Ever since I came across fabric pots and learnt of air pruning I was sold. Even though it was a bitch to transplant, all I cared about was results. Then I came across air pots. Same air pruning benefits, 100,000% easier to transplant. I guess my question is, is there any benefit to fabric pots over air pots? A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
I never thought that transplanting with smartpots was that hard. I run a garden shovel around the outside edge when the medium is dry and pinch/pull down from the bottom corner while holding the main stem and tilting the plant. Rotate pull down, rotate pull down. The fabric is now loose and will pull right off the rootball. Air pots are skinnier and taller then smart pots. Smartpots are more squat. This can be good in that it makes a plant more stable and harder to tip over. It also can give you slightly more headroom since the pot takes up less of it. A skinny/tall pot can be an advantage if you have a lot of headroom and you like high plant counts because you can squeeze more plants in a smaller space. Fabric/smart pots lend better to growing very large plants compared to airpots because of the stability the squat pot gives the large plant. Both dry out quite fast and can increase feed rate/growth/aeration/prevent rootbound issues.
No need to transplant fabric pots. Since they air prune you will never get the benifit people claim from up potting hard containers. With hard containers the roots will begin to circle and then upon being moved into a bigger container supposedly explode in growth. Fabric xontainera prevent circling. The root system from a fabric container is more fiborous then that of a hard container. I take a clone or a seedling directly from a solo cup to it's final container. Even my larger 15 and 20 gallon containers. It's pointless to up pot fabric unless it's just for space saving.
Small plants grow slower in large containers because they are usually not able to get proper aeration to the roots. When the container is so much larger then they are they can't dry it out very fast and spend extended periods water logged. That's the main reason people transplant. If there wasn't any need to why would anyone ever bother? I bet if you did a side by side with one started in a solo cup and one in a 10 gallon pot the solo cup version would outgrow it. You'd have to time your transplant's correctly but you could get so much better early aeration in the smaller pot. I only transplant from 3 gallon to 7 gallon fabric pots to finish. Usually mid to late veg. My young plants are in disposable cups and small 1/2 gallon plastic pots before their first smart pot. I do 3 to 4 transplants.
Well kill me now bc I go from seed to mature plant in a large pot at I cannot tell any difference other than I don't have to water as.much. also I am starting to rethink air pruning.... I am not so sure it makes much difference. I am going to look for side by side comps now to see if I am crazy...er ..wrong.
Already done all the comparisons. I used to always transplant. Due to the added aeritaion of fabric containers, transplanting is in no way beneficial except to save space. I used hard sided containers for over 20 years, I'm glad transplanting cloth isn't benificail. 1 less thing to do. Many of us who run fabric containers don't waste our time transplanting, especially us no tillers. As far as leaving them water logged, learn to water and keep the fabric container elevated. It's pretty hard to over water in a fabric container as part of their design is to aid in over watering. That would be the growers fault if they kept the pot in standing water. After all helping with over watering is one of the selling points of fabric containers like smart pots Better yet set up a simple sub irrigated planter and let the plant water itself. That's easy enough Why would people still transplant? That's easy enough. Lots of old information still being passed around. Just like lots of aspects of growing. People still hanging on to past techniques or just don't understand the benifits of fabric containers. In a hard sided container roots will begin to circle as the room in the container runs out. Upon transplant the roots supposedly explode in growth with the new space. Thats the whole theory behind transplanting. Fabric containers air prune and prevent circling, therefore eliminating that effect people see in hard sided containers.
I use air pots but I have used smart pots on one grow. Smart pots have to be elevated somehow so that it will drain properly. I personally prefer a hard sided pot to the fabric. Contrary to what some people say, I have never had a tipping problem with an air pot - even with a wide plant.
Lots of people will put lava rocks or something similar under the container to elevate their fabric containers out of the drip pan. Even a handful of rock out of the driveway would be fine just for a drip pan. My fabric containers actually sit on top of a sub irrigated planter with a resivior full of lava rocks and water.
