Cloth versus plastic pots

I just finished my first indoor “soil” grow with two plants in fabric pots and one in plastic. Same strains. Containers around 3 gallons. Here is what I observed:

Fabric and plastic grew about the same size.
Plastic stayed greener and looked healthier.
Plastic looked more mature/rip at harvest.

However, upon examining the root balls after harvest I found that the root balls from the fabric pots were very dry with poor root growth. The root ball from the plastic pot was slightly moist with fully developed roots.

I watered the fabric and plastic pots on the same schedule (water, no water, no water, water).

Conclusion for my grow environment:

I under watered the plants in the fabric pots. They dried out really fast and struggled to grow.
Mixing fabric and plastic pots in same grow room is not a good idea if you plan to water on the same schedule.
Letting fabric pots get dry where they feel light is not a good idea—just be careful!
Next grow I will use two 7 gallon fabric pots and plan to water every other day, unless I see that the 7 gallon pots are holding water better.

Overall, I think plastic or fabric is fine for typical indoor grows. However, I’m planning to switch to plastic after my next grow so I can reduce how often I water and so I don’t have to clean or replace dirty fabric pots.

Cheer…

Herb & Suds said:

I use Plant Warrior and they are the bomb for air flow https://www.tillandroot.com/pots-containers/plant-warrior-pot-5-gallon/?sku=724795&msclkid=da4f5ebb6aeb1cb55b8d3e81167c2d3c

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I may have to give these a try. Does these go good with those

“However, upon examining the root balls after harvest I found that the root balls from the fabric pots were very dry with poor root growth. The root ball from the plastic pot was slightly moist with fully developed roots.”

This is because you didn’t water with sufficient volume. Guaranteed. Your plastic stayed moist? Duh. That’s a major reason for ditching hard side containers.

PubZombie said:

I just finished my first indoor “soil” grow with two plants in fabric pots and one in plastic. Same strains. Containers around 3 gallons. Here is what I observed:

Fabric and plastic grew about the same size.
Plastic stayed greener and looked healthier.
Plastic looked more mature/rip at harvest.

However, upon examining the root balls after harvest I found that the root balls from the fabric pots were very dry with poor root growth. The root ball from the plastic pot was slightly moist with fully developed roots.

I watered the fabric and plastic pots on the same schedule (water, no water, no water, water).

Conclusion for my grow environment:

I under watered the plants in the fabric pots. They dried out really fast and struggled to grow.
Mixing fabric and plastic pots in same grow room is not a good idea if you plan to water on the same schedule.
Letting fabric pots get dry where they feel light is not a good idea—just be careful!
Next grow I will use two 7 gallon fabric pots and plan to water every other day, unless I see that the 7 gallon pots are holding water better.

Overall, I think plastic or fabric is fine for typical indoor grows. However, I’m planning to switch to plastic after my next grow so I can reduce how often I water and so I don’t have to clean or replace dirty fabric pots.

Cheer…

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The temperature in the root zone is few degrees lower than in plastic. In colder months it can cause issues. I have tried them few runs and went back to plastic…

I use plastic indoors and fabric outdoors.i agree Plastic is easier to transplant. Fabric pots are my choice outdoors because i like big pots outdoors and i dont care about transplant as they recieve the final transplant. My area i haven't had any real heat issues and i actually prefer my pots to dry quicker. Imo all pots are fine just need to figure out the way they take water

I haven't experienced root issues in fabric ,yet anyways

bam0813 said:

I haven't experienced root issues in fabric ,yet anyways

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And you won’t. Unless you have no idea what you’re doing.

bam0813 said:

I haven't experienced root issues in fabric ,yet anyways

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If you refer to my post, I was talking about temperature in the root zone causing issues like slowth grow and nutrient uptake restriction. If you are talking about root issues like pythium than youre right.

The reason that the root development in fabric pots may seem less developed than plastic pots is because the roots are air pruned and don't swirl around growing in the pot. The smaller roots are where most of the activity takes place.

Autodoctor said:

I may have to give these a try. Does these go good with those
View attachment 4973112

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I don't see the benefit
Those pots already have clearance from the floor

Pro's and cons to each and a lot has to do with your growing style and setup. I like growing in small containers of coco and like to water multiple times daily. For that reason I like fabric pots as they dry out quicker.

Autodoctor said:

I may have to give these a try. Does these go good with those
View attachment 4973112

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I just received two of the Gro Pro 16” risers. Just letting you know that they are really cheaply made. I expected them to be high quality for the price, but they are crap… Nevertheless, they will work.

xtsho said:

The reason that the root development in fabric pots may seem less developed than plastic pots is because the roots are air pruned and don't swirl around growing in the pot. The smaller roots are where most of the activity takes place.

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I definitely considered that when I examined the root balls. I still thank that I under watered and as #hotrodharley mentioned, may not have watered with enough volume. I will keep that in mind on my next grow.

