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Bigger pots

If you guys REALLY want DIY smart pots, I have two words for you..."geotextile underlayment" sold at lowes and homedepot as pond underlayment or anywhere else on the internet. I get 5ft by 100 ft for around 65$. With a good sewing skill, and a bit of reverse engineering on an original smart pot, youre in the money !
 
Pepper-Guru said:
If you guys REALLY want DIY smart pots, I have two words for you..."geotextile underlayment" sold at lowes and homedepot as pond underlayment or anywhere else on the internet. I get 5ft by 100 ft for around 65$. With a good sewing skill, and a bit of reverse engineering on an original smart pot, youre in the money !
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Thats good information, man i have like 30+ vintage sewing machines problem is i don't know how to sew hardly at all but the Sergers would be ideal for making a smart pot... i have thought about trying to make some out of Felt material but i didn't think it would hold up...
Any idea if that geotextile underlayment is as thick as smart pots??
 
armac said:
Only bad thing about buckets is that at the mid to end of the season, your buckets will get brittle from the sun. I have had several break when picking them up.
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Must be your hotter Texas sunshine as mine are as good as the day I bought them.
They are the silver Lowe's buckets though so maybe the silver color reflects more light?
 
My PVC buckets last a bit longer because lower leaves are left on the plant and provide a fair % of shade after the first few weeks, but many do have various cracks in them so I am very careful when moving them. Supposedly the darker the color (the more it blocks light penetration) the slower PVC degrades in sun. My white buckets do seem to be the worst, but it is possible they are also the oldest having sat around for years indoors before being repurposed as plant pots.
 
Wish i would have saved the link, and i can't find it in a search, but there's a 3 part discussion at Gardenweb where they discuss smartpot alternatives and sources.

Some sand bags are made from the same material, polypropylene. I don't remember if they found them to be more durable than Walmart bags (?)

Check out the prices on the orange colored bags: http://www.catalogcl...sku-SB8000.html

$29 + S/H for a 100 pack, the bag measures 14" x 26". No idea how many gallons it holds, but it's almost twice the height of the walmart bags. Bags like this can be propped to stand on end but the shape looks awkward with the bag bulging in the middle.

Or if someone's looking for a bigger pot, they can just cut out the bottom of a walmart bag, and hand-stitch it halfway into another walmart bag and end up with a 7 gallon pot for only $1.
 
thank you to the walmart bag idea, I have done it
http://thehotpepper.com/topic/29587-my-first-plant-growing-ever-trinidad-scorpion-butch-t/page__st__20#entry676167
 
I finally got the 1-gallon pots today that I ordered and they looked... well, smaller than I thought. So I decided to pull the trigger on some 3-gallon root bags from the same vendor as they had them for a very good price.

And all is not lost with these because one thing I will be doing with these is to use these to grow some seedlings in them, and then proceed to sell them to friends and whenever I get my carcass into gear and actually doing it, at the local Farmer's Market as well :)
 
Most of my plants are in 3 gallon smart pots and one is in a 5 gallon. The one in the 5 gallon seems to be doing quite a bit better than the others. I love the smart pots though. I'll probably stick with the 3 gallons though. Good luck!
 
For the minimal cost involved in WM bags, would you expect "years" of wear?.......really.....

Cheap one season, maybe, solution.
 
armac said:
For the minimal cost involved in WM bags, would you expect "years" of wear?.......really.....

Cheap one season, maybe, solution.
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I certainly wouldn't expect "years," but if I went to move them after a couple of months and the bottoms fell out or they tore, I think I'd look for a different solution. But if they last a season, that would be good enough for me.
 
I kept potting up to encourage roots to spread out. I kept utilizing the local Dollar Tree (where everything is only $1) for flower pots up to 1 gallon size. I then purchased 2.5 gallon buckets there for $1 each. I just drilled 1/4" drainage holes in bottoms and sides. The buckets have handles that make carrying/moving easier. I found that Lowes 5 gallon buckets were 3x more costly and that the 2 gallon buckets had plenty of space for plants to reach maturity. All plants grew very productively and I plan to save the pots and buckets for next year. If it aint broke , dont fix it.
 
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