Anybody ever try "no till" in 3-5 gal. pots?

[heady blunts]

rooted cuts were transplanted directly to 10 gallon containers to veg and flower, but we were doing a lot of seed hunting simultaniously so the 1/2 gallon and 2 gallon containers were used until we could sex the seedlings.

promising female plants were potted up but the culled plant containers were treated as no till sucessfully.

the issues you will likely run into with both the autos and the party cup plants will be root bound related. drought, heatstress, ph swings, and deficiencies/lockouts.

heavy pruning is necessary to keep vegitation and root mass balanced unless you are willing to supplement with solubule nutes.

 

[Bongi]

Thank you for sharing your experience. I really appreciate it.

I keep some cash ready for bigger pots in case I need them for moms. I am going to flower my plants that I choose mothers from in 50l containers so at least there will be no problems.

What kind of soluble nutes you are talking about? I hope you are talking about teas. I can feed them with teas if needed.

I have grown before in organic soil and 3l-1l containers. If I remember correctly I did get some bud out of them. It was in DR60 with 250w hps. It might even have been my pest run ever with 0,75g/w but I am not sure. It was years ago. I was using subcools recipe then and top dressed them with fertilizers during flowering.

 

[thejact55]

I use 1 gallon grow bags outside. Plants are at 5-6 feet tall (including bag height). When they are done, i take the soil, small roots and all and dump it back into my soil bin. Soils is too expensive not to reuse.
It is too rootbound usually to just replant in the same pot, but i can reuse 50 percent of it after the grow is done.

 

[Bongi]

I use 1 gallon grow bags outside. Plants are at 5-6 feet tall (including bag height). When they are done, i take the soil, small roots and all and dump it back into my soil bin. Soils is too expensive not to reuse.
It is too rootbound usually to just replant in the same pot, but i can reuse 50 percent of it after the grow is done.

Do you feed them any teas, top dress them or is everything plants need in soil?

Here is those pics I promised. Northen Lights is in 12l container, 1 Ripley's OG is in 10,8l container and other is in 3l one, Auto Amnesia Haze is in 10,8l container and rest are in 3l.

Whole garden


Auto Northern Lights


Sour 60


Sour 60


Auto White Widow

 

[Bongi]

Auto White Widow


Auto Amnesia Haze


Ripley's OG


Big one is Sour 60 and small one is Ripley's OG.


All pics are from today.

 

[xmobotx]

5's, 3's, 1's, yogurt quarts.

the small ones need a little ewc here & ther maybe a little top-dress

 

[thejact55]

Do you feed them any teas, top dress them or is everything plants need in soil?

The soil is fairly fortified with the slower release nutrients. I hit them with a tea like 2-4 times in their life. Nothing drastic.

 

[Bongi]

My experiment did not end welll last time. My blumat system did let all the water on the floor of my tent so I dont trust it anymore. I had to water by hand and had bad depression so my plants did dry up too much between waterings.
Next time I will use tray filled with perlite as my watering system.

I will use Candida cuttings in 4x 3 gallon fabric pots and 4x 0,5 gallon bottom watering pots. Bigger pots will be under 400w hps and smaller pots under 96w leds.

Mother plant needs week or two before I can take cuttings from it.

 

[Squirly_wrath]

I'm trying this out in 3gal smarties right now ill report back how it turns out

 

[bigbadbiddy]

I've tried this with 5 gallon smartpots over 5 grow cycles in roughly 2 years now.

My results:
I asked several times if I don't need to topdress or somehow reamend the soil after each round because I couldn't imagine that nutrients don't need to be replenished.

I didn't get good feedback, nor answers and kept hearing how notill means it gets better as time goes on.

Well in those 5 grow cycles I also twice used a fresh batch of soil.

The fresh batch always yielded great results, even though I had issues with PH, used a PH down for pools (which is anti-bacterial and kills the microherd .... doh) and also tried to mix in "organic" synthetic nutrients (Canna Bio) in the first 2 rounds.
But the second (and one time third) round with the same soil batch always were disastrous. But I believe this was mostly due to the N deficiency and compaction issues from the decomposing buckwheat hulls I used instead of perlite. This along with the other issues I havent even mentioned yet, like temperatures and the like. And mainly, I think, because I didn't topdress or otherwise reamend the soil in any way between grows. I just pulled out the stump and most of the roots and planted the next one in...

So long story short:
It does work and it does work well. I have no issues in 5 gallon smart pots aside from the fact that YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO REAMEND YOUR SOIL IN THOSE POTS after, I presume, every grow.

I have by no means figured everything out and am still struggling with several issues. Mainly compaction issues and massive nitrogen deficiency due to the buckwheat hulls I used instead of perlite composting in the soil.

After this run I plan to mix perlite into my soil mix for aeration and replacing the decomposed buckwheat hulls. Since I am already mixing it, I will amend it with bonemeal, bloodmeal, kelp, rock dusts, dolomite lime etc. to bring it back up.

Then I will do 1 run with it and expect it to give me equally good results as the 2 runs I had with fresh soil batches.

After that I will start top-dressing with blood, bone and kelp meal along with EWC and maybe some dolomite lime and maybe some epsom salts after every harvest before transplanting the next plant in the same pot.

I hope/expect that it will work fine then.


So far, for me, it didn't work in the 5 gallon containers but I believe that was all due to other issues and not the container size.

Will report back when I was able to fix the other issues and can safely say whether or not it works for me.


But I am pretty sure it works fine, you just need to topdress enough and the right things.

I also would say from my experience that not PHing my water in 5 gallon containers was a mistake. I am of the belief that in such smaller containers, PHing is maybe not absolutely necessary but to me, it seems like it definitely positively affected the plants. I believe that you need a certain volume of soil in order to successfully buffer the PH to the point where it doesn't matter much what you started with.


