Fabric pots dry too quickly.

morgwar said:

I tried them for a few grows until one harvest where I mistakenly left the water timer on night before chop.
Examining the root ball and soil I found a few huge pockets of dry rootless soil in every pot.
I live in Nevada where it's extremely dry but I keep my rh at 48 min at flower
I use yucca and coconut water and the medium is Coots based.
Switched to plastic and finally beat my gram per watt average x2
The fabric ones work, but to me it's not worth the risk.

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Nevada / Arizona and parts of Cali are all in that zone where the humidity is so low I'm amazed you all don't just shrivel up and turn into raisins. Imo no way you want to use those because you would have to water the sides only every day.

I don’t water edges till the plants big, I water around stalk and progressively move out. I’ve never started at the edge? And I only water when the plant shows me. Fabric is the only way outdoors imo . I hear alot about they suck to transplant and that may be true but my fabric pots take the transplant so zero issues there. It’s plastic indoor though

As a newbie It’s bittersweet having fabric pots. I read a ton of older posts about how great they were, so I got a few. They work well, but I’m using peat and have to be careful to water slowly it’s abit of a pain. I mixed a lot of vermiculite to help keep it moist, and that works well.

what I’m having more issues with is the premade soil mixes like roots,FFoF etc.They do not hold water like the peat and vermiculite and dry out pretty good in these pots, becoming abit hydrophobic. I notice too the water will run out of the sides if I do not carefully wet it and pour slowly. I’m probably letting it get too dry, I had a fungus gnat problem that forced me to keep the topsoil more dry.

I'm going to start growing in 6" wide plastic dutch leech trays with square nursey bags that are a tad bit smaller than the trays (9" x 9" nursey bags fill to 5.9") I've noticed that roots thrive if there is a little gap between the fabric pot and the wall of my flood trays. If it's too far they will dry up, but if it's narrow enough they will go wild and stay white. Plus they will grow in the channels beneath the bags.

I've used the bags / leech tray setup in veg, but I haven't tried flowering plants yet. It seems like it will be the best of both worlds, and I can run the plant from seedling to harvest in the same container. I have almost always transplanted them into their final pot once I'm able to move them into the flowering tent due to veg room sizer constraints. This causes me to wait a few weeks for everything to get established before I flip them.

I'm also using Blumats, so the pots can stay small. I'll run 3 plants per tray in a 4' x 4' footprint. I'm hoping this works, but if not I'm going back to 3 gallon fabric pots.

Milky Weed said:

As a newbie It’s bittersweet having fabric pots. I read a ton of older posts about how great they were, so I got a few. They work well, but I’m using peat and have to be careful to water slowly it’s abit of a pain. I mixed a lot of vermiculite to help keep it moist, and that works well.

what I’m having more issues with is the premade soil mixes like roots,FFoF etc.They do not hold water like the peat and vermiculite and dry out pretty good in these pots, becoming abit hydrophobic. I notice too the water will run out of the sides if I do not carefully wet it and pour slowly. I’m probably letting it get too dry, I had a fungus gnat problem that forced me to keep the topsoil more dry.

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I topped my fabric pots with 2 inches of perlite...gnats nearly gone. one bag of perlite will do two 7 gallon pots easy.

Week4@inCharge said:

I topped my soil pots with 2 inches of perlite...gnats nearly gone. one bag of perlite will do two 7 gallon pots easy.

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I should have used perlite but I went with sand, it does not help the hydrophobic issue at all lol. I will use perlite next time thanks for the tip.

Milky Weed said:

I should have used perlite but I went with sand, it does not help the hydrophobic issue at all lol. I will use perlite next time thanks for the tip.

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no worries.. did the exact same thing two weeks ago .. couldn't sleep...so I vacuumed the sand out with my wet vac... I'm sleeping way better now..

I like to dig a little crater after the roots are established so the water falls in the center like a slope with the edges higher

That helps keep the water like a pool till it all drains to the bottom

silverhazefiend said:

I like to dig a little crater after the roots are established so the water falls in the center like a slope with the edges higher

That helps keep the water like a pool till it all drains to the bottom

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I was doing this but got worried it won’t get to the edges, is that an issue in fabric pots? The water never came out the sides when I did it like that.

I’ve done that in ground but not pots not sure if it matters because there shouldn’t be pooling, it should drain

If that happens your watering too fast or it’s not draining good enough imo

Just use verimiculite instead of perlite, it holds around 2x more water than perlite.
Also make sure to use mulch such as straw and then that combined with a soil mix containing vermiculite will not make your soil dry out quickly when using fabric pots.

Top of the soil will harden as some of the beneficial bacteria goes dormant from lack of moisture, turns into a thin crust and forms a barrier, you could A. let the water slowly break it down by dropping a few cups at a time as mentioned above, and or B. Rake the top soil before watering.

Milky Weed said:

As a newbie It’s bittersweet having fabric pots. I read a ton of older posts about how great they were, so I got a few. They work well, but I’m using peat and have to be careful to water slowly it’s abit of a pain. I mixed a lot of vermiculite to help keep it moist, and that works well.

what I’m having more issues with is the premade soil mixes like roots,FFoF etc.They do not hold water like the peat and vermiculite and dry out pretty good in these pots, becoming abit hydrophobic. I notice too the water will run out of the sides if I do not carefully wet it and pour slowly. I’m probably letting it get too dry, I had a fungus gnat problem that forced me to keep the topsoil more dry.

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My first too. Have 5gal pots but only filled about 4gal worth. I cut with both vermiculite and perlite and moving forward will probably only do perlite. The soil I have is already pretty heavy (it was Black Gold) and it holds water when I saturate for up to 4 days. I mean, that will be great when I go away on a long weekend, but not great if I want to water every other day.

Not having any problems with losing much water out the sides. I water slowly across the whole surface on each plant then rotate through all until I get to runoff. Slow but workable. The real trick for me with watering is not just to water to run-off, but to do that, then water more. Past week I've moved up to 2 gallons per pot with about 1/2 gallon runoff. You can actually HEAR the water hitting dry soil inside...it makes little bubbly squinchy sounds as it slowly saturates dry areas.

That said, I'm thinking I may try to find some square pots that will maximize how I arrange the plants in the tent.

Milky Weed said:

I was doing this but got worried it won’t get to the edges, is that an issue in fabric pots? The water never came out the sides when I did it like that.

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I focus on the root zone I kno the water will reach out to the edges and I use saucers so it usually wicks back up if u don’t pour too much