The compost I use is loaded with weeds, it worried me but didn’t seem to be an issue. At least watering with a sprinkler, which I do for first year plants, and nearly all of the weeds are gone by the second year. With drip though, the weeds would push up the fabric and let water run down the side so they would not get wet.
I still get a gap between the compost and fabric as the compost decomposes and shrinks, this year I’ve started putting small rocks on top of the ones that aren’t getting enough water and that seems to help.
The heavyweight geotextile blocks enough light that weeds can’t grow under it, but some grasses can poke through as they germinate. It also gets hydrophobic and sheds water, so I’ve had to run the lines inside of the socks.
In anticipation of the freeze on Friday night (projected low of 27F) I started sorting through the compost socks. First year trees are headed to the hoophouse for further protection while the second years are getting laid down. I’m not planning on covering them for this freeze as I’d like them to lose their leaves if they haven’t already, and I’m not scared of a little tip dieback. I’ll probably transport some of the better/proven varieties to a more protected spot at some point but I’m going to play it by ear.
Last pic is of bindweed roots which parasitized their fine hairs through the bottom of the socks. Could not have helped with the dry conditions this year…
@DCinFLX Here is how I am setting them up to let the roots grow into the ground. There are 2 tomato stakes stacked to hold about 2" of compost, should be easy to tear apart at the end of the season and cut the roots with a saw.
That looks great. I’m actually doing something similar for my bucket trees. I put 7 or 8 one inch holes in for drainage and to let the roots escape down to freshly rototilled ground. Hoping the rain off the side of the greenhouse helps too… The compost socks will be put on auto-irrigation with stake drip emitters very soon.
Your roots will be much easier to deal with than mine…
I’ve started to buy pots with holes around the bottom edge and not just the bottom of the pot. Makes it a lot easier to trim the roots. If a pot has both (why?) I use a dryer cloth to line the bottom holes. This has proven to be fairly effective in keeping the roots from escaping the pot.
I’ve started repacking some socks that have become loose as the compost disappears. Not too hard, stand them up on their end, open what is now the top, fill with compost, feel the fabric to find the loose spots and then push a stick like the one shown down to make a channel for the compost, then pull the stick out to let the compost fall in, push the stick back in to pack it down, and repeat. It is the same concept as potting orchids on a much larger scale. I got about 5 gallons of fresh compost into the right side of this one.
Going to leave it half packed for a while so I can get an idea of how much it helps with wetting and water holding.
It is kind of time consuming, probably best to do in winter, but hopefully will help the ones that are not getting wet or just drying out faster than the others.
I moved the compost socks to their overwintering location the day after Thanksgiving. I’ve wanted to use their overwintering bed for strawberries in the past but the timing really doesn’t work. So I need to find a heat loving, short-ish, crop for the summer months for when this bed is empty.
Anyway, I can fit over 40 socks in an area that is 32 inches wide, 31 inches tall, and 20 feet long. Each sock holds around 8-9 gallons of potting mix !and weighs something like 35-45 pounds. Before spring growth I’ll need to repack most of these socks and switch over the material of the socks that still had the older, thinner landscape fabric. While partially explained by being a year older, the roots of the older trees in the thinner socks found their way through and made moving them a bear–even being placed on top of woven landscape fabric didn’t help.
