Very ingenious! I wonder if you could line the bottom of your "pots" with some kind of paper (coffee filter, newspaper, paper towels, brown bags?) that would stay strong enough to get the plants in the ground before it disintegrated.

Now that is a great idea!

About a month ago I started some lettuce as a trial of my bottomless pipe pots. Here they are ready to plant ...

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I have made up a scoop to move the pots around. Below I have opened a trench to the depth of the pots. Using the scoop they are set in place and the scoop is removed.

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Then the planting handle is attached to the pot as was shown in my last post.

I found that I can pull the dirt back around the pot almost to the top before I start to pull the pipe up with the handle.

Here is a shot of the scoop.

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Finished.

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Great system - seems to have worked well for you, and you've got some nice starts, there!

Please don't tell us you are a "Girl" :)LOL. I thought I was good at making weird things work, but you are the champ without a doubt

1eyedJack and the Dawg

Thanks. And rest assured, I am 100% redneck male. lol I've been designing and building things all my life. When I was young and kept bees I needed a honey extractor. Built one with the pulleys, motor,and torque converter from a washing machine along with some 3/4 all-thread and Chevy wheel bearings.

Besides zinnias, the next thing I'm going to try in the pipe pots is corn. My garden space is limited and I should be able to hold the corn in the pots for the first six weeks, plus I can control the warmth to get good germination for an early start.

I use a similar system on my balcony, I have some Hibiscus and other shrubs in large containers, and I like to have small things around the base, I have cut the bottoms out of some smallish pots and sit them on a tray (It was hard to find a ribbed tray so there would be suitable drainage), put some shredded paper in the bottom of the little pots then compost and potting mix and grow annuals in them. When they start to mature i pop out the last years pots from around the shrubs in the large containers and place the new one in the holes that they leave, as I am using the same holes it causes minimal root disturbance to the shrubs in the large containers and I get to change things around a lot, I have even moved the annuals around during the season because I need a change in colour or because some are doing poorly and may need a change of position. I sprinkle bark chips around the tops and you cant see the little pots at all.

I developed the Pipe Pot system for use on my zinnia project., which is in disarray. I'll post about that on the zinnia thread. But the Pipe Pots have so far been a huge success.

The AR extension service has always discouraged growing head lettuce, as our spring is too short. Over my 50 years of gardening I tried several times and failed to get a head.

The lettuce shown in the above post has been in the ground about 5 weeks and look ....

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I did it. Real Iceburg head lettuce in Arkansas. The Pipe Pots got me there. After transplanting the lettuce I put corn in the pots and it is doing great too.

This is going to revolutionize the way I do gardening. Large transplants without root disturbance and lots less time of maintaining the plants to maturity is the way to go. And no more "dead" spots in my flower beds, just plop almost grown plants in there. I'm going to need a lot of Pipe Pots.

Ingenious. Inexpensive. Important innovation.
This should be on the forum Page 1 again for 2009.

pls8xx, sent you an email via GW.
Please let me know if you don't receive it, via post to the 'OT: To Robert (soilguy)' thread on the Compost forum.

Robert

I start many seedlings in pots for later transplanting ... though, I only do one little trick that really helps to avoid root disturbance. I simply let the soil become somewhat dry, it thus shrinks and pulls away from the edges of the pot, the plants come out with the rootball 100% intact, so simple and easy and without any extra work whatsoever! One thing that I recommend is not overpotting the plants in unnecessarily large containers, otherwise the roots may not be developed enough to hold onto all the extra soil.

Terry