posted 5 years ago
First, a little background. I live in the desert. I have about 40 fruit/nut trees, almost as many vines, and a tropical greenhouse. I do a limited amount of seasonal gardening. I have a grow room with lights. Everything outside is under 90% shade cloth. Even at that, nothing was growing like it was growing in, lets say, the Pacific Northwest. Everything was stressed to a little or more degree. So what I did was take everything I could out of the ground, chopped the main leader branch down to either 18 or 24 inches, and put them in self made air pruning pots. My water bill has halved, everything is gloriously beautiful and they are bearing more fruit/nuts.
When I first started with this new project I bought air pruning pots from both makers, Root Makers and Air Pots. They are nice and they are not nice. I didn't like that they were black...its a vibration thing with me. Plus, if one wants to have them in an area where temps are high, it is going to heat the roots unnecessarily. I also noticed that they dried out quickly (media was coir/perlite/vermiculite). And sometimes the media leaked out the holes. For that price, wasn't working for me. So I went to Walmart and got 5 gallon BPA free buckets for $3.00. I put rows of holes in them and fastened pink shade cloth around the circumference, fastened with zip ties. I then put them in rectangle storage containers (the black ones with the yellow lids, minus the lid of course) I drilled a hole in the bottom side of the black container and put a cork in it. In the winter rains, I can take the cork out and all that water doesn't drown my trees, plus the bin keeps the air pruned pot a little warmer.
So anyway, after researching air pruning pots at the Root Maker site, I began to understand that this method is an ongoing transplanting situation. You start with a very small seedling size air prune pot so that the roots will cramp. Then when they completely fill up the container you move up to the next size. At some point, depending on the size you want to be growing, you might have to move them to the ground (like if you want a 15' fruit tree). But I am keeping mine espaliered or super dwarf. More trees but smaller trees equates to less work, less water, etc for me. Especially because I live on a mesa with regular 40mph winds.
So it has to be understood, the whys and wherefores of this method. You can't plant something small in a large air prune pot/plot. It won't develop feeder roots correctly. IF a plant or tree has a thousand feeder roots, it does not really even need the tap root. That is what is behind the air pruning method. You could do the same thing with plastic drinking cups, move them up, move them up, until you have what you want.
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