Smart Pot Liner is one of the latests news introduced to SantYerbasi's catalogue. This container manufactured in geotextile fabric (BPA free), brings you the possibility to grow in bancals (with all its advantages), indoors, and even in terraces. Today we will discuss advantages for our garden, using Smart Pot Liner, besides some tips and possibilities to get the best performance of our growing space.
Smart Pot is a company known by manufacturing best quality fabric pots in market. Unlike many other brands that sell fabric pots, Smart Pot containers are BPA free (abbreviattion for "Besfenol A", a toxic organic compound, widely used in plastics, directly relationed with an increased risk of suffering diverse organic upheavals. Being a toxic material, just in contact with food, that has effects on male and female reproductive system, on brain and behavior, on metabolism, and cardiovascular system between others, about has been demonstrated that could have a carcinogenic effect that may derive in prostate cancer (or breast cancer) it is very important to avoid this substance in pots where we grow our plants. That's why when we're talking about fabric pots, it is very important to explain that maybe they look similar, but they aren't, so that's why we recommend using only Smart Pot (it's worth it the extra money in savings on risks for our health).
Said this, let's focus in what's important in this post: Smart Pot Liner, benefits we'll get from it, and advantages using it.
What is Smart Pot Liner?
Liner Smart Pot is a container, squared based, manufactured in geotextile fabric, with a size of 93x93x25 cm. Thanks to its size, and depth, it can be used as a raising bed, easing the work, and reducing efords form grower, indoors and also outdoors. Indoors, thanks to the amount of substrate contained, Liner may be a great ally to get large organic crops, of high quality, with low efords compared with using regular pots.
Advantages of Liner Smart Pot
- Improved root system: As we previously said, Smart Pot Liner, is a fabric container, so its main advatage is in beneffits it brings to the root system of plants, what derives in an increased root mass, and also in healthier plants that can uptake larger amounts of nutrients, what also derives in higher yields.
- More substrate volume available for plants: To the known characteristic of Smart Pot pots, this Liner offers an increased capacity to be filled with substrate, together with the feature of having a unique container, with all plants sharing the substrate, brings a large amounts of nutrients available, impossible to find in small pots.
- Unifying irrigation demands: To the higher volume of substrate available for plants, we should add the characteristics that, being grown in the same container, all the substrate will dry at a time, removing the classic difference in-between plants that drink more, and others wich need less water (what usually derives in headaches for grower, who has to adapt to an individual demand of water.
- More plants in the same container: Thanks to Smart Pot Liner size, it allows you to grow more plants in the same container.
- Increased heat dissipation: Growing outdoors, were pots are sun exposed, and also ground's heat exposed, fabric containers are a major benefit for plant's root system, that won't suffer the heat transmission, typical of plastic-crafted containers.
- Possibility to recycle the substrate: One of the main advantages of using an only container for growing is the ease of reusing the same substrate for more than one cycle. If we pretend to recycle the substrate used in the Liner, the only thing we should do is using a rake to clean big roots, and follow with a worm castings refill (or similar) to bring a source of life back again to the substrate. If you are interested in this technique we aim you to read our post about how to recycle substrate.
1st Week from the transplant.
Tips for indoor growing in Liner
Now we have talked about advantages of using a Liner, compared with regular pots. Now we will focus in growing cannabis indoors, and how to take advantage of Liner growing indoors.
if we pretend using it indoors, first thing we recommend is complement the use of Liner with a flat plastic tray that will help recover all the water that may drop from the liner when irrigation occurs (our Liner fits perfect in a 1sqm tray). If we pretend to use it in a growtent, we can use the tray that many brands source, but if we want to be sure that no water will spread to the floor, the best option is to use these plastic trays.
Substrate: We can use soil, or coco. The choose of one or another will vary depending on our preferences as growers. From SantYerbasi we've got larger results working with soil (specially when we've used heavy prefertilized soils like Canna Professional Plus, because it allows you to almost forget about feeding your plants with nutrients). Besides the simplicity of using soil, BIO lovers will thank this medium due to the quality of final dried flowers.
Number of plants and distribution: Smart Pot Liner is suitable for all growing techniques (SOG and SCROG) even with hydroponic systems type Ebb&Flow, in wich you can work with higher or lower number of plants depending on grower's interest. In a Sea of Green system, our favourite option, it is recommended to use 12 plants in a 3 rows 4 columns (being possible to use 16 plants in a 4 rows 4 columns). If our method is SCROG, results got recommends using a minimum of 4 plants to get best yielding options.
Tips for outdoor growing in Smart Pot Liner
Growing outdoors, specially in terraces and balconies, it is not possible to place plants directly in-ground, what lows down growth possibilities, and their final yielding options. Smart Pot Liner is the best option to get benefit from a raising bed in our terrace, sourcing a size and depth perfect for growing plants.
The main advantage of Smart Pot Liner use outdoors is based in the quantity of substrate available for plants, that will require less atention from grower. In addition, being a container manufactured in fabric, it does not suffer the effects of heat from sun nor the heat transmitted by ground (important detail in terraces). Another key factor is that due to its big base, is almost impossible for plants to fall to a side due to wind-force. If you want to learn more about growing in bancals read our previous post: Grow cannabis in raising beds.
If what we are looking for is a discreet garden, we can we can delay the seeding season, until Mid. June /Early July, and use higher number of plants, to get a Sea of Green effect outdoors.
In cases where grower is interested in using autoflowering seeds, we aim you to use Lightmix type of soil, even we got our best results within coco thanks to being more spongy.
We recommend using this system to all growers, more experienced ones and less experienced ones, because they will get a 100% natural crop, for the lowest efords. Working with higher amounts of soil in a one big container, allows us to use worm castings along vegetative stage, and Bat Guano along flowering phase, freeing us from adding fertilizers to the nutrient solution, being also possible to use a water irrigation system for longer autonomy of the system (or even products like Aquabox Spyder). In those cases we could act in two ways: Mix those powder nutrients directly in substrate (previously to placing plants in it), or add them at the surface depending on plant's needings (we aim you to use the second option, so you'll know when the product is dissolved, so you have to add more).
Disadvantages of Liner Smart Pot
Without any doubt the worst disadvantage of Smart pot Liner is the impossibility of moving plants once placed in substrate. This could be a huge disadvantage specially when working with regular seeds (because you never know wich ones will be males and wich ones females).
Interesting complements for this product
- Indoors and outdoors placing the the Liner on a plastic tray will be very useful.
- The use of an Aquabox Spyder Autopot, or a automatic water irrigation system will give more autonomy to plants.
- Powder fertilizers ready to mix in substrate will notably reduce dedication to plants.
- Stakes and clips are really helpful to hold plants, specially during flowering when the weight of flowers could cause the stems to fold.
Feed plants grown in a Smart Pot Liner
Probably our favourite feature from Liner is its versatility. Grower can adapt this product to its own requirements and growing methods with no problems. As we said, these fabric containers source plants with large amounts of substrate, what translates into healthier plants, that reach higher yields per crop. To this larger amount of substrate we can choose to use our favourite nutrients, no matter if they are organic or chemical origin, liquid or powder. Another technique that could be used, highly recommended by SantYerbasi is preparing the substrate previously to use it with no-till techniques or preparing the well-known super soil.
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