Group of pots for nursing and replanting plants

A group of enclosures for nursing and replanting plants is disclosed comprising several parallel rows of enclosures wherein each two adjoining rows of enclosures have a common wall construction. This wall permits the flow of nutrients and water through the wall and thus makes it possible to control and guide the growth of the roots.

The present invention concerns a group of enclosures for nursing and 
replanting plants. This group of enclosures comprises several parallel 
lines of enclosures wherein each two adjoining rows of enclosures have a 
common wall construction. This wall is split during nursing of the plants 
because the middle part of the wall consists of a material which can 
readily decompose when exposed to water and soil. Such materials include 
cardboard and paper which is capable of decomposing under such conditions. 
The invention is particularly concerned with the wall material of the root 
cake. A proper selection of the wall material makes it possible to control 
and guide the growth of the roots in the cake in a direction favorable for 
replanting. 
Sheet-shaped or tape-shaped growing systems for cake plants are known in 
which the wall of the cake consists of plastic or a plastic-reinforced 
paper which prevents the roots from growing through the wall. The method 
of growing using a wall containing plastic is disadvantageous because the 
plastic must be removed prior to replanting. A brittle plastic film may 
fragment during the mechanical handling of the plastic enclosures. This 
can result in the breakdown of the nursing and replanting machines. In 
severe cases, this can have a detrimental effect on the growth of the 
plant itself. Moreover, especially in the case of cakes with unperforated 
plastic walls, the plastic prevents the flow of liquid between the cakes. 
This flow is necessary to balance water and nutrient distribution between 
the cakes which require extremely precise fertilizing and watering 
methods. 
The use of a plastic film causes additional serious problems. For example, 
when the roots contact the film they attempt to bypass it which results in 
twisted roots which may ultimately suffer serious deformities. This can 
hamper the growth of the root and the plant. 
The object of the present invention is to overcome the aforementioned 
drawbacks associated with the prior art methods. The group of enclosures 
in accordance with this invention is characterized as having enclosures 
with a wall construction which is capable of splitting. Each wall 
comprises an interior layer of cardboard, special paper, or other 
decomposable material. A non-woven fabric consisting of a highly porous 
network of artificial fiber is glued or laminated on the sides of the 
interior layer. This non-woven fabric must be capable of slowly decaying 
in the ground or at least at a slower rate than the interior layer. The 
layers of non-woven fabric, laminated on both sides of the interior layer 
of the wall construction, are permanently fixed to each other at one end 
of the wall constuction. Thus, the fastening points of the non-woven 
fabric at the ends of two adjoining walls are always placed at opposite 
sides of the group of enclosures. This provides for, after the nursing 
stage, a group of enclosures constituting an enclosure band continuing 
throughout the entire handling batch. 
As compared with plastic-reinforced paper, an advantage of the present wall 
material is its ease of manufacture. Additionally, a smaller amount of 
artifical fiber is required because only a thin layer of this material is 
required on the surface of the wall. Moreover, a non-woven fabric almost 
exclusively containing artifical fibers can be cross-linked to the desired 
strength with a considerably lower quantity of fibers than in an artifical 
fiber reinforced paper web. In this case, the amount of artifical fibers 
is distributed evenly over the entire length of the web. This is because 
the amount of natural fiber disturbs the construction of the fiber network 
.

