loslunasfarms,

Now that is what I would call a shirt load of roots ;))

Cecil

Jose:
That is a really nice result. I have noticed here that the cuttings that do best are those potted in the lightest, most airy mix. Your Air Pots are a step ahead of that.

Did you say that they root-prune themselves as well? No circular roots? It appears that way to me.

Are the plants hard to get out of the airpot when you want to re-pot or plant in the ground?
Ox

Ox, they unwrap around the tree using the screw seen on the first pic. Yes, they root prune themselves, not circ roots.

Day'um! then are some seriously well developed roots!

I've been pondering trying the superroots air-pots but have been dissuaded by the reports of being such a P.I.T.A. to keep them moist.

Bu sh!t, with results like that, it's well worth the extra effort.

My plan is to incorporate some super absorbent polymer crystals (see www.water-keep.com) into the soil to help with retention and adopt a dunk-soak method. fill a 7 gallon pail with water/fertilizer, dunk the whole thing in let it soak for about 5 minutes and then pull it out to drain over a second pail.

My offer still stands to send you some of those crystals to see if they make cut down on the watering requirements WRT using these pots..

Guess I better order some of them air-pots PRONTO! After posting your results, I think there may be a run on them.

Sans, I am send them on Monday.

Thanks for that.
I certainly would not begrudge you for changing you mind, after you saw those fantastic results.

Where can air-pots be purchased? Are they reusable?

fignewby inquired:
>Where can air-pots be purchased?

The manufacturers web pages
(http://www.superoots.com/air_intro.htm www.florikan.com
http://www.canby.com/benwalker

gut neither of them accept pay-pal.

I did find that LariAnn at http://aroidiaresearch.org/airpots/ was MOST helpful in answering all my questions, and accepts pay-pal, so once I test them out for myself, if (read "when") I purchase, I will be getting them from her.

>Are they reusable?

Certainly.

Loslunas, Thanks for the two air-pots!

I took my (extremely stubborn) Marseilles out of the rootrainer and potted it up in one air pot.

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loslunas'_air-pots.jpg

The second pot I'm going to try to utilize to layer off a baby from my T*T* "Mystery-X". Since it has a convenient side shoot that has sprouted some growth.

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Mystery-X_layering_1.jpg

While the side shoot is still small enough I CAREFULLY fed it through the bottom of the air pot.

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Mystery-X_layering_2.jpg

And then even more carefully assembled the pot around the bottom.
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Mystery-X_layering_3.jpg

I plan to stake it in place to avoid damaging the shoot for the next few weeks. Once it gets some height to it, at least to the top of the pot, I'll strip the bottom leaves and fill it with my rooting medium, and hopefully in a few weeks/months I'll have a nice layered baby I can cut off the mother plant.

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Mystery-X_layering_secured.jpg

I am in my third year with Air-Pots. I have used the .4g for rooting cuttings (and not for air-layers), 3.4g and 12g for mature trees. They work not quite as well as advertised, but a hell of a lot better than the standard black nursery containers.

For the most part, the root-pruning works. There are some roots that get turned around by debris in the growing mix and a few roots will will end up traveling around the perimeter of the container. However, overall the root systems look more thick (less long) than those of trees grown in nursery containers.

The top inch of the Air-Pots are hole-less. This is designed to be a water reservoir. It holds water until it passes through the root ball and out of the bottom. Well, I get a little seepage out of the holes on the side. I am not sure if it is due to my growing mix being a bit coarser than the standard potting mix. Overall, I give a 3.4g container about 3/4g of water at each interval. This is about the same as what the trees which remain in solid sided containers get. Despite some root-circling, overall the roots are much more heavily branched. This is a pomegranate I was growing in NJ. Some of the growing mix has been striped in preparation to be shipped

Here one can see an air-pruned root and the branching that occurs behind the dead tip.

I have used the Air-Pots for air-layering with very good results.

I created a new base (a similar one goes on top). The container is filled with damp growing mix (I use my regular mix) and then wrapped in plastic to retain moisture.
results

As the roots grow out of the holes in the side, the plastic prevents air-pruning from occurring. I press the root against the side of the root-pruning hole to snap the end off and encourage branching.

I have about 120 fig and pomegranate trees in Air-Pots. Next year, I will transplant blueberries into them as well. I'm pretty happy with them.
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~james

That is a lot of figs, are you a nursery?

Like the results on the airpots.

No, I do not run a nursery. The easiest explanation for this is insanity.

~james

On Thursday 03-JUL I received two superoots(tm) airpots(c).

Set up one to layer off a sucker (see above) and potted up a "Covington_B"(unknown) from the rootrainer into the airpot.

This morning 08-JULY, ONLY FIVE DAYS LATER, I noticed some white roots sticking out the holes in the sides of the airpot:
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airpot_roots-exposed

Conditions have been pretty much ideal here; of 90°F to 100°F and 50% humidity during the day, mid 70's and 80%+ humidity at night. but still I have never seen this type of root production in nursery pots.

When I went to move it the "bottom" ring and inch or so of medium fell out on me, so I promptly planted it in the back yard, the root development in only 5 days was _most_ impressive. Roots all the way out to the perimeter and almost all the way to where the bottom was.

I'm pretty sure the bottom of it falling out was due to my "missing" the ring of larger nodes when I assembled it. but next time I'll run a few zip-ties arcoss the bottom for some extra support, just in case.

A "Covington_C" cutting is going in next.

loslunasfarms stated:
> So, I may have complained about the air pots
> in that I have to water and fertiize alot!

I have found that these thing really SUCK WATER!

I have adopted a "dunk and drain" method, where I fill a 5 gallon pail with water/miracle-gro and then place the entire pot in the water to soak for a good 10 minutes or until no more bubbles are coming up from the pot. I have been doing this every three days, and have noted that even with the addition of water-keep crystals, I need to drop this back to every other day as the plants are starting to get really flaccid and one particular time I lapsed and went four days and the bottom leaves got really "crinkly".

I'm thinking of slipping them into a larger black nursery pot after they come out of the dunk tank to try and stow this evaporation down.

I have found the best method for watering these containers is several short bursts. With my set up I can water four containers standing in one place. I water each one for 3 seconds then go back to the first one and give each another 3 seconds worth. I lose less water out of the side holes and seam, and the water is not so quick to escape from the bottom when I use this method. For me, a good flow rate seems to be about .75-1 gal/minute.

~james

I'm bumping this thread because I have about 100 cuttings from UC Davis alive and well. Some figs, most grapevines, some pomegranates, some olives. I could not believe the cost for those pots!! The best thing I could find is Proptek Air Root Pruning pots. They are based in the UK, but they have a California distributor and if I drive for 1.5 hours, I can pick up 100, 10 gallon pots for only $2.22 each! I like these pots because they are white and they reflect heat. HEAT abounds here in the low desert!
They sell by the bale, so if you want a smaller size, you have to purchase 300 pots! YIKES! I'm in for the 10 gallon size!

Here is a link that might be useful: Proptek Air Root Pruning Pots

Since I will have at least 60 of these pots, I will definitely put them on a drip system with 1/2 gallon emitters for about 3 hours twice a day. But I do live where the heat rules!! And I did order the weed/evaporation control top also.