Growing in small pots

[Tranquilidade]

Any advice on how to treat plants while growing in small pots? By small, I mean smaller than 1 gallon or even 1/2 gallon. Every time I grow, I end up in yellowing plants, stunted growth, small leaves, etc. One thing I've discovered is light intensity. If I grow the same plant in the same pot but using 4x40W CFLs, I get way less problems, but if I try to grow them under 480W LED, I immediately face issues.

Can I still use 480W LEDs and grow great small plants? If I reduce the intensity or hang lamps higher, would that help?

Please share your experiences.

 

[troutman]

It's best to flower ASAP in small pots.

 

[Tranquilidade]

What about watering and feeding?

 

[GoatCheese]

You can grow plants in 2-3,5 liter pots of soil, no problem. I do it all the time cause i lack room to grow big plants. Just make sure your pots won’t dry out too much when you’re using small pots cause as soon as the soil dries out too much the leds will damage your plants, esp. if the light is abit too close to your plants.

480 watt led is totally different animal than 4 x 40w cfl lights, so i think your biggest problem is that your light is too powerful for your plants or you’re keeping the light too close to them.
Modern leds, esp. if you’re a soil grower, need quite abit of distance to the canopy. Hydro/coco growers can keep their plants closer to leds cause with these growing styles the plants have more moisture in their tissue compared to soil grown plants, so they won’t dry out so easily.

If you’re running that 480 watter at 100% you prolly need atleast 50cm distance between the plants and the leds maybe more. It all depends on the environmental factors like humidity, temperature and air movement in your grow space. Leds need a good humidity % and temperature in the grow area to work well.
Calmag and epsom salts will help plants to keep in better shape under leds and they won’t dehydrate so easily.

 

[exploziv]

You could grow in coco, and then a gallon is more than enaugh, and half a gallon is doable too. My guess is you would need a way to auto water them cause it will take a lot of water and nutes to keep them happy.

 

[f-e]

You might need to increase your feed with the increase of light. Also your pH could be a bit high. I'm not sure what you are growing in.

Aim around 15w a foot in veg, and have a foot between the tops and lights. That shouldn't be too much. You can go from there, once you have established the issue.

Pics would be helpful


GoatCheese Calcium Chloride might be a better choice in your low RH environment. Use that with Epson salts. That's your calmag, without the N. It's the Chlorine you want. It stops cells loosing moisture. They should stay more turgid while still breathing better as the RH drops.

When a cell absorbs Cl[SUP]−[/SUP], it accumulates in the cell vacuole and lowers the cell water potential below that of the medium surrounding the cell. Water then flows into the cell and increases hydrostatic cell pressure so that it maintains a pressure that exceeds the force exerted by the plasmalemma. The cells remain turgid and are able to grow even when drought conditions prevail. Theoretically, plants that get root diseases might be protected by supplying sufficient Cl so that they could still grow normally in soils with greater moisture deficits

 

[Dr.Young]

You can grow plants in 2-3,5 liter pots of soil, no problem. I do it all the time cause i lack room to grow big plants. Just make sure your pots won’t dry out too much when you’re using small pots cause as soon as the soil dries out too much the leds will damage your plants, esp. if the light is abit too close to your plants.

480 watt led is totally different animal than 4 x 40w cfl lights, so i think your biggest problem is that your light is too powerful for your plants or you’re keeping the light too close to them.
Modern leds, esp. if you’re a soil grower, need quite abit of distance to the canopy. Hydro/coco growers can keep their plants closer to leds cause with these growing styles the plants have more moisture in their tissue compared to soil grown plants, so they won’t dry out so easily.

If you’re running that 480 watter at 100% you prolly need atleast 50cm distance between the plants and the leds maybe more. It all depends on the environmental factors like humidity, temperature and air movement in your grow space. Leds need a good humidity % and temperature in the grow area to work well.
Calmag and epsom salts will help plants to keep in better shape under leds and they won’t dehydrate so easily.

Super good advice, humidity is everything, and with high performance lights it will be your best friend or worst enemy. If you are struggling to keep the humidity/temps in correct range for VPD you definitely wanna get a pump sprayer for the plant/soil, or adjust light height/power.. Im battling all this myself currently because of insane weather 20 degrees one minute 70 the next outside and I cant even flip my plants into flower because I want to get them 100% healthy first.

 

[GoatCheese]

Super good advice, humidity is everything, and with high performance lights it will be your best friend or worst enemy. If you are struggling to keep the humidity/temps in correct range for VPD you definitely wanna get a pump sprayer for the plant/soil, or adjust light height/power.. Im battling all this myself currently because of insane weather 20 degrees one minute 70 the next outside and I cant even flip my plants into flower because I want to get them 100% healthy first.

Yea, leds are very problematic during colder seasons unless you have a controlled room, esp. because i’m a soil grower.

To get the RH and temps up during winter i put a timer on my exhaust fan - which also has a controller on it running on very low - 15 min ON 60 min OFF but i have a circulating fan in my tent to mix the air all the time when lights are on.
This helped quite abit. From about 20% RH and 24 C temps i got it to rise to 50-60% RH and temps to 26-27 C, but both go down very soon after the exhaust fan starts to operate. But it’s a nice, cheap and easy trick to try if you’re struggling with proper RH and temps during cold season

 

[Tranquilidade]

I grow indoors and attached the screenshot of temps and humidity for the last 7 days. 1st chart shows day and night temps in C. Second chart shows high and lows of RH.

 

[Douglas.Curtis]

Small containers are fine, as long as you use deep ones and use an easy draining soil.

FWIW, I flower at 70F max, RH preferred at mid to low 20's. The lack of humidity keeps transpiration high and LED runs are no problem.

 

[Tranquilidade]

What about distance from the lamp? Attaching my LED info:

 

[GoatCheese]

What about distance from the lamp? Attaching my LED info:

It all depends on temps, humidity and air movement in your grow area and your growing style (hydro vs soil).
​​​if environmental conditions are at optimum then if you’re a hydro/coco grower the distance between light and canopy would be maybe around 50cm+ but if you’re a soil grower then you need to hang your light higher, to somewhere around 60-75cm with 100% power.

 

[exploziv]

With proper vpd and nutrition I can keep my lights at 20 to 25 cm away at 100% power in coco. Before, in soil, even 50% at 35 cm was too much to ask without major defs..
I am talking mars hydro fc3000 light, should be 1000 ppfd or more at that height. Maybe even 1200+ ppfd in some places.
I am now just running a test cause its first time for me in coco and don't have a grow posted, but will start one in a few months.
Plants are now under 7 weeks from seed, some minor Cal Mag defs I am already treating for a while already..

 

[Tranquilidade]

I think my biggest problem is dealing with rootbound. What do you recommend to do when plants are in middle of flower and got rootbound? It’s too late to transplant, but maybe there are ways to save the plants?

 

[Dropped Cat]

Less yield is better than no yield, but if the plants are root bound little to be done other than
perhaps reduce light intensity and feed lightly till chop.

The only time I transplanted in flower was after a dropped plant, but that's another story, lol

 

[Tranquilidade]

GoatCheese Calcium Chloride might be a better choice in your low RH environment. Use that with Epson salts. That's your calmag, without the N. It's the Chlorine you want. It stops cells loosing moisture. They should stay more turgid while still breathing better as the RH drops.

How do you mix calcium chloride with epson salts in the soil? What are the proportions for 1 gall pot?