Stubborn soil in fabric pots

I feel like I might be the only person with this problem. :nerd_face:

I find it difficult to get the soil out of fabric pots after the plants have been chopped! It just doesn’t want to budge. What is the trick to this? 🪴 :muscle: :rofl:

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Lay it on it’s side and squish it down a bit, turn and squish again. Should loosen it up enough to get it out.

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Just don’t squish too hard, if you have cheap bags the integrity of the seam may become compromised.

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I’ve been trying to peel them off so squishing it can’t be much worse! I’ve left a few to dry out because I was just annoyed with them so I suppose I will hose them down tomorrow. Lol

Yeah, removal can be a bit of a pain. Especially when the whole thing becomes one big ball of roots that’s tougher than the insides of a baseball.

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I let them site tell really dry, lay on their side, little pressure all the way around and than push on the bottom and pull on the stem. I have learned to take off the lower branches fist and leave as much stem as possible to pull the ball out.
:green_heart: :seedling:

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Same I let mine dry then yank it out by the stem, easy peezy. Usually it’s a big pot shaped cast made of roots.
Have not had problems with them…

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Ah! I will try to yoink them out while dry and see how that goes. :rofl:

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I punch mine a few times around the sides , then one smack on thee bottom and out it comes.

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There are cloth pot designs that have a vertical seam you can open up and peel off the pot from the root-ball. I haven’t seen them locally so no experience with them.

I have an extremely dull chief’s knife that I use to carefully cut the fine roots grabbing the sides (after it is dried out).

I haven’t screwed up yet but sooner or later I know I will :laughing: :boom:

I’m planning on investing in a couple dozen ‘air pots’ this fall

air pot

Cheers
G

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@Gpaw I did couple of runs on those, My experience wasn’t really good.

Summers Where I used to live where 50C and those things just melted down, plus if you lose one of this screws or drainage lids you would probably ending buying a new pot.

This times I do stick to the smart pots.

To rip of the roots out of the walls once you flushing the plants do it with enzymes, let the pots dry and use a spatula to scrap the soil around the walls

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I found it best to break up the roots really well by pressing around the pot repeatedly when taking the rootball out, and I do this semi-damp. 90-95% comes out this was. What’s left I let dry was out then just wring the pot and let the dust fall out. It won’t ever be “clean” unless you wash it.

But I can’t imagine some remnants being harmful anyways?

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I’ve used bags for years, and this ^^^ is the key IMO. :slight_smile: It takes a few times to get your confidence up that you aren’t damaging the plants, but it’s not as hard as it seems.

It’s a lot easier if they’re kinda dry, so let them dry out until they pull away from the sides a bit, and run a knife around the inside of the bag to loosen it up. Grab it with both hands at the seam where the bottom is stitched on, with your hands oriented, so your thumbs are pressing against the bottom of the bag. Then get a good grip on the edge, and just rotate your hands outwards. That motion pulls down on the edge of the bag, while at the same time, forcing your thumbs up from the bottom. It should release with no problem, but if it doesn’t, just slide your hands to a different position, and repeat. Once it’s loose, hold on to the bottom of the bag, and give the stalk a yank. :slight_smile:

Once it’s out, I turn the bag inside out, shake as much dirt out of it as I can, and soak them in warm water to loosen up the embedded dirt. I rinse 'em out, and toss 'em in the washing machine with a tbsp of bleach. They come out clean, and it doesn’t seem to hurt them at all. I have some 1 gallon bags that I bought in 2017 that I still use. :slight_smile:

My sister-in-law showed me how to run a sewing machine, and I made some pint, quart, and 1/2 gallon bags. I start my plants in pints, and transplant to bigger ones as needed using the same “de-bagging” method. :grinning:

I hope you find this helpful. :slight_smile:
:guitar:

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I don’t like fabric pots at all. I really tried. I even made some.

They make transplanting a real PITA. If it’s your final pot then I could see the value but I don’t grow that way.

I prefer the rigid plastic ones. I have been using the same 4 for years now.

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I will admit that the first time I went to transplant out of a bag, I thought I’d screwed up big time. “HTF, am I gonna get that bag off”, hadn’t entered into my decision-making process, until that very moment. :laughing:

It was touchy at first, but once I realized that if I took it easy, I wasn’t gonna harm the plant, it got a lot easier. :slight_smile: Now I can transplant from bags just as fast as I can from hard pots.

One thing I didn’t mention before, you want to make sure that the roots have used up all the soil before you try to remove the bag. If they haven’t, you’ll have pockets of loose soil, and it’ll fall apart when you take it out.

You can also take your small bag, put it in a bigger bag, and cover it with soil. :slight_smile: The roots will grow right through it, into the new soil. Or you could just sit them on the ground, and the roots will grow right through the bottom of the bag.
:guitar:

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That is very helpful, thank you for the guidance! I’ve only used smaller plastic pots to start and transplanted into fabric pots for the last move.

I take the pot with the stump in it and flip it upside down in a garbage bag, punch it on all sides with my firsts to loosen and lift the pot out of the garbage bag.

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I try to use fabric pots for final potting. If for some reason they get to big for their fabric pot I just fill a bigger fabric pot half way and sit the one with the plant into it and fill it in till the pot with the plant is about 50 - 75% buried.

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As for taking plant stumps out like others have said I let them dry out then squeeze or step on or whatever to loosin up the dirt then it’ll come as a mass of dried roots and dirt

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I also tend to use hard plastic pots until the final transplant. I usually go plastic pint to plastic quart to fabric.

If you’re going to transplant from fabric to fabric, its easiest to do it before its really filled out the pot (i.e., a little early). I’m about to do that, move a few plants from 3 gal to 7 gal that I’m going to veg longer (was planning to finish in 3’s). You’ll have loose soil but the plant will easily come out ime.