>> I hope you won't need anything quite as complex as your described system above for getting your WS plants out of their containers!
Me too, thoguh I am only thinking of using them for potting-up, not WS. The only ridge I have to worry about is very shallow, and very near the bottom. I am hoping that it will be no problem after banging the inverted bottle really hard on its rim. An d if it disruopts roots circlin g the bottom of the bottle, good. I'm often timid about doing that as I plant out, but I know I should unrtavel those cicrcling rolots, or even c ut them off.
The worst part will be if I give them away to people who are reluctant to WHACK a plastic pot against something to get the plant out.
My hope is to nevfer have plants in these pots long enough for them to get a lot of UV. 3-5 weeks would get them pretty root-b ound, and I plan for most of that to be occuring ine arly sprin g. MAYBE in a cold frame, if I get around to that next year.
I only tried WS once, and then I used 4" square pots for each variety, and used a big translucent plastic tub as the humidity-container. A HoS the size of a milk jug would be WAY too many seedlings of one variety for me. Actually 4" square is bigger than I would really want for that. If 6-pack-inserts from 72-cell-trays were packed together more tightly, those are about the size I would rather WS, if I were trying WS again.
My "Winter" is more like cold spring anway, and if the tub was out in partial sun during the winter, its interior would be warm enough to sprout many times (and many weeks) before the last hard frost. I think my climate lends itself more to a very-well-vented cold frame, and starting seeds 4-8 weeks before the last frost, mostly inside, then moving seedlings into the cold frame or under plastic in their final beds.