This is pretty much my first attempt to sell something online in a long time (fifteen years or more, not counting odds and bods on Craigslist) so please let me know if I'm doing it wrong. Advice is welcome! (Mods: I read up on the "Promoting Your Stuff on Permies for FREE!" thread and others and I think I'm doing this right? Please let me know if not.)
A couple of years ago I saw this "how to make your own grow bags" video (I mentioned it on
this thread) and I tried it out. The weed barrier fabric worked well, but I wanted to experiment with air-pruning, so I tried making them out of fiberglass mesh (the kind you use for screen doors and window screens) instead. This worked really well, and the mesh stood up to the elements over the last two years. (A couple of holes were nibbled in one of them by mice or something, but it held up.)
I've decided to try selling these online as a way to make extra money to fund my nascent
Permaculture farm. I sew them myself on our living room table. It takes about fifteen minutes or so, including the cutting, and the raw materials cost about $2.00 per gallon bag, so I've set the retail price at $7.95 per bag, which might seem a little steep, but you can reuse them more than once. (If you would like to buy some but can't afford ~$8 per bag please contact me through Purple Moosage, eh?)
I have some small trees that have been growing in these for the last two years (waiting to be transplanted) so I'll take a video of that and we can see how the roots have grown.
The idea with air-pruning is that the root of the plant grows until in encounters the air and then it stops and a new root grows in a different direction. This prevents the plant from becoming root-bound and leads to a nice "puff ball" effect with lots of small roots radiating out. This is supposed to give better results when transplanting e.g. tree saplings, etc. There's a lot of information on the web about this.
My sister has put up a Gumroad page to take orders:
Handmade reusable air-prune mesh grow bag - 1 gallon (gumroad)
Thank you for reading this! I appreciate it.
Warm regards, ~Simon