Herb & Suds said:

I don't see the benefit
Those pots already have clearance from the floor

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Good will save the money

I've only ever used plastic pots and usually do about 3 or 4 repottings over a plant's life counting the one from the tiny 9-hole seedling pots that I'll use to sprout my seeds or root my cuttings in.

I do tend to leave them in each pot long enough that they can be a little root bound and in the first larger pot around 1L they will have roots around the bottom and sometimes half way up the sides. My procedure at each transplant is to use a bread knife to saw the bottom of the rootball off and even shave down the sides to get rid of any stringy roots. Like topping branches the amputated roots branch out with lots of fine feeder roots that fill the whole pot from top to bottom with a web of them. New roots are seen coming out of the drain holes within a week in most cases and the plants never suffer the dreaded transplant shock I hear about so often. I did see it recently when we dug up three 16" tall plants and potted them in 5gal pails for my buddy to take home for his tent. By the time we got the third one done the other two looked like hell but they had just lost about 90% of their root systems and were growing rapidly so of course they had a bad reaction. Told buddy to put them in a dark tent, seal up all the holes and spray them down good a few times for at least 24 hours then keep the 600W light 3 ft away until they looked fully recovered. Only took 3 days and all survived and are now growing great. Looking back we should have done it after dark when water demand wouldn't have been so strong but WTF eh.

Roots are not such the delicate things most people think they are.







With our dry climate I'm pretty sure cloth bags would have me watering twice as often as I do with plastic and I have well over a 100 plastic pots of various sizes now. Not long ago I bought 26 - 2.5gal square pots even tho I have 40 round ones of the same size as 25 of the square ones will fit in a 4x4 space with a few inches to spare for a really good SoG grow. The round ones are about 6" wider all around so only 16 would fit. Hoping to do that grow over the winter this season.

2klude said:

Pro's and cons to each and a lot has to do with your growing style and setup. I like growing in small containers of coco and like to water multiple times daily. For that reason I like fabric pots as they dry out quicker.

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I thought with coco you don't want it to ever dry out like I do with the peat-based ProMix HP I use for my base medium so I would think plastic containers would be better for what you're doing. Never having grown in coco I won't pretend to know what's best but watering every 4 or 5 days is more my style.

Are you using an auto water system of some kind? I couldn't see doing it otherwise.

I did pick up a big bag of good coco last time I was in the city so I can do a little side by side experiment with it. Almost 3X the price of the HP that I can pick up at the local hardware store.

OldMedUser said:

I thought with coco you don't want it to ever dry out like I do with the peat-based ProMix HP I use for my base medium so I would think plastic containers would be better for what you're doing. Never having grown in coco I won't pretend to know what's best but watering every 4 or 5 days is more my style.

Are you using an auto water system of some kind? I couldn't see doing it otherwise.

I did pick up a big bag of good coco last time I was in the city so I can do a little side by side experiment with it. Almost 3X the price of the HP that I can pick up at the local hardware store.

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Yes, I'm using an auto watering system... (2) 0.5gph netafim pc emitters per pot. I want my media to dry down evenly and quickly so I can water often. I water sometimes upwards of 8 times per day. Just small shots during lights on... by the last shot of the day I have full saturation and start seeing runoff.

Never ever let coco dry down past a certain moisture percent of your EC in the pot is going to skyrocket and lead to problems.

If I only wanted to water coco once a day I would stick with plastic 5-7 gallons pots and only run 4 plants per light. I'm currently in 2gal, really only 1.5gal of medium, 9 plants per light. Actually, if I only wanted to water once a day or so, I'd just stick to Promix. No point running coco if you don't want to feed multiple times daily IMO.

3 times the price for coco compared to Promix is crazy. Where I'm at Canna brand coco is about 25% more money.

2klude said:

Yes, I'm using an auto watering system... (2) 0.5gph netafim pc emitters per pot. I want my media to dry down evenly and quickly so I can water often. I water sometimes upwards of 8 times per day. Just small shots during lights on... by the last shot of the day I have full saturation and start seeing runoff.

Never ever let coco dry down past a certain moisture percent of your EC in the pot is going to skyrocket and lead to problems.

If I only wanted to water coco once a day I would stick with plastic 5-7 gallons pots and only run 4 plants per light. I'm currently in 2gal, really only 1.5gal of medium, 9 plants per light. Actually, if I only wanted to water once a day or so, I'd just stick to Promix. No point running coco if you don't want to feed multiple times daily IMO.

3 times the price for coco compared to Promix is crazy. Where I'm at Canna brand coco is about 25% more money.

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I'm actually thinking about setting up a DTW grow. I have a sump right next to but separated from my grow room and one of these garden timer units for watering on various schedules and it would be no biggy to rig up spaghetti lines etc to make it so.

Just one of many ideas rattling around in the old attic. First priority is get this pressure tank hooked up and working so we can have water in the house again. Other one sprung a pinhole leak.