Air Pruning Pot

thingiverse

I am a avid hunter and enjoy growing trees for wildlife. I use the Rootmaker line of pots and bags to grow seedlings until they're big enough to plant. The neat thing about these containers is that they are designed to air prune the roots so that they don't circle the bottom of the container and become kinked and constricted. Then it occured to me that I could design my own version of these air pruning pots. I realized that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel and that a "net pot" design was close to what I had in mind as being the perfect root pruning vessel. One problem is that the bottom is flat so when roots his the bottom and not one of the holes they j hook. That's not good. Second there are too many holes in the side and it allows for too much drainage. I use a professional soiless mix to grow my trees which already drains well enough. I don't need to compound the problem with more ways for water to escape the pot. So I filled in some of the holes on the sides and inserted a wedge in the bottom to direct the roots to the side towards the holes in the bottom and the sides. I have not printed one yet so be warned. You can scale up or down as you see fit but I had intended for these to be about 4" or ~100mm tall. There are two files. One with tww rows of holes on the side and the other with one row.