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Comfortable pot size?

Gargoyle91

Gargoyle91

Well I have over 50 seedlings and At 1st I was really ambitious and planed to plant each in a 10 gallon plant bag but after buying 20 bags of soil I realized holy crap this is going to be over $500 in dirt not to mention I don't have a truck and I have to load my wives Yukon up--(There's 12 bags in there now she doesn't know about god It stinks to all hell in there after a day in the hot sun LOL ) 
 
 
What size can I get away with without them becoming root bound?
 
5 gallon nursery pots should be plenty, either that or the Home Depot buckets.
 
I use 10 - 15 gallon pots. Put 3 per pot based on size. One tall, one bushy, one small. I may get more yield planting more sparsly, but this cuts down on watering and they shade each other somewhat.
 
I use the blue Walmart reusable shopping bags. Only a buck a piece, they hold about 7 gallons of soil and they do a good job of air pruning the roots. They only last one season but hard to beat the price. They're pretty sturdy too and have handles if you need to move plants around
 
The 5 gallon pots/bags as mentioned above should work great.... but that's not the cost prohibitive part, the soil is! I don't have space to make and keep a compost pile, so here's what I do to help cut costs on soil:
 
At the end of the grow season, take whatever plants you don't plan on overwintering and cut them all the way down to the soil. Leave the root balls in the soil all winter long. Put them in shade so they stay damp, but also somewhere they'll stay warm. What will happen is the roots and remaining stem will start to rot in the pots, essentially making mini compost piles. The following spring, dump them all into a tub/pile/bucket... whatever... and mix the dirt all up. You should see some pretty healthy earthworms that have taken up residence in there. You can just keep recycling and reusing the dirt as long as you keep composting the roots in the pots. I'm on my third year in a row of this method, and it's working great (along with a regular fert regimen, of course). My tomato plants are already twice as big as they were a week ago.
 
Depending on how picky you are with soil, buy from a landscaping place rather than Home Depot.  I bought all the stuff to fill my beds from HD and spent like $200 for about a yard.  If I buy by the cubic yard from a landscaping place I will pay between $35-$55. 
 
I too have no real way to transport this.  I have a Jeep.  I went with a bunch of rubbermaids and asked them to fillem up.  Paid for about a 1/3 of a yard at a time.  Also ask around if they will give you some old 30g tree nursery pots full.  My local place will sell me a tree pot full of mixed dirt/pine fines/compost for $5 each.  I could fit 4 of them in my Jeep.  2 in the back, 2 in the back seat.
 
Maybe use plastic household buckets and drill holes in them? I think they are about 10L, and cost .50c or so.
 
They are cheap to buy, and give the plants enough room to grow to a fairly decent size.
 
You can always transfer the real performers/the ones you really like into bigger pots. But chances are the majority of them you wont feel the need to put into bigger pots.
 
Of my 30 or so plants I currently have, the vast majority will never see a bigger pot.
A. because I don't like them that much
B. because i already have way way more pods then i know what to do with so no need for bigger plants.
 
the buckets are plenty big enough to grow a plant out, let it produce a good number of pods. and decide if you like it or not.. If you like it it can go in a bigger pot. 90% of your plants will probably never go into a bigger pot
 
grow bags are probably the cheapest container you can get.
 
regarding the cost of soils... id suggest the following.
 
look into a good cyclic irrigation system.
 
 
try to allow your plants to root from container, directly into the top soil.
 
fertilize agressivly.
 
 
an irrigation system will allow you to ensure steady watering, and a steady volume of runoff draining into your top soil. the roots will eventually grow down into the soil and basically weld the containers down to some extent.
 
my tobacco does this quite quickly, and it helps hugely with them tipping over.
 
a small container can only perform like a larger one if it has the same ability to supply nutrients as that of the larger one.
 
consider supplementing nitrogen and calcium, as these are the quickest depleted.
 
alternatively consider a CRF. just be aware that the convinience of a CRF comes at a substantially higher cost to that of ammonium, or nitrate fertilizers.
also, most of the cheaper CRF  fertilizers will supply nitrogen via prilled urea... which is not a terribly good source of nitrogen. try to find something with atleast 10% nitrate and something close to equal portions ammonium and urea.
 
generally speaking the less urea the better, though some small amount of urea less than 10% is usually better than none.
 
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