dobro13
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Bottomless containers

As with my other posts I’m still on the quest to find alternatives to this hard sloped ground. The self watering/sub irrigation stuff is great but I’m also looking at bottomless containers and straw bales. The bottomless pots seem to be a good choice if I loosen the ground up some. Any experience with these methods?

imafan26
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Sounds like a workable plan. Watering the containers will actually infiltrate the ground over time and the plant roots will go down somewhat and help to break open the soil. However, I would not plan on growing root crops you actually plan to harvest on that kind of soil. Been there done that. I planted gobo (burdock) it normally has a 3 ft root. It went about 18 inches int the raised bed then hit the hardpan and split like an octopus. It was very hard to get out and I had a lot of tiny branched roots. Not really worth the trouble to try to save.

If you are not in a hurry and don't want to have to do a lot of digging, try growing cover crops instead. alfalfa, pigeon pea, buckwheat if they grow in your area. Alfalfa and pigeon pea have deep tap roots that will break up the ground. You do still have to cut the tops down at flowering and either cut and drop or till them in. Building or adding organic matter over time will help compacted soil. Terracing a slope will help with the erosion of the loose soil, which is probably why the soil is compacted in the first place.
https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/what_to_d ... acted_soil
https://www.growveg.com/guides/how-to-c ... n-a-slope/

Gypsum does help make it easier to work compacted clay soil. However, it only benefits certain soils and only should be added if it is needed,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-h74CXO_dU

dobro13
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It has terracing already and I’ve been putting out leaves and such to help since I’ve been here 5 yrs. There is a level spot that I’ve been building on but for health reasons I’ve got to make it easier to get to. These container plans seem to be the way to go. I was thinking the same about how the ground would get the moisture and loosen up with those bottomless buckets. That gives me some optimism.

dobro13
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I’ve got 2 cantaloupes and one Sugarbaby Watermelon planted in these so far. I’m lucky to have a goldmine of good dirt and I’m planting these pots on the bed that I’m building up so this dirt will stay. I’ve several more to plant this weekend. As always, I hope this works.

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PraticalGardener
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I do something similar, but it is the same concept. :) While my garden's soil tends to compact and requires addressing the 'hardpan' beforehand, it otherwise works well. You water less often than a container with a bottom, but abit more often than when planted at the soil's surface level/ 'in the yard'. Granted my experience is with natural soil inside the 'bottomless raised beds', with hardly any potting 'soil'.

I use the same concept for my strawberry&onion raised bed, and occasionally for flowers in the garden. Here is a picture of the same concept, where the walls are built with some large handy rocks.
Snapdragons in 'bottomless raised bed'
Snapdragons in 'bottomless raised bed'
Trailing Snapdragons 2019 resized.jpg (211.69 KiB) Viewed 12287 times

dobro13
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That is nice. I have some old wood from a downed tree that I want to use for one.

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applestar
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I’m realizing now that you probably meant something different, but your query reminded me that *this* worked well for squash last time I tried it, so I decided to repeat this year for melons — these are bottomless gallon size nursery pots, half buried in prepped mounded row bed — in this case mulched/covered with black landscape fabric (this is new — am trying to see if it really does make a difference for heat-loving melons)

I will top off the pots with good potting mix and sow the seeds in them. The elevated half-pot warms up the seeds and they sprout quickly and well. Only issue is the vines could kink while growing over the pot rim, so I believe I added more soil and maybe mulch to cushion.

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Fwiw — none of my raised beds have bottoms.

SQWIB
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I do what practicalgardener does for a lot of my garden
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Its hard to tell but the guild in this picture is raised about 6"
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Another guild about 6" deep.
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Another guild about 6" deep.
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And all my raised Hugelkultur beds are bottomless, filled with wood.
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This one was put on top of the pavers then the pavers were removed from the inside before filling.
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I used a lot of my native soil, layering it in the hugelkultur beds, if you have a hard pan I would suggest tilling it up a bit, and ammending before adding your bottomless beds/pots.

