercress from a supermarket. Stick the stems in a pot of water. When they develop roots, put them in the Grow Bag. And stand back.

That’s all you have to do, ever, because the water cress – if it lasts its first few weeks – will produce seed. Then you’ll have all the water cress you’ll ever need. But watercress hates dank water. A tip: if you do have running water, like a down-flow pipe, put the water cress in a sink under the tap. If your water cress fails you nonetheless, at least you’ll delight the garden frogs.

Looking to grow vegetables indoors? Try this ingenious new idea. It makes organic gardening in your own home cheaper than ever because it uses recyclable materials. This clever system is called GrowFlutes. An indoor GrowFlute will grow you almost any small plant, edible or otherwise, decoratively and conveniently.

Your first step is to slice the base from a big squash or cola bottle, about three inches from the bottom. Keep this little tub. It makes a nice growing pot. The rest of the bottle is your GrowFlute. Take the cap off.

Now you have a clear ‘flute’ around nine inches high. It will grow almost any salad, herb or small vegetable plant. Let’s start with a foolproof example of indoor vegetable gardening. Dandelions.

Why dandelions? They’re both edible and beautiful!

Remove a dandelion from the garden, making sure its long root is intact. Cut off its larger leaves and push the root into the neck. Turn the flute upside down. Now put a capillary cord into the flute. This can be any non-degradable fibre like a shoe lace, or a strip cut from nylon socks or stockings and twisted together. Wind it around the taproot. Now add damp compost to the bottle and tamp it down firmly.

Put your GrowFlute on a tray, such as the plastic packs used by supermarkets for perishable foods.

Rest the GrowFlute in the saucer on a base of corks, gravel, hydroleca or any inert thing that will raise it above the bottom of the tray. The emerging roots will need some drainage and air but they will soon be trimmed by the air and will not ramble too far.

Fill the saucer with water and make sure your capillary cord is well steeped too. Now expose your flute to good light, such as a south-facing window. In a week or so you’ll be rewarded with fresh lush leafy, and edible, growth. Tomato growers call this ‘ring culture’, but a GrowFlute is more decorative.

You don’t need a garden to raise delicious food

You can cut the leaves two or three times a week and gain fresh-food vitamins without even needing to leave your house. Eventually, they may flower into a beautiful blossom. (Just don’t let them go to seed or you’ll be cropping fresh dandelions from your curtains.)

For long-term food production, the GrowFlute will need feeding after a few weeks. The ideal organic feeds are nettle or comfrey infusions but do be careful about using them indoors. They have a powerful smell.

Of course, dandelions are just one possible candidate for your GrowFlute. Any small plant can be grown in a GrowFlute, either from a seedling or the seed itself. Provided your capillary wick is set well in place, you can water the GrowFlute thereafter from the saucer.

Grow salad plants in the depths of winter

Good crops of common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris) and broad beans can be grown successfully in GrowFlutes, indoors on a south-facing window sill, even in December. Legumes need very little root space, if well fed and watered.

A great indoor gardening idea is to put tinfoil or metallic ‘holographic’ gift wrap paper under, and ideally behind, any plants you grow on your windowsill to throw back the light.

Such methods were no novelty for Victorian gardeners. They ‘forced’ peas, dwarf beans, strawberries, rhubarb and every type of unseasonable plant, indoors in winter, and thought little of it. The GrowFlute lets us replace a hothouse with our own living rooms. Another virtue of the GrowFlute is that, if we fill the trays with water, they’ll look after themselves for a week or more.

GrowFlutes can also be ornamental. We need merely paint them or clothe them in a suitable fabric.

A wicked idea for a dinner party is to place a GrowFlute beside each guest and let them cut their own fresh salads. It will make a memorable conversation starter.