Grow Bags The Good The Bad & The Ugly

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CannaGranny

CannaGranny

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Grow bags. Seems everyone’s experience is a bit different. Some run with it, other’s struggle the entire grow and hate them!
I love them and had to wonder why so many do not. Mainly it seems to all come down to watering practices and an understanding of the root zone.
Pros of the bags:
Allows light and air sheering of roots having outgrown the size of your container. This would occur in the same manner if this plant was planted in nature.
Does not allow the main tap root to hit a hard spot and snake or coil up in the bottom of your planter. When this happens the plant sends out a 🆘 call for help. Your lady will respond sending all kinds of good stuff to the main root that thinks it’s in trouble. We need that good stuff up top!
They are easily carried.
For chemical growers, they show what’s going on in your soil and will alert you to salt leeching.
They take minimal space for storage.
They can be washed and reused. (Empty, rinse dirt residue out,outside. Washer, using one cup of white vinegar and 1/4th cup of baking soda on a gentle cycle, remove, shape and allow to air dry)
Affordable
Cons:
Hard to water properly. This seems to be the number one problem and the one almost always mentioned. They (dried out cloth pots) seem to accompany many pics of sad droopy thirsty plants.
They dry out quickly. About three days max for me regardless of the humidity.
Improper watering allows pooling at the bottom of the root ball, allowing drowning to occur.
About Watering Cloth Pots:
This is no fast process! Watering cloth pots takes patience and time. If you are someone that just throws water at your plant and quickly moves on, this is not the container for you.
I water until the water slightly pools atop of the soil and then move on to the next while this “sinks in”. By the time I return to the plant I watered first, that has soaked in and I repeat this process. As the medium becomes willing to accept the water without pooling atop of the medium the process picks up a bit.
If I were to just dump a large amount of water atop of it, it would create channeling that would dump the watering right out the sides of my bag with all of it basically becoming runoff. You really want to allow time for that water to permeate the bag. That’s why I’m not satisfied until I see small drops from the bottom of the bag showing me that my medium is throughly watered. (I grow organically and don’t allow a big run off).
When watering a cloth bag the only time the center of the bag should be watered is at the time of transplanting to set your plant in. After that initial watering all watering is to be done in your root zone. To picture a root zone, look at your bag of soil, one inch from the rim of the bag picture a circle all the way around the pot. This will be your root zone. Watering in this area encourages your roots to spread out seeking water. Watering close to the root ball will build a mud hole beneath your plant cutting off oxygen and drowning it.
All in all for a bit of time in exchange for minimal storage, excellent growth and sticky fat buds.. I’m keeping mine 🙂
 
RootsRuler

RootsRuler

2,389
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Grow bags. Seems everyone’s experience is a bit different. Some run with it, other’s struggle the entire grow and hate them!
I love them and had to wonder why so many do not. Mainly it seems to all come down to watering practices and an understanding of the root zone.
Pros of the bags:
Allows light and air sheering of roots having outgrown the size of your container. This would occur in the same manner if this plant was planted in nature.
Does not allow the main tap root to hit a hard spot and snake or coil up in the bottom of your planter. When this happens the plant sends out a 🆘 call for help. Your lady will respond sending all kinds of good stuff to the main root that thinks it’s in trouble. We need that good stuff up top!
They are easily carried.
For chemical growers, they show what’s going on in your soil and will alert you to salt leeching.
They take minimal space for storage.
They can be washed and reused. (Empty, rinse dirt residue out,outside. Washer, using one cup of white vinegar and 1/4th cup of baking soda on a gentle cycle, remove, shape and allow to air dry)
Affordable
Cons:
Hard to water properly. This seems to be the number one problem and the one almost always mentioned. They (dried out cloth pots) seem to accompany many pics of sad droopy thirsty plants.
They dry out quickly. About three days max for me regardless of the humidity.
Improper watering allows pooling at the bottom of the root ball, allowing drowning to occur.
About Watering Cloth Pots:
This is no fast process! Watering cloth pots takes patience and time. If you are someone that just throws water at your plant and quickly moves on, this is not the container for you.
I water until the water slightly pools atop of the soil and then move on to the next while this “sinks in”. By the time I return to the plant I watered first, that has soaked in and I repeat this process. As the medium becomes willing to accept the water without pooling atop of the medium the process picks up a bit.
If I were to just dump a large amount of water atop of it, it would create channeling that would dump the watering right out the sides of my bag with all of it basically becoming runoff. You really want to allow time for that water to permeate the bag. That’s why I’m not satisfied until I see small drops from the bottom of the bag showing me that my medium is throughly watered. (I grow organically and don’t allow a big run off).
When watering a cloth bag the only time the center of the bag should be watered is at the time of transplanting to set your plant in. After that initial watering all watering is to be done in your root zone. To picture a root zone, look at your bag of soil, one inch from the rim of the bag picture a circle all the way around the pot. This will be your root zone. Watering in this area encourages your roots to spread out seeking water. Watering close to the root ball will build a mud hole beneath your plant cutting off oxygen and drowning it.
All in all for a bit of time in exchange for minimal storage, excellent growth and sticky fat buds.. I’m keeping mine 🙂
Would you say that cloth pots could be used in a flood and drain setup where you're bottom watering the pots and letting the wick effect wet whatever the immediate flood didn't towards the top of the media? Obviously for an organic grower this would not be conducive but for someone not running organic media this would solve whatever watering issues they have and wet the entire media which is what you correctly pointed out is the preferred method.
 
