So you order your little baggies from TheNile. They cost literally a Penny per and store a lot better than little pots lemme tell ya.
Fill em up with your matrix and put aside. You’ll want in and around a certain size, I’ll illustrate them here in a minute.
Then you get a 500ml pop bottle or next best thing and cut into 2 inch cross sections. You also want a few pinholes in the plastic so it can let water in. A lighter a fork tong or other metal pokey thing is what I used and you are good at a half dozen holes, more is fine too. Put ‘em low down so water will get in even when bowl level is very low.
Take one pop bottle 2 inch cross section ‘ring’ and put it in the bottom of a cereal bowl.
Fill inside the ring with perlite (best) or peat/perlite (next best) even small gravel wicks water. Our example pics here are using oat flakes instead of perlite and pea gravel instead of dirt in the planter baggy, for illustration only and a small plastic cup cut in 2 inch section bc I couldn’t find a pop bottle.
But I find at two inches high, which is what we cut our ring to here, that you get a good capillary flow using medium perlite. Pack it down, esp if using dirt or peat so it can’t sag away from the planter bottom and lose the connection, it needs to be full.
Place your wee hairnet-material baggy atop the perlite filled ring in bowl and press down so it has a good connection, seal, and is stable. They won’t tip over.
Fill bowl with one inch of water, which is halfway up the 2 inch high section of plastic, perlite-filled pop bottle section ring that your new “mini smart pot” sits atop. Don’t overfill past 1 inch or you might make things too wet in the baggy.
Your bag o dirt will suck up all the water pretty quick but don’t water again until top is dry. Thankfully, because air reaches all sides not just the top with these baggies they dry quickly, which means they pull a lot of water and it really helps keep everything fresh.
You won’t get scummy algae like on my initial pic, that thing was sitting in nearasmakesnodifference a ‘pond’ getting abused every way I could think of.
Your baggie/SIP will fill with chunky roots from all the air pruning but will also develop a moisture gradient even though it’s got barely more dirt than a solo cup because of the constant drying from being a fabric bag. This really makes the gradient work even in such a small package.
Transplant after 5th node appears. You will need to feed your plants before transplant. You can make water into fertigation, or, mix in some with the matrix of your planter baggy at the start.
When transplanting you just drop the bag in the hole you made in the Daddy SIP after you’ve filled with matrix, charged the SIP with a half full reservoir that you let soak up and into SIP matrix for 24 hrs minimum.
Now, recently I’ve been raising my seedlings and small rooted cuttings in bags of almost pure compost/EWC/mycorrhizae with a little perlite mixed in for aeration but basic peat/perlite works fine too.