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TomatoNut95
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Hello! I have hard as rock clay soil to, so anything I grow must either go in a pot, or my raised bed. Have you ever heard of GrowBags? They are fabric pots that come in different sizes. I'm using the five gallon to grow tomatoes in.

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applestar
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Looks like Sqwib is up again - he’s posted pics of his growbag gardens.

A little concerned you said 5 gallon. Unless you are using it in conjunction with irrigation system — drip or something like rain gutter sub-irrigation — I believe you need 10 gallon minimum, more like 15 gallon size for a standard tomato plant, especially since grow bags dry out faster.

My subsoil is solid blue-green clay. I could almost maintain a natural earth-bottom pond if it weren’t for the tree roots.

What worked for me to improve the native soil is to fracture the ground with garden fork then building lasagna/sheet mulch bed. I’ve also incorporated some of the hugelkultur principles, though by burying 4” or less branches rather than big logs, rounds, and trunks.

Planting sunflowers and corn for the first year to grow deep roots breaking up the subsoil then leaving roots/organic matter. Squash or tomatoes next year.

Where the soil has been improved, I have good soil down to 8 inches or more, broken up clay layer roiling with night crawlers, upper top soil layer populated by red/mulch worms.

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TomatoNut95
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Yeah, I know tomatoes need a lot of root room, but I've grown them in five gallon buckets before with no problem. Filling up pots with store-bought dirt is expensive for me. I cannot have a compost pile due to pest problems, and no where to put it.

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TomatoNut95
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These are all my potted tomatoes which are inside my greenhouse.
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applestar
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It struck me that you are growing these tomatoes in a greenhouse ... in Texas. It’s already been hot enough here that even a simple covered structure would get too hot. Is there a reason you would want to grow them in the greenhouse? It IS a greenhouse with solid cover right? Not a shade house with screen/mesh cover?

- High heat could cause any number of problems, possibly including splitting stems, but moreover, tomato blossoms will stop setting fruit and start dropping.

- in a small (less than ideal size) pot, you need to practice European style tomato culture with indeterminate varieties, and prune off all suckers so you are growing only 1 or 2 main “vine”/stem. Cherry tomatoes could be pruned to upto 4 vines/stems.

- in a casual/not scientific experiment I did with Winter Indoor Tomatoes, I learned that larger-fruited tomato varieties will respond to smaller and smaller pots by limiting the size of the fruits, and regular Cherry-size fruited tomatoes will respond by limiting the number of fruits, though not the size of the fruits (sometimes a little smaller than grown under best conditions). In a tiny 1 qt container, constantly watered and fertilized, a variety that normally could grow 2-1/2 to 3 inch fruit produced miniature versions less than 1 inch across. I was shown examples of tomatoes managing to grow a full size fruit In a large drink cup ONLY by topping the vine above the fruit (and thinning the fruit cluster to a single fruit), in other words, one large drink cup = 1 fruit.

- there are many varieties that are suited to growing in containers and smaller containers, too. As long as you choose those to grow and in sizes of containers they are meant for, you can achieve full potential of each variety.

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TomatoNut95
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Yeah, I know I probably shouldn't have them in there- it's the first time I've done it. I guess I was thinking it might protect them from storms. I might just take that cover off. I cannot sit all those pots elsewhere or they'll be in the way of mowing. Yeah, you're right; I'll have the cover just taken off- don't worry.

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applestar
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Don’t take it off on a really hot sunny day, if you are expecting high winds or lashing rainstorm. They have been protected and are not used to the elements. Overcast quiet day would be best to start.

If you get hail and such, you might consider using a hail-cover — hail netting.

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TomatoNut95
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Oh, ok. It is supposed to rain later on, don't know how badly. I'll keep check on the weather and choose a good day.
By the way, had a sort of a question about the plants foliage in my split plant thread.

dobro13
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All great replies.



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