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Fabric Pots vs plastic pots

I want to report on my positive experience with fabric pots. The three figs in the photo were all planted this year. The tallest is now over 6 feet from the ground , the second is over 5 feet and the last is about 4 feet

I watter roughly every day but skip a day once in a while. I don't water heavily 30 seconds or so for each. I fertilize lightly every roughly 3 weeks. I rotate the plants a quarter turn or so every other day so they grow upright

From my personal experience it feels like the figs grow much faster in fabric pots than in plastic pots

These come in black and beige but the beige ones discolor and get some green mildew on the bottom ( there is one showing on the left) so now I only get the black ( probably still het mildew but it's not visible)

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Im glad you had a great success with fabric pots. I was going to purchase a bunch of them but then i had to factor in the cost, of potting media and the cost of the bags themselves and also moving the bags would be difficult as they are not rigid and may disturb roots. (my experience).

I have lots of pots laying around so  i drilled holes around the pot and lined it with weedmat which has the same properties as the fabric pots and then planted my trees in it.


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In my photos you will see my grafted white sapote tree recently potted. I have not potted my figs yet they are still dormant and i time is on my side :) ). 

Do you think i'll get great success with my design? 


  • Ernie
  • · Edited

Your figs trees look fantastic, Simon. Are those 20-gallon pots? I have four trees in Root Pouches, and I moved them up from 15 to 25-gallon pots this year because I was having trouble keeping up with their water requirements (now I can water every other day rather than every day). I have two others in 15-gallon plastic pots so that I can compare vigor, fruiting, etc., and there's no overlooking the fact that the trees in the fabric pots are much larger and more vigorous. I could really see the difference in the root systems when I repotted this spring, as well. The fabric pot trees had beautiful branched, fine root systems with no circling. By comparison, the root system of the one tree tree in plastic that I repotted was the usual mess of thick, circling, tangled roots. On the other hand, I'm not seeing a tremendous difference in the most important category -- fruit. For example, my most neglected tree (LSU Purple) in a plastic pot has a larger crop than all but one of my four trees in fabric, despite being half the size. Even the Hardy Chicago in plastic that I heavily pruned (canopy and root system) when I repotted this spring has a larger crop than two of the four in fabric pots. It's probably a little premature for me to draw any conclusions, especially since the fabric pot trees got a bump in root volume this year and so are likely expending more energy on vegetative growth. Nonetheless, the Hardy Chicago in plastic is in much the same situation given the heavy root pruning that it received, yet it still set a comparable crop to nearly all of the others. With all of that in mind, I'm actually considering going back to 15-gallon plastic pots for all of my trees -- they're easier to handle, the smaller size means they're easier to protect from critters (a big, big problem for me), and I'll spend less time watering.

I have been wanting to try them I got a friend that swears by them somewhere he buys heavy duty laundry baskets and uses them as air pots 

I'm curious about the growbags. Do they tend to fall over in heavy winds?

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