[GLAN]

That is very interesting.......thanks

[r schipul]

Voodoo,

You don't see many grow bags in the northeast, neither people growing plants that way or grow bags in wholesale nurseries, they just are not that common. I've been reading Dr. Whitcomb's articles for a couple of years and find the whole growing system impressive. I'm glad to hear your response. I've have never had the luxury of receiving a bag grown plant so I do not know what it's like to remove the bag. I question the few people I know who have had limited experience with planting a grow bag plant. I would imagine that the more you become familiar with the product the easier it will be to remove the bag. It does make me nervous lining out a couple of acres with a product I've never used. Thanks for your response.

[VoodooChile]

r shcipul,
Are your concerns removing a bag-grown plant from the field, harvesting? Or are you concerned about removing the bag in the planting hole?

I have always harvested bag-grown plants by shovel, usually after hours by myself when there's time to dabble in nursery production. I haven't found it to be a big deal, given that the bag was installed at the proper depth and the plant has not outgrown the bag.

Planting a bag grown tree or shrub isn't much different frowm planting a b+b tree or shrub, just easier. Once it is in the hole, we simply slice the sides of the bag with Fiskars or a utility knife, peel down the bag, rock the plant to get the bag off the bottom, and reset the plant at proper grade and orientation.

For a small company like mine, with minimal equipment-- no skid-ster-- bag-grown plants are a great way to produce species that the nursery industry ignores at a quality larger operations can't duplicate.

[r schipul]

My concern is strictly at planting. The last thing I would want to do is line out a couple of acres of plants and not want to use them because everytime I take some to a job I spend 3/4 of my day struggling to remove the bags. Also, we have approval to run a retail nursery out of our property as long as we grow and sell only plants. I'm not sure just how 'retail' we'll be but we'll be the one removing the bags and putting them in containers before they leave the property. I'm not sure how that transaction would work if we decided to open a day or two a week. Do people wait or do they pay and pick up later? It's not a typical retail situation but neither is opening up 1 or 2 days a week.

[VoodooChile]

Field harvesting would be a snap, much faster than digging or spading a tree b+b, with much less root disturbance and stress.

The trick is to plant the bags so the top is slightly above field grade. This reduces/eliminates rooting over the top and out of the bag, a big problem with notorious surface rooting trees like Maples and Birches.

Some bags come with a tag stating that the bag must be removed at time of planting. I would simply sell all my plants in the bag, with explicit instruction on proper removal of the bag. That should cover you, and eliminate the possibility that you remove the bag at the nusery, put the plant in a container, and the customer goes home and kills it out of the ground.

From bag to final home would be best case for the tree and your nursery.

I've never found removing the grow bag from bag grown plants a struggle, and I've planted scores. Wrestling with the big rootballs on traditional b+b, that's a struggle...

[trees]

Voodoo-

That's a great primer on grow bags. My experiences, as stated before, have not been great.

I think that the theory behind the system has great merit, it's just the implementation that can be suspect. As you alluded to, if you don't follow a fairly strict propagation schedule, it can get fouled up.

Possibly proper bag selection can improve the results? I'm intrigued by the green one you had a pic of (the ones I worked with were all black geotextile, like the 2nd pic).

Anyway, interesting stuff. Thanks...