My current 2" pots have the single cross on the bottom(4 openings on the bottom). I always have to find big fat pieces of hydroton to put in first so the littler ones won't fall through.

Thanks ... Is it just random that you have the four-slice bottoms or for a performance reason? I've got some 18 slice ones ordered to compare the next cycle.

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Mon, Aug 5, 13 at 13:39

I was purely random. I used to have some that had about 8 slices that I liked better. I didn't have to concern myself with finding large hydroton balls to start with. I just made it work when I bought the 4 slice ones.

I recommend going to lowes and buying some cheap plastic pots with large lips and drilling holes in them for the roots. I have done this with great success at about $2 a pot that last through many grows

I have a YouTube channel called blue planet nutrients where you can see some of my homemade pots in 18 gallon totes with a variety of veggies growing. I have used those net pots in the past and the small lips resulted in the tomato plants falling into the reservoir once they got too big

Thanks Blue. I can now see you are 100% right - the 18 slice 2" mesh net pots came the other day. They weigh 4.0 grams each, too flexible, and the lips are tiny and molding shoddy. The only way to deal with them would be to buy a 1 7/8" hole saw. To add further insult, about 10% of the lips were not completely molded, i.e., missing material and are worthless. These disappointing mesh net pots came from hydroponicsnation in CO via eBay. They are obviously not reliable for most veggies, though they might be pretty good for Spiritweed, garden Dandelion varieties and the like.

I may just snip the 16-slice bottoms out and insert them in the durable 4 slice bottoms I'm using currently when I get a chance. They came from homeandgardensupply in RI via Amazon, and weigh 4.5 grams, which made all the difference to their integrity and clearly superior durability and molding.

If you're going to be doing any kind of large scale growing, the labor involved with drilling holes in pots is not worth it. For a small scale garden, It'll be fine: large scale, the value is not there. In my years growing tomatoes in 2" pots, I've only have the pots push through once. Typically, the weight of a full grown plant is supported on a trellis so the net pot doesn't cary the weight.
If you really want to go the disposable 1gallon pot route, you don't need any more holes than the 4 or 5 already in the bottom. you just have to devise a way to keep your hydroton from falling through them. And plan on using a lot more medium. In that case, you could go the route of using lava rock instead of hydroton. It is a lot cheaper and with the larger pots, you don't have to bust it up to make it fit.