Heh. I was thinking about starting a thread asking who was moving away from smartpots. It seems more than a few after using them for a number of years are going back to the 'old school' containers. I tried them once, years ago, but they proved to be a PITA to move around (no handles then), and transplanting. Most of the complaints I hear now involve watering/maintaining moisture levels. IDK, haven't paid much attention to them after seeing they didn't fit my style.
Have used the square pots for years and recently another sq pot user pointed out that you don't get the roots circling around like in round pots.... Something I had never noticed.
I don't root prune either, but might score the root ball if it's really root bound. Razor knife with just a bit of the tip exposed works great. Like 1/8" or so of exposed blade, enough to cut the surface.
Wet
I don't know if it's because they absorb water differently or what, but I do have a theory..
A plastic pot doesn't flex when moved right? I mean we all know that, so, when the smartpots are moved at all, the "settle" and it I think THATS where the problems is, when I reamend I notice the soil in the smartpots are a lil denser, which is why I abandoned the strict no-till, because of soil compaction.
In the plastic containers, it seems to me that the soil hold it's original "fluffy" texture.
Or the other theory is the way you need to water the smartpots may be settling the soil also.
SOMETHING is making the soil more dense.
The times I've seen smartpots perform VERY well are in bigass containers, for outdoor plants.
But those things never move.
But outdoor in the 100+ temps, with wet cardboard on the soil surface and they don't even slow down, in fact they seem to excel..
JUST keep the roots cool..
Honestly the biggest thing that pisses me off are those "corners" of unuseable floor space.. each smartpot is round and the corners drive me nuts... if they were square, I could fit three more plants in there...
Good to know that another veteran grower has been on the same thought process though...
Good to know..