Root bound question

[santiago19]

Hi

I'm in the southern hemisphere.

My growing season is from 1 september until about end of april, transplanting the seedlings at about begining november into their last pots.

I've always used 80 Liter, 20 gallon pots with no root bound problems, but this year I decided to scale down to 45 Liter pots about 11 gallon, as I need the pots to be a bit moveable.

My question is, will the plants keep going strong from begining november until late april of the next year in these 45 Liter pots or will there be a possibility of root bound towards the end? I hope not, what do you guys think that's been growing in pots for a long time, yield , size, ?

I am growing in soil and have these strains lined up, GSC, Blue dream, Bay 11, pineapple express, gods gift, c99 etc.

Thank you for your time

 

[farm420ok]

This seems like a great question. Im going to make an assumption here, in that your november, is my april (start of spring). Generally speaking we plain mid April for September harvest, which follows the soltice schedule for outdoor plants. That said, your plant will become root bound in this amount of time, and restrict its growing, I believe. Any plant that becomes root bound, will be restricted in growing, especially a flowering plant. Im no canna expert, but I know general gardening. That said, I have a few question to try and help figure out a solution.

Are you starting with 11 gallon pots?

Why do they need to be moved?

Can you not transplant into bigger pots as needed?

Have you looked at what the growing season is for your region and compared that to your expected flowering size? (I'm assuming this is for an outdoor grow)

You are moving to a pot about half the size, so expect about half the production. However, there are several techniques you can utilize to up the production, I'm sure some other members can elaborate far better than I can.

One thing I have considered is using furniture rollers to assist in moving the bigger pots. I have a few plants that will go into 25 gallon pots soon, and I'll be using those to help with moving around.

There are a few other things you can do to increase yield on the pot size, like scrog setup, but that generally makes the