CannaGranny

CannaGranny

1,680
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Would you say that cloth pots could be used in a flood and drain setup where you're bottom watering the pots and letting the wick effect wet whatever the immediate flood didn't towards the top of the media? Obviously for an organic grower this would not be conducive but for someone not running organic media this would solve whatever watering issues they have and wet the entire media which is what you correctly pointed out is the preferred method.
I would say yes. The reason I would say yes is because when I split my watering they wick up anything in the drain tray that they can reach. I will tell you that I never bottom water and don’t like my plants sitting in water, but with other mediums I believe it could be done.
 
mysticepipedon

mysticepipedon

4,738
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You might be able to set up something similar to an Octopot system -- or just using the basic principle -- by putting a couple of inches of perlite under the soil.

When soil is saturated with water for prolonged periods, acids form and pH can drop way lower than you'd want it. I don't think that would happen with saturated perlite, and roots will dip in and suck up any nutrients you put in the water. https://www.octopot.com/
 
RootsRuler

RootsRuler

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263
I would say yes. The reason I would say yes is because when I split my watering they wick up anything in the drain tray that they can reach. I will tell you that I never bottom water and don’t like my plants sitting in water, but with other mediums I believe it could be done.
When I say bottom water I mean in a flood and drain setup so that the pots can drain. Plants sitting in water is a definite no no but you know that already!! 🥸
 
CannaGranny

CannaGranny

1,680
263
When I say bottom water I mean in a flood and drain setup so that the pots can drain. Plants sitting in water is a definite no no but you know that already!! 🥸
Yeah I got it, but at the same time had I not said that, someone was going to do it say I said it was okay! 🙂
 
AnimalHouse

AnimalHouse

Supporter
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Would you say that cloth pots could be used in a flood and drain setup where you're bottom watering the pots and letting the wick effect wet whatever the immediate flood didn't towards the top of the media? Obviously for an organic grower this would not be conducive but for someone not running organic media this would solve whatever watering issues they have and wet the entire media which is what you correctly pointed out is the preferred method.

This is common and can actually be done with organics and even aquaponics.
I may have an old video I posted on youtube years ago using an Oxypot system and organics. Inorganic, it can be done using coco as the medium, preferably chunky coco and not the rehydrated bricks.
The principle with organics is simple really and similar to nature when a fertile valley is flooded by snow melting off a mountian and then the valley is drained by a river flowing away. What happens next is explosive growth in the valley.
Mineral based organics is preferred and you need a very fast draining, coco based soil to pull it off. All fertilizer is in the soil and not the water. No fish guts or compost teas and the water tank needs to be monitored for foam/microbial digestion. If no foam, the grow can continue. If there's foam it will go south quickly and probably has decomposing matter in the system.
Timer is set to only flood once every few days early on and by late flower floodings happen once per day. But never anything like 4-7 floods per day like using an inert medium like hydroton
 
D

dean1963

646
93
Grow bags. Seems everyone’s experience is a bit different. Some run with it, other’s struggle the entire grow and hate them!
I love them and had to wonder why so many do not. Mainly it seems to all come down to watering practices and an understanding of the root zone.
Pros of the bags:
Allows light and air sheering of roots having outgrown the size of your container. This would occur in the same manner if this plant was planted in nature.
Does not allow the main tap root to hit a hard spot and snake or coil up in the bottom of your planter. When this happens the plant sends out a 🆘 call for help. Your lady will respond sending all kinds of good stuff to the main root that thinks it’s in trouble. We need that good stuff up top!
They are easily carried.
For chemical growers, they show what’s going on in your soil and will alert you to salt leeching.
They take minimal space for storage.
They can be washed and reused. (Empty, rinse dirt residue out,outside. Washer, using one cup of white vinegar and 1/4th cup of baking soda on a gentle cycle, remove, shape and allow to air dry)
Affordable
Cons:
Hard to water properly. This seems to be the number one problem and the one almost always mentioned. They (dried out cloth pots) seem to accompany many pics of sad droopy thirsty plants.
They dry out quickly. About three days max for me regardless of the humidity.
Improper watering allows pooling at the bottom of the root ball, allowing drowning to occur.
About Watering Cloth Pots:
This is no fast process! Watering cloth pots takes patience and time. If you are someone that just throws water at your plant and quickly moves on, this is not the container for you.
I water until the water slightly pools atop of the soil and then move on to the next while this “sinks in”. By the time I return to the plant I watered first, that has soaked in and I repeat this process. As the medium becomes willing to accept the water without pooling atop of the medium the process picks up a bit.
If I were to just dump a large amount of water atop of it, it would create channeling that would dump the watering right out the sides of my bag with all of it basically becoming runoff. You really want to allow time for that water to permeate the bag. That’s why I’m not satisfied until I see small drops from the bottom of the bag showing me that my medium is throughly watered. (I grow organically and don’t allow a big run off).
When watering a cloth bag the only time the center of the bag should be watered is at the time of transplanting to set your plant in. After that initial watering all watering is to be done in your root zone. To picture a root zone, look at your bag of soil, one inch from the rim of the bag picture a circle all the way around the pot. This will be your root zone. Watering in this area encourages your roots to spread out seeking water. Watering close to the root ball will build a mud hole beneath your plant cutting off oxygen and drowning it.
All in all for a bit of time in exchange for minimal storage, excellent growth and sticky fat buds.. I’m keeping mine 🙂
amazing reply and thank you very very much.
i'm new to fabric pots and have trouble with consistent moisture in the soil.
 
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