so here’s the deal. I have a 2x2x3’ cabinet with a 150W 3-bar spider-led that gets too hot to run in summer.
growing outside (my house) is not an option, enter my new acquisition: The AtomicGrow!
an itsy bitsy teenie weenie grow tent measuring 40x40x120cm, googol says 15.75x 15.75x 47.25". small.
comes with a 65W ledpanel.
up till now I’ve only really used it to raise seedlings or root clones, now it’s time to see if it lives up to it’s name.
so I coffeefiltered a Lemon OG-seed from the SSSC and when it popped I put it in an “instant transplant pot” I made earlier.
Hello @mo_budsummer heat is a real challenge for the grow and also post harvest. Specially in the south. Was wondering what the methodology behind the instant transplant is. Does the altered solo slide out and get planted with the rootball?
exactly that!
the genius behind this is that at this point there is no rootball yet, and if you try to “up pot” it it would fall apart. with this it’s just as easy as you describe it.
it’s something I picked up on autoflower.net a few years back, can’t find that post anymore.
that guy actually did it on much bigger pots but I never have (had) issues with transplanting established rootballs.
you can run photo’s a bit longer but I find that with autoflowers, you need to transplant @day 4 in order not to stunt them, roots already peaking out the bottom
I’ve been thinking about this also. Next run will be auto. I picked up some ac infinity quart size nursery bags cause you’re supposed to be able to up pot them without removing the bag.(roots grow thru)(supposedly). Hoped this would enable avoiding staggered timeliness by up potting only the winners. Since had second thoughts and may final pot sprout after all.
with AFs you just have to run em and see. some are real troopers and take all you throw at em, others are snowflakes that give up if you as much as phart in their vicinity.
I do like em tho, this whole ITPpartycup thing evolved around them.
if I run AFs I transplant straight into their endpot, like I said, usually at day 4
with photo’s you have more play and I sometimes transplant those into “inbetween-pots”, depending on what I have going on
got them in all sizes by now.
Looks like a nice system! I read a study that pregrowing for 14 days in a small container before repotting to the final container only decreases final yield by about 5~10% compared to instantly putting the plant in the final container for autoflowers.
Since then I’ve been pregrowing my autos for around 14 days in a 10x10x5cm (4"x"4"2") container with pure coco, until the roots have become firmly established, then I let the container dry out for a day or two, so the medium shrinks a bit, and the plant plops right out.
Then I make an imprint of the small container in the new and final container, sprinkle in some IBA rooting hormone, very lightly spray it with water containing rooting stimulant (I use Canna Rhizotonic), put in the plant, press firm and go!
With this method I keep the roots fully intact and happy, with the only “negative” being that the tap root is obstructed, so it will take a while for the roots to grow “deep”, which is fine in my small containers !
I will be following your grow, hope to see your experiences with the SSSC seeds, I’m currently running 3 Auto Creepers but they have not been performing as expected…
Never had issues transplantation autos from one pot to another, even if the roots haven’t taken hold of the soil yet, there are tricks that don’t involve plastic waste, such as pinching the sides of the cup and flipping the plant upside down inbetween your fingers and giving a tap on the cup/pot and you can get the whole thing to come out.
Regardless even if the soil ball falls apart or you take it apart slightly its just goes down to the point of where the roots are holding things together which allows one to transplant the plant deeper in the next pot if say the pots dont have alot of depth to play with, just trying to say the cut out cup within a cup thing isn’t needed.
and im all for micro grows, which you have a luxurious amount of height to play with.
yes, there are a million ways that work, growing this wonderful plant
I happen to be somewhat hamfisted and the way @Mr.Sparkle describes led to many a sad demise
altho we agree on the plastic use, I sometimes have to make the decision to still do so.
like with a lot of other things in life.
in my defense, only a few partycups were discarded because they were tore up by the inhabitant
all of the other ITPpots I still use; they’ll last me forever!
I decided to go with a 5 ltr airpot, that’s a good gallon and a bit.
they can be a bit tricky to water, water dripping out all sides. what really helpes is wicking the darn thing, so I did.
for the partycup I just used lightmix with wormcastings and bac & myc’d that
for the endpot I ammended some light-mix with wormcastings and about a tablespoon each of bonemeal ( P), vinassekali (K) and lavameal (loads of minerals) …
I will be fertigating when / if needed
look at her, just before lights out on day 4, chilling with some chili’s
there’s bugsy’s… thrips by the looks of it.
luckily they seem to have more of a taste for the chili’s, perhaps due to the silica.
but still a little leaf damage.
didn’t have The MTA UltimateUM ready yet but alle the ingredients are on order so…
ended up FIMing her. I hope. we’ll see what happens.
today I ‘ponytailed’ her. leave that on for a couple of hours and take it off before I go to bed so she’s got a good couple of hours to ‘recover’. this really boosts the lower branches IME
don’t think the FIM went all that well, I guess I snipped too high -so I FIMed my FIM LOL
looks like I only trimmed the leaves of the new bud short…
all kinds of undefined outgrow so all’s not lost yet, I’ll try and catch that in a pic later
the next step depends on how she develops. the original gameplan was to top for 4 nodes, eight branches and top those for 16 growtips in a perfect 4x4 grid.
so far I haven’t had one grow going exactly as planned so…
Interesting technique, I also place a lot of importance on lower branch growth, gonna have to try this some day! As a question, have you tried combining this technique with cutting the biggest fan leaves in half, that way the apical node will still receive some light while it’s ponytailed, and you could potentially leave it on for longer periods?
summer heat is a real challenge for the grow and also post harvest. Specially in the south. Was wondering what the methodology behind the instant transplant is. Does the altered solo slide out and get planted with the rootball?
!
