I use a combination of coir and peat compost with 10 - 15% grit added. I don’t think theey would be as efficient with akadama or other granular mix. I only sieve out the big particles which could block the holes. Plenty of air gets in to the pot. If the tree is lifted from the ground there isn’t too much pH shock when using this mix. Plus you don’t have to worry about humus levels. I’ll post some photos of the results shortly (have to wade through hundreds to find them as I’m not too organised)
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Okay, well I got curious and bought those Anderson Flat looking things from Amazon. I should say that I’ve never owned an AF. I’m pretty impressed with these. They’re fairly rigid for what they are. I’d be pretty confident with using these for trees. The link above seems to be broken, so here it is again.
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Did anybody else watch that video? The wood is the bottom of the pot. That is a huge box and yeah hi puts a thin layer of akadama under the wood but there is more than enough soil above it for the new roots to form. He is making a bonsai not developing a trunk.
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I’ve seen people do similar and i agree that having such a large baseplate would cause a drainage issue for the soil directly below the plate. Not much water is going to absorb through the wood plate and pass into the soil below and tilting will not help much if the plate is only just smaller than the inner dimensions of the pot.
In reality you don’t need a huge plate to direct roots outwards to form a good nebari (size will obviously vary based on the diameter of the trunk and size of the pot).
Drilling holes in the plate will increase drainage into the soil below but the roots will pass through those holes, limiting the benefit of using a plate.
If its a deciduous tree the splaying or even pinning the roots at each repotting can help to develop the nebari. Conifers are more tricky as we can’t bare root so root manipulation to generate nebari generally has to take place from the seedling age onwards to get good results.
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