What you keep saying is the "theory" behind transplanting is only a small side benefit. If you let a plant's roots circle a container you've probably waited long enough that the smaller container is slowing growth down. Yeah if you root bound a plant when you transplant it, it will take off. It's not an ideal method and it's not the theory behind transplanting. Starting small plants in small containers is all about getting air to the roots and not water logging the plant. That's the theory behind it. It's the fact that air cannot go through a 10 gallon pot anywhere near as well as it can through a solo cup with plenty of holes fabric or not. There is no way that starting a new small seeding in a 10 gallon pot just because it's fabric won't get it inferior aeration compared to a well sized container. I agree you can probably minimize waterlogging a small plant by a well constructed well draining medium but I still think a small container would outgrow a 10 gallon pot for the first 2-3 weeks at least. Transplanting can also be used to control the size of a plant. If you put off transplanting at all it will keep a plant small.
That is the theory of uppotting. Allowing the roots to fill the container and begin to circle, that way they are searching out that new space after transplant. Allowing them to begin to circle is not root bond. Takes quite a bit of circling before the plant is root bound to the point of hindering the plant. However it's not possible in Fabric because of the air pruning. . transplanting in Fabric containers just isn't beneficial except space saving. You will not get that growth associated with up potting hard containers. Using small fabric containers to control the size of the plant also isn't easily achieved in fabric. Do to the air pruning the roots won't become root bound and slow the plant down. I've seen some very large plants in small fabric pots in a drain to waste system, utilizing a net to steady the plant and keep from tipping.. I never was a big fan of the Up potting theory anyways, even in hard containers. Like most though I just followed the crowd as that's how it's been done for decades. Way before people started using fabric containers regularly. Thankfully I did my own experimenting and found it useless in Fabric. Saves the mess, saves the time and saves effort at no expense to the plant. Up potting doesn't hurt anything in Fabric containers, just old info still being unnecessarily utilized. I was once like you until I bumped into some people that questioned my methods so I gave it a shot. Try it sometime and you'll see what I'm talking about. Until then you're just guessing like I once was. I'm glad I was open to a new way, paid off really well. I too was reluctant but low and behold I was wrong. That's what's great about trying things instead of relying on old information designed for hard containers.
I agree with you somewhat but I think you're overblowing what the fabric pot does. You still have a few weeks for a small plant to grow roots to the edge of the pot if you plant it in the middle of a 10 gallon pot. During that time it won't get as good of aeration as it would in a smaller pot. That's basically all that a smaller pot does. It increases aeration for small plants that would otherwise be almost drowning in a large pot. I've seen your setup if I remember right. You use like 12" tall or larger clones that are about 4-5 times the size of the clones I usually start with. It's possible that since you start with larger plants they don't get impacted by starting in the larger pot like they would if they were little 3" clones. I'm not new to this. I've tried a few times to up pot early. Who wants to go through the work of transplanting several times? I've put smaller plants in finishing size pots to attempt to save time. You know what happened? They grew extremely slow for the first week or two that they were in that large pot. When I transplant to reasonable sized containers matched to the plant size that doesn't happen. I get next to no slowdown in growth.
air pots indoors smart pots out doors. Smartpots main advantage other than airpruning was ability to get stable and hopefully warm temps from ground. Although my next indoor seed is going in a 5 gallon smartpot hempy and the handles make it fun to carry to the ktichen sink for an effortless flush. If that works I'll try a 7 gallon air pot. My 10 gallon airpots just got to be too big for me to manage indoors and I really don't need that much volume, but I agree, airpots are in a totally different league than smartpots and the roots are unmatched by any other container I know. Airpots will by the way hold 100% perlite.
I'm really not over blowing it. Until you've tried both you are just guessing. I've tried both ways....im not guessing. You shouldn't get any slow down. Since the pots air prune they won't become root bound and if you're a decent gardener transplanting shouldn't slow them down either. A plant gets plenty of aeration in a 10 gallon fabric container, some of us including myself use larger
I'm not trying to take sides in this discussion because I respect both of you as growers. But do the roots get plenty of aeration just based on using a fabric container? It seems to me that if you have a muddy dense soil with no perlite, a fabric container would be no help with aeration.
So are you saying you would take a clone from an areoponic cloner and go right into, say a 10 or 15 gallon fabric pot, and just let it go? A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
Thank you for all your passion guys. It really makes me feel great that everyone cares about growing so much. It don't even matter if everyone agrees as long as we all are happy growing! A friend with weed is a friend indeed.
If you want the best of both, you should try spring pots. They are made of cloth fabric and also provide the same type of pruning of both. I just plant straight into large containers with no probs tho. I'm not big on transplanting.
I needed a small footprint (my fabric pots are too large) for extended veg and flowering a clone for a sex reverse..so..<$1 and my soldering iron..just like the real deal..and not $20 !!