Hi Mark, those platters look amazing. My sungolds are just coming in. I can't wait for the rest of the garden to begin harvest. I'll be waiting on the 50 or so candidate avocados for another year.
Remember, I didn't go bottomless for a couple reasons; listed here in order of severity (High->Low):
1) These trees are planted along the side of my house adjacent to the neighbors yard (just a couple feet over across a fence). They have very mature fruit trees (plum, pear, cherry, etc.) that have roots which have invaded most of my yard. I planted some blueberries in the ground some 20' away from these trees, and found the younger blueberries in a pot produced loads more and grew, where as those in the ground were insipid. They were overrun with the neighboring tree root system. The same has been true of a garden bed I keep that's in the vicinity of those trees. I'd have to dig a trench of 2-3 feet down and lay down some metal siding to attempt and address the problem, but the ground is so boulder, stone, and rock ridden, it would require some heavy equipment and a lot of space to do that.
2) I wanted to keep the option to take some of these trees with me if we ever decide to move to a new location. I know that transplant will be very rough on the trees, but they should be able to survive the ordeal. If you read up on the RootBuilder site, they talk about wrapping the container in burlap material for transporting. I think the idea is you just remove the container, pull-up the burlap and transport. I don't think that was meant for trees that are multiple years in their site. Maybe I'll get to test the idea some day.
3) Well, I had a three sometime ago, but I can't remember it. Oh well, (1) and (2) suffice.
Thanks for always chiming in. It's gotten quite (it seems), though I haven't been keeping up as much.