As shown in FIG. 1, the unrolling of the non-woven fabric takes place from 
rolls 1 and 3, and the unrolling of the special paper from roll 2. Webs 
1a, 2a, and 3a are each passed over their respective guide rollers 4a-c, 
5a-c, and 6a-c to lamination station 7. 
At lamination station 7, the three webs 1a, 2a, and 3a are joined together 
by a known method using either a gluing, heating, or ultrasound technique 
or any other laminating technique. The resulting laminate 8 is passed over 
cooling station 9 and guide rollers 10, 11, and 12 to cutting station 13 
where the clean-cutting of the edges of laminate 8 is performed. Cutting 
station 13 comprises aligning roller 12, drive roller 14, and cutter 15. 
Laminate 8 is cut into sheets and piled into pallets 16 by a known method 
for the purpose of switching the fiber direction. Cutting into sheets need 
not be performed on non-woven fabrics whose strength ratio (machine 
direction to transverse direction) is approximately 1. However, from this 
step, it is possible to proceed straight to joining the chain-joint 
material with the laminate. 
As shown in FIG. 2, the laminate sheets are supplied, by a known method, to 
the manufacturing line so that the fiber direction in the non-woven fabric 
is aligned with the direction of the unloading of the sheet. The sheet 
supply device is designated as 17. 
Chain-joint material 18, which is paper coated with a known hot-jointable 
tough plastic material such as polyethylene, polypropylene etc., is first 
laminated to the border of the bottom face of the laminate sheet by means 
of a disk hot-jointer 19 or by any other known method. Then, the material 
18 is forced, by means of a known method, 180.degree. over the edge of the 
laminate sheet and the lamination of the border of the upper face takes 
place by the method corresponding to the lamination of the bottom face at 
20. This operation permits the formation of a chain joint band which runs 
the entire length of the border of the laminate sheet. One chain joint 
band 18 permits the opening of the entire sheet into a continuous row when 
the first enclosure is pulled. The chain joint band 18 on the upper track 
is laminated to the left edge of the laminate and on the above described 
lower track to the right edge, or vice versa. 
The lamination of the upper track and lower track to each other takes place 
by means of adhesive stripes 31 (FIG. 5). The adhesive stripe can be 
produced by means of a cold gluing technique (in which the laminate must 
pass through a drying tunnel before further treatment), a hot-melt 
technique, a hot-jointing technique, an ultrasound technique, etc. The 
adhesive stripe 31 must be definitely insoluble in water and non-decaying. 
By varying the width and positions of the adhesive stripe, it is possible 
to produce enclosure systems having different forms and diameters. 
Prior to the preparation of the adhesive stripe, a device is preferably 
employed to cause the omission of the adhesive operation if the sheet 
fails to arrive from either the upper or lower track. The unlaminated 
sheet is passed from the line and is discarded or recycled. 
Either glue or hot-melt glue is again supplied onto the multi-layer 
laminate by means of a known technique. If the mulit-layer laminate is a 
web, it is cut off and the sheets are piled on top of each other. The 
sheets are then glued to each other while, depending on the gluing 
patterns, either square on hexagonal enclosures are formed when the sheet 
is opened. 
FIG. 2 shows additonal members of the enclosures forming equipment. These 
members include gluing equipment 21 and 22, laminating pinch 23, drying 
tunnel 24, sheet stacker 25, and stacking table 26. 
Thus, a finished group of enclosures comprises several parallel rows, each 
two adjoining rows having a common wall construction 28 which splits 
during the nursing period. It is characteristic of the wall constrction 
that layers 29 of non-woven fabric that constitute the border faces of the 
cakes are connected to each other so that during the nursing period the 
joint 32 loses its adhesive quality. Once this occurs, layers 29 of 
non-woven fabric are only fastened to each other at one end (i.e. at the 
chain joint point 30). The above adhesive joint 32 between layers 29 of 
non-woven fabric may consist of glue, or a decaying intermediate layer 
such as paper or cardboard, etc. Chain joint 30 of layers 29 may be 
produced by folding layers 29 against each other out of the same blank or 
by joining two separate layer blanks 29 together by means of a generally 
known joining method so that the joint is durable even after nursing. When 
the intermediate layer 32 has decomposed, the enclosures a-h form a band 
continuing throughout the entire batch (FIG. 6). 
The wall material 28 of the cake preferably consists of special paper 32 on 
whose sides a non-woven fabric 29 is laminated. The significance of the 
paper in the laminate is to give the non-woven fabric 29, at the 
manufacturing stage of the enclosure system 27, sufficient density, 
strength, and rigidity and, at the filling and sowing stage, the strength 
and rigidity required by highly automated mechanical handling. 
The paper 32, whose rate of decay can be controlled, binds the substances 
controlling the growth of the roots for the period of the decay resistance 
of the paper. The substance controlling the growth of the roots stops the 
growth of the tip of the root when it approaches the paper layer. This 
results in branching of the root and an active root system wherein an 
abundant number of roots are present in the root cake. This root system is 
necessary to insure successful replanting. 
Thus, the substances controlling the growth of the roots limit the growth 
of roots from one cake to another. This is necessary in mechanical nursing 
and planting to avoid breaking roots when the cakes are separated. At the 
same time, any damage to the root system is also eliminated. 
On the other hand, the non-woven fabric 29, which includes a known 
artificial fiber, such as polypropene, polyamide, polyester, 
polyacrylonitrile, or polyvinylalcohol fibers etc. is a highly porous 
network of artifical fibers interconnected by gluing or by any other 
method and which slowly decays in the ground. It allows the wall material 
28 to keep the cake bound together after nursing of the plant since the 
paper 32 has already lost all of its strength. 
Decomposition of the cellulose in the paper 32 can be programmed in advance 
and the effect of the substances controlling the growth of the roots can 
be terminated at the same time. The highly porous non-woven fabric 29 
permits the roots of the plant to grow through the fabric in accordance 
with a growing program planned in advance (i.e. at the time of planting or 
immediately thereafter). The non-woven fabric 29 gives the bands of cake 
plants sufficient strength for extensive handling in an automated 
mechanical nursing and planting treatment.