smart pots

anyone got an opinion on these?
So far I am thinking they are no better if not worse than regular pots.

1. When I move my plants the medium kinda gets squashed and thus all the roots with it.
2. The pot is made from some kind of fibre which seems to readily absorb and build up salt deposits
3. plant pots are constantly soggy, this might be a good thing for some mediums but not for my perlite/vermiculite mix
4. yield was lower on my first try, now the 2 plants in smart pots are smaller than the rest and are looking less healthy.

I am trying air pots this time round as a new pot and they seem to be much better.

i have 5 going for the first time and i noticed they need to be watered more often since they are exposed to open air more than plastic pots. I am going back to plastic buckets, I dont like the fibre pots much.

hmm funny I just bought 4 air pots (exited to see how they will preform) air pots is 3,8 gallon I think, usually I use 5 gallon square pots, so wonder if they will do the job ..

but I also got a free grow bag, was thinking to grow a auto in the bag for some early smoke (bag is only 2 gallon) was told it let the plant breath and some how (dunno how ???) stop it from getting root bound ? maybe just a sales talk ?

was thinking of placing the bag in a bigger plastic pot for support when you need to move it and water it aso

The Air pots do keep your roots from being root bound. I have not had any problems with soggy soil I also did not have to water them more because of the smart pots. I have 3 and 5 gallon smart pots and 3 and 5 gallon regular plastic. I didn't water one more than the other. When I removed teh soil from the smart pots their was no swirling of the roots at all the roots were not root bound even though she spent her whole life in this pot. I recommend the smart pots if you are looking for air pruning pots. I didn't have any problems moving teh pots around and I recommend not bagging it up because your roots need oxygen and you will probably end up with root rot. I just use a regular tray underneath that I bought at the dollar store. I'm about to clean out a couple of pots I will post pics.

Want to keep reusing your Smart Pots ? Simply take them to the laundry mat every few runs and throw them into a Double Loader hahahahah ... I have seen this done and I laughed my ass off .. No Smart Pots here though , only dumb ones are used ..

I guess his name fits

Im using 2 geopots atm on a trial. The rest are all a month older and in 4 gallon square buckets. Plants seem to like them though I water twice as much.

That's really not very helpful

Halamaya said:

The Air pots do keep your roots from being root bound. I have not had any problems with soggy soil I also did not have to water them more because of the smart pots. I have 3 and 5 gallon smart pots and 3 and 5 gallon regular plastic. I didn't water one more than the other. When I removed teh soil from the smart pots their was no swirling of the roots at all the roots were not root bound even though she spent her whole life in this pot. I recommend the smart pots if you are looking for air pruning pots. I didn't have any problems moving teh pots around and I recommend not bagging it up because your roots need oxygen and you will probably end up with root rot. I just use a regular tray underneath that I bought at the dollar store. I'm about to clean out a couple of pots I will post pics.

Click to expand...

i just ran my first grow in smart pots and found the same as you think i will keep using them imho

There are +'s and -'s with both but I personally, went back to smart pots (root pouches-same thing)

These are my findings

-same growth. Both employ air pruning which definitely builds a better capillary system than a standard pot

-When growing on a cement floor, the air pot has a nice bennie of keeping the medium a few inches off the surface (+)

- Because they are "off the floor" they cannot absorb any spillover from feeding. Big negative for me. (-) I feed very light and very often. ROughly 1 gallon a day to a 10 gallon pot (assuming plant is full grown). I purposely like spillover because that all gets absorbed by the roots at bottom of the bag which do not get the same access to water due to my feeding technique.

-With air pots, you have to feed VERY slowly or your spillover comes out the side holes. (-) Seeing as how it is not re-absorbed, you now have no idea exactly how much food they just got. (-) Secondly, you have a water build up issue in your trays now. (-) Gnats, etc, yuk

-Smart pots you dump the feed in and move on to the next, much quicker and neater (+)

-Smart pots can be washed in straight water at the laundromat. I do them every other run. (+)

-Air pots can be stored flat (+)

-With air pots having a screen as a base, all "finer" material in your soil gets rinsed through. This leaves you with a poor draining medium about 1/2 way through the grow. Turns into "duff mat" (-)

The idea of air pruning works, there's no denying it but I never noticed a difference whether one did it better than the other. My yields never suffered using wither of them. With that said, I went back to smart pots because they are cleaner, easier and faster to feed with the same results. I wouldn't go back to a standard pot after a few yrs of playing with air pruning gear.

A general note about wet pots. They ain't good,lol. If pots are staying wet too long, you could be over watering. A good rule to remember is you are watering per root mass, not pot size. If your plant is still small and is in a 10 gallon pot, don't go dumping 2 gallons in there to ensure all 10 gallons of medium get wet. 1/2 gallon at the base of the plant is all you need. Keeping soil too wet with young plants inhibits root growth. The plant needs to experience DRY soil to initiate sending out those search roots. If it never gets this experience because it's never dry, those roots are never formed.

If anyone is interested, I have probably 25 or 30 five gallon air pots I'd be happy to sell (if this is against forum rules, please erase and forgive, just trying to save some experimenting grower a couple bucks)