I’ll drop a few pics to show the in ground grow bag. These are non woven material, using a mix of Daddy Pete, lawn/garden with raised bed mix. Daddy Pete operation is on a dairy farm down towards Statesville, NC.
Ideally, the bags are to be filled with field run soil, but weather is wet, these will be filled with grafted apple scion/rootstock (MM111 and B118), cloistered in an open storage area and dropped into the garden for grow-out when weather permits with drip irrigation, black weed control fabric, mulch and a hardy varmint fence.
The plow is a subsoiler/middle-buster frame with a modified wide glide foot to make a flat bottom trench. The bags are shown on the work bench with open sheet metal sleeves, bagging four plants at a time. Load them on the trailer, water and deliver to staging shed.
There are pics of grow bags on this site in several posts. Used them since 1985, especially good with fibrous root structures, like dogwoods or apples. They are easy to pop out of the ground with a tree spade. Slightly more $'s than plastic containers, but the quality of the root structure far excels, don’t fall over or overheat.
You pull that big’ole middle buster with that B ? That’s a tenacious little tractor! I really like this system, especially having those black fabric sides underground to prevent them from generating heat.
Those are topless and bottomless sleeves, gives the bag sides and bottom structural integrity. Drop in the plant, use the scoop to fill with soil, pull up/ out the sleeve. Can be done in the field for large in-ground pot sizes. Manufacture has detailed photos and vids on their site.
Supposed to use field run soil as the fill/backfill but it is too wet now here and I use drip line for dry weather once in the ground. They will get planted when the weather gets dry again.
I didn’t think the compact tractor would suit me, but it has surprised me a few times. Needs to have the deck off. I wish I had gone up one Kubota frame size, more like an old Int. 140.
The soil gets worked a couple times, these two tillage pieces get it ready for the middle buster layoff plow.
Lunch Break,
Instead of posting a commercial link for a product, if anyone might be interested in this method…look for Smart Pots, used to be named Grow Bag. They are in Oklahoma and have some interesting vids and university studies if you look around. I have some left overs from the 1990’s in the potting shed.
Screwed up the pics, but I sink to the hub on the 1st pass (deep-as-it-will-pull) with a single moldboard turning plow, then the pto rototiller and then the layoff middle buster. Sold a load of tillage equipment this winter and got these new tools for the compact tractor.
Since the pasture land got fenced/leased last year, I’m concentrating on the 60ft X 60ft house garden for annual flower/vegetables and apple whips.
Thank You Andy, This is a piece of the old family land in the Brushies, for 200 years now. I moved here on my 24th birthday, grandfather had died and the house was empty. Been working on the land and house for near 48 years. Don’t think I’ll ever get all the projects completed.
Thought to post, (brag dang me). This has been a red-letter day, the kind one should thank the god of your choice for, be sure and say a kind word for others.
Here are a few pictures of the layoff with middle buster and pto tiller.
I haven’t started grafting the 150 pieces yet, all are in cooler. We haven’t been afforded any drying weather since last Sept.
Re-graded/tilled the 60 X 60 and turned out ok. In-ground root control bags will be healed in soon with the Limbertwigs!
The old poplar is wider than 4 people can reach around, an old old old Signal Tree on the national registry. She had a twin that came down in a super thunder storm 15 years ago. Together they delineated foot and wagon passages up the valley and to Moore Mtn, Star Rock, Boone Falls, and the Yadkin River.
Yep, true as true, two Danial Boone homeplaces nearby, Tom Dula and Laura Foster graves, and honest to my grave, a real Boone inscribed beech tree (now gone). If you get the old 1936 Wilkes County road maps, you can see for yourselves.
I hope a member or two here might steer me with instructions to document with a moving picture camera. Ask that favor in another post too.
My folks got their water from the hardy spring under the poplar, I piped it into the pond back about 2000.