At the moment, I am trying to combat the nutrient deficiencies with aerated compost teas. Top-dressing EWC generously was not enough this time around. It did help a lot mid-flower last round. I used bloodmeal pellets instead of powder/meal since it wasn't available and I think the pelets took too long to release the nitrogen for the plants so I had nitrogen deficiency mid flower. I top-dressed generously with EWC and it did help a bunch.

I top-dressed with EWC again after the last round and it wasn't enough. A bunch of deficiencies showed up, nitrogen chief among them.

So now I am trying with aerated compost teas. Applied one with malted barley, EWC and molasses a few weeks ago with not as much effect as I had hoped.
2 days ago I applied a ACT with malted barley, EWC, molasses, kelp and bonemeal. I also defoliated heavily (a lot of dead/yellow growth had to go).
So far I couldn't tell how they reacted because they look completely different due to the defoliation but I have already started the next batch of ACT and will water them with it again in a few days. Hope they will improve considerably and new growth will not show so many nutrient deficiencies any more.

Problem is, I can't water as often because of the compaction/drainage issues... It is really tricky if you ask me and I often wondered if it wouldn't be a lot easier if I just went into beds or 20 gallon containers or something with a lot fewer plants. I am actually convinced it would be much easier then.

But I am trying to pheno hunt here and I need the high plant numbers to do so and 5 gallon is the largest I can go if I want to flower around 20 females at a time and make a selection...

Often wondered if I shouldn't switch to a hydroponic system at least until I have a few keepers selected. But what good is it to select in an (imho) inferior system? All the tastes and smells would be off/wrong and I might end up selecting plants that do well in hydro but are surpassed by others who would have done considerably better than them in organic soil...

 

[wasgedn]

i use 3.079569 gallon pots in 3rd run....covercrops....nema tagetes,several clays,lupines,gelbsenf
i will have lupine flower and bud photos this time....

i not only grow cannabis....
i grow the pots too...
even when no cannabis in it the pots they have my attention and care...
but i go only 1-2 times a week in growroom...good mix ,good drainage but also good in holding water...

 

[bigbadbiddy]

Thing is, the arguments against perlite in an organic no-till setting make absolute sense.

Everyone attempting no-till, be it in small or large containers, does it for the long haul.
And in the long haul, perlite becomes concrete.

So what are the alternatives?
My research told me rice hulls or buckwheat hulls, I later found out pumice or lava rock granules work fine as well.

Rice hulls weren't available, I didn't know about pumice or lava rock granules (did include lavarock meal in my rock dust mix though).

Buckwheat hulls were available locally and cheap, so I opted for those.

Big mistake. I have since found out that Jeremy from Build-a-Soil has tried the same as me and ran into exactly the same issues as me (fine first harvest but by round 2 everything goes down the drain due to the buckwheat hulls decomposing fast) and opted to can the soil and start a fresh batch with rice hulls/pumice because he didn't want to even attempt to start fixing the massive N-Deficiency with the buckwheat hulls.
He, like myself, did buy buckwheat hulls that were advertised for filling pillows, though. And like him, I will say: Maybe the folks who recommended buckwheat hulls as a perlite replacement used a different type of buckwheat hulls, because those for filling pillows are a disaster.

Otherwise, I really don't understand why people recommended those.
I was also told about the buckwheat hulls decomposing hella fast, several times, but looking at the top layer of the soil and the sides etc. it really doesn't look like the buckwheat hulls are decomposing that rapidly. You can still see their structure etc. and the water seems to drain fine. But at the core of the container, they are definitely decomposing fast and the core never dries out and the roots there don't get air.
I found it very hard to diagnose and would say buckwheat hulls are a real trap.

I am looking into pumice or lava rock granulates now but failing to source those, I will just use the perlite and be done with it.

Just don't use buckwheat hulls is the morale of the story I suppose.

 

[soil margin]

Yeah red lava rock and pumice are my two favorites for aeration. Really simple and effective. Only downside is it's expensive to buy, at least the decent stuff I've found online.

 

[MJPassion]

Is landscaping lava rock out of the question?
From your local land scape supplier or home despot or bLowes?

 

[Squirly_wrath]

Is landscaping lava rock out of the question?
From your local land scape supplier or home despot or bLowes?

should work just fine but make sure to pre rinse them

 

[bigbadbiddy]

wouldn't they be a bit too coarse/big (the granules) when going for landscaping lava rock?

I think on a farm they would be fine, large outdoor beds or the like.

In Pots, aside from the weight, I would think they are too big? Maybe they offer smaller granules/pieces for landscaping as well, I only ever saw the large, child fist size, pieces for landscaping.

 

[wasgedn]

you can buy several grain sizes ...not only one....

i use perlite,lava rock,vermiculite,silicia sand for drain among others feature's....

 

[Limeygreen]

If you can't find smaller lava rock, try a sledge hammer to break it down, heavy canvas bag or tarp from an army surplus should contain them fairly well.

 

[heady blunts]

pumice is great but with my back problems i usually opt for perlite to save some weight for when i have to mix soil and move containers.

also IME practicing no till with containers really mitigates most of my complaints about perlite---less disturbing of the soil means less mechanical agitation means less pulverized perlite dust, and developing soil aggregates/fungal networks/living root systems bind them in place so no floating issues.

bio char is another good option. it's also light weight and much more durable. i like it a lot but i've never used it for more than ~25% of my aeration portion personally.

 

[VortexPower420]

^ I agree about perlite. Everyone always says it floats and then crushes down Going on 7 years with this soil and have not had issues either way.

I went to water a friends garden while they were away. They just use bottles and no soil cover. It was like a raft of perlite on the top as the water tried to go through.

Perlite works great for a living soil.