Need some grow bag advice!

[DTOM420]

I’m shopping for grow bags for next year’s outdoor garden and I’m going to be using big bags: 200 gallon and 300 gallon for my photos. We have a very long outdoor season that starts April 1 and sometimes earlier and can easily go through Thanksgiving. First frosts are usually not until late December. However. We have very hot and dry summers that will produce 100° temps for up to 60 days in a row. I did ok this year in some smaller bags with autos but they required daily watering. So, for the photos, that’ll get big, I want to give them all the room possible to maximize on their potential.

Well, I was going to get some Grassroots bags when I noticed that they now have bags supposedly designed for living soil; that slow down the drying out and make it a little more like nature. Check them out here: https://www.grassrootsfabricpots.com/moisturelock-and-living-soil/ My concern is that the waterproof material strip that gives this effect, sorts defeats the purpose of the bag in the first place - the air pruning. On the other hand, I’m using such large bags, is root pruning even an issue for me? I’m not going to root-bind in a 100, 200 or 300 gallon container anyway, am I?

What are YOUR thoughts? Would you mess with these for an additional $4-$6 (per bag) cost? Is this a smart idea or a bad idea; especially for someone in a hot and usually dry area?

 

[MickJ]

@912GreenSkell is your man

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[DTOM420]

@912GreenSkell is your man

Sent from my comfy chair
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Hey, congrats on the promotion, brother! You deserve it!!

Yeah, Skelly is ‘da man’ when it comes to all things outdoors. Maybe he’ll be along shortly.

 

[G.Leave]

2-300 gallon smart pots....hmmm yes i believe they will work well....they will dry out fairly rapidly though especially if the wind is strong(which will be a good thing with all of the medium in those large pots, because it will results in increased watering/feeding).
Okay....i believe i have asked this before, but how many hours of daylight do you get on the 21st of june, and how many minutes of daylight do you lose after that. Here we get nearly 16 hours of daylight and we lose 2-3 minutes daily.

 

[DTOM420]

We have 14hrs an 2 minutes on the 21st of June. We lose 20 seconds of light per day. Please go check that link I posted in my original post - they’re are a new style of bag that are supposed to slow down the drying out that you normally get with traditional bags. I’m comfortable with grow bags as I used them this summer pretty well for autos. But I’ll also have an in-ground garden.

I’d like to hear your opinion on this new ‘take’ on grow bags!

 

[bad dragon bzzz]

ahh so its waterproof apart from the air prunning 4" strip at the bottom.no idea and we get a lot of rain here. @hecno @Growtogrow are in hot places
good luck n keep er lit.

 

[Growtogrow]

Mmmm... 100, 200 or 300 gallon. The concept of the walls being waterproof until the last 4" of the bottom so all the pruning benefits is at the bottom Mmmm.
It does make me wonder if you really need it in a pot size of those.
But if you were going to use it for moisture retention it does seem like it would be a benefit to help hold the moisture in better for longer periods of time.

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[DTOM420]

Mmmm... 100, 200 or 300 gallon. The concept of the walls being waterproof until the last 4" of the bottom so all the pruning benefits is at the bottom Mmmm.
It does make me wonder if you really need it in a pot size of those.
But if you were going to use it for moisture retention it does seem like it would be a benefit to help hold the moisture in better for longer periods of time.

Sent[emoji297][emoji100][emoji482]

Yeah, I don’t know if you need it in those big bags. I may try some with the strip and some without and see if I can tell a difference. Now, water retention IS an issue here. We normally have around 90 days in a row of 100°+ temps in the summer; along with a pretty steady breeze, thank God! So, the bags do tend to dry out. It was a daily struggle trying to keep 10 gallon and 15 gallon bags properly hydrated. If I’m going to do the living soil thing, I can’t let the soil get really dried out and going big, hopefully, will help in this regard along with keeping the roots cool and giving them just about as much room to grow as if they were in the ground.

We don’t normally get a lot of rain here. 23” annually in a good year, normally. But we just went through 45”+ in the last TWO MONTHS! Right when my outdoor plants were trying to flower. Lol! Three years ago we had a crazy spring of flooding. With the endless cycles of drought and flooding, with very little ‘normal’ weather any more, I’m nervous about planting everything in the ground. So, I’m doing 12 photos outdoors. 6 will be in the ground and I’m going to test out the large bags for the other 6 plants. That way, IF we get one of these unprecedented weather events again, hopefully I won’t lose my entire crop. That’s my thinking, anyway.

 

[the green bandit]

Hey bud, I'm also in a extremely hot climate and have found having a good layer of mulch on the surface of the pots reduced watering a fair amount, and also helps keep the heat out. I can't help on the new pots as i only have the standard fabric pots. Also this spring I added a few spoonfuls of water retaining crystals which seems to help

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[Growtogrow]

Yeah, I don’t know if you need it in those big bags. I may try some with the strip and some without and see if I can tell a difference. Now, water retention IS an issue here. We normally have around 90 days in a row of 100°+ temps in the summer; along with a pretty steady breeze, thank God! So, the bags do tend to dry out. It was a daily struggle trying to keep 10 gallon and 15 gallon bags properly hydrated. If I’m going to do the living soil thing, I can’t let the soil get really dried out and going big, hopefully, will help in this regard along with keeping the roots cool and giving them just about as much room to grow as if they were in the ground.

We don’t normally get a lot of rain here. 23” annually in a good year, normally. But we just went through 45”+ in the last TWO MONTHS! Right when my outdoor plants were trying to flower. Lol! Three years ago we had a crazy spring of flooding. With the endless cycles of drought and flooding, with very little ‘normal’ weather any more, I’m nervous about planting everything in the ground. So, I’m doing 12 photos outdoors. 6 will be in the ground and I’m going to test out the large bags for the other 6 plants. That way, IF we get one of these unprecedented weather events again, hopefully I won’t lose my entire crop. That’s my thinking, anyway.

Well if I lived in that kind of dry climate. I put in those bags some spongy pumice old wood mulch and decaying logs.
That the plants can use as a nurse logs.The logs and old wood chips will soak up the water and the plants will be able to suck off them.
I use this technique in my outside garden. I have the same problem with dryness it helps retain moisture in my grow pots outside and inside grows.
So the whole idea of having the pot three-quarters of the way or 7/8 of the way down being a wall they can help hold moisture in better and just the bottom of the pot being the fiber pot part that just gives me an idea about lining my pots with some gardening plastic down to 4 to 6 inch of the bottom it's not a bad idea.
I'm going to give it a go in my next grow inside.


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