I transplant my plants 3 times during the course of a grow. This is #3, when they go into the biggest pots to finish vegging and for flowering. My question is, should I leave the root mass undisturbed (that’s what I’ve been doing) or rough it up a little bit to get the root tips loose and outside the confines of the milk carton they grew in?
In my experience, any disturbance to the plant tends to slow growth. They seem to do best when everything is smooth, on time and low-key. But in this case, I’m wondering.
I transplant 2 or 3 times before they go into the final pot which is usually a 4gal pot. Each time I saw the bottom inch or so off the rootball with a bread-knife to get rid of any stringy roots. If there are roots wound around the sides I slice them off too.
It’s kinda like the idea behind those airpots that trim the root ends and cause branching of the roots to get a lot more fine feeding tips growing. I always notice a spurt in plant growth shortly after and new roots will be poking out the bottom of the pots in a few days.
I’ll have to try that on a few and see how it works in my case. Kinda reminds me of what you can do with tomatoes to stimulate fruit growth–cut in a circle around the plant to restrict the root growth and force the plant to focus on producing fruit instead of more veg. Different in this case, I guess, but same general approach. Looks like you use milk cartons, too, for the intermediate stage. Is that right? I prefer square containers once the plants get bigger. Easier to fit them all in my grow space.
I’m of the opinion that rootball damage is the worst thing you can do to an actively growing plant. I’ve managed to kill plants because of excess root pruning.
If the canopy cannot be supported by the root system, it wilts and dies.
The only time I’m ok with root pruning is cutting down established moms in where I cut the top canopy then cut the roots.
They are actually tall, square plastic pots that had small rose bushes in them. I did use milk cartons with my first bud producing grow back in '78. I used a carton full of water to act as a mold in the 5gal pails I transplanted them to by filling the pail to the height I wanted then placing the carton in and filling around it. Then watered it well and carefully pulling the carton out and replacing it with the plant in it’s exact sized rootball. Rootsquare?
This is what the roots looked like before I sawed off the stringy ones.
Clones or Seeds? Clones don’t have a Tap Root. Plants grown from seeds do. I think plants don’t like their tap root cut. I don’t like to mess with the roots at all.
Usually the tap root finds a drain hole and gets air-pruned anyhow then it starts branching off and spreading across the root ball so it doesn’t really matter. Outdoors in the wild it will keep going down and that’s why pot is often still so green in the late summer during drought periods when everything else but trees are brown. In a tended garden it’s not so important. A tap root has no place to go in a foot deep pot.
