Hi everyone, after having my plants coming to 8 to 10 weeks old (most are probably sativas), only one surely fem (OG Kush), and 5 regulars though one clearly seems to be a female; I’ve reached the conclusion that my plants haven’t grown as much as they could have. The obvious suspicion: I lacked enough experience and most likely have stunted my plants’ growth by planting them in soil which was a bit too dense. I went from 6" pots to 3 gallon ones from early on. Despite having made the decision to go as organic as possible, I’ve come to the realization that I’ve made the soil too dense, I put a layer of expanded clay and coconut dried strips and then soil, may be too much regular soil and not enough air, and worm castings, which also leads to denser soils. Question: I still would have enough room to grow taller. Should I go ahead and transplant them to maybe 5 or 7 gallon pots but with more peat moss, perlite and more worm castings to compensate for the previous dense soil? At this moment they’re filling about 60% of the trellis net but are all kind of short, not reaching 2.5 feet in height, including pot (I haven’t been able to really work the trellis net. Some suggested lowering the net but some plants simply don’t have much height. As soon as possible I’ll post some pics. They’re still on 18/6 light/dark schedule.Thanks as always! Love this site!
Hi man, too much worm castings will make your soil solid, rather than fluffy. I get the same problem with my no till pots as the soil builds up and compresses. I either remove all the soil and add about another 10% perlite or volcanic rock, and about 15% peat moss every now and then or give the fabric pots a good kicking to loosen it all up again.
I go from 1.5 liter pots straight to 10 gal, it helps lessen the shock and delays in growth from constant up potting I find. Rather than 3 or 4 re pots into consecutively larger pots.
If you are still vegging the plant and have time, I would take the plant out of the pot and remove as much soil as possible from the roots, re mix your soil and put the plant back. It needs oxygen around the roots or it will constantly be growing slowly and struggling and looking like its over watered.
Pics would be good to get a better idea of the problem when you can get them up.
Hi everyone, and hi @Shadey, thanks a bunch for the input, it was exactly what I had in mind since it’s up to me to flip to flowering when I decide to go for it. Went quite fast on every aspect of planting and see myself overwhelmed with details and flourishing conclusions, failures and successful deeds, not that different from us seeing them plants growing and showing life all the way or, when you take too long to water, they clearly show us how droopy they look… And looking back, soil is too dense, it needs to breathe… especially before they go into flowering. As far as time goes, I’m extremely anxious to see my own buds coming into shape but, I’ve been having a hard time getting a least of quality from local stuff for ages, so I’d rather fix it to the point that I’ll maximize my results in the future, near or not so… After all, pretty soon I hope to be able and say, “I did it!” Thanks again! All suggestions are welcome!
that’s an old pic but as soon as I can, I’ll post a more current one…
They look OK back when the pic was taken, maybe a bit to much N but other than that I cant see any problems. When you water does it it sit on the surface for a few minutes and slowly sink in, rather than disappear in 20-30 seconds?
I’d say a whole minute but not 30 seconds, and I’ve been doing just that, a cup and 1/2 watering, wait about 5 minutes, and then water again… It does seem to drain, I just notice the ratio being more hard soil than, say, peat moss, perlite and fluffiness, if you know what I mean! I’ll post pics as soon as I can. Thanks.
One thing to maybe keep in mind is that if/when you transplant to a larger container you cannot really mess with the original root ball much, you know? The roots are even more fragile than the plant itself - although they will tend to recover from being messed with quicker than a plant can.
When I got too much casting in my mix I would use a chopstick to push holes down into the top of the container. Not a ton, but enough to allow water/ferts to penetrate to the lower bowels of the container better. Done gently you will not piss the plant off and you will allow for water to penetrate the packed ball easier. Running a few good leech flushes of straight water through them might help too.
I had used worm castings - a ton of them - over the years indoors. Usually mixed with potting soil (Happy Frog), perlite, vermiculite and castings. Sometimes some dolomite lime powder when I had it (for smiling pH). I found that anytime I added castings to an already rich mix I fed too much nitro and ended up with buds all rosy dark green and harder to cure. Now I just use a mix of Happy Frog with some coir. Much easier to work with, and adding 25%-40% coir gave me really killer drainage, and the plants purr when I talk to them.
Thanks a lot, nicely put…
And you mean in a way similar to a flush but literally to soak up the whole pot and somehow move a bit of what’s inside? thanks…
I’ve been using it and shoots the soil to ph of 7.2. I used to be a bit worried but read somewhere ph in soil varies, reason why I tend to ph my water and nutes to 6.2. I also use vermiculite, there is an abundance of coconuts round here, problem is, most came from salty beaches, which is not a combination for the plants (excessive salt). Thanks a bunch!
Don’t overthink it buddy… My own rule of thumb for leeching is to put 1 gal of water for each gal of mix. But keep in mind that it along with the infamous chopstick technique it can help to flocculate (l love that word - sounds sexual) the soil and allow it to breathe, it also can rinse out nutrients. So allowing them to rest an extra day between feedings can be good but you need to feed them again.
Leeching is like giving your plant an enema (gross). It washes out a lot of crap but also can leave the plant really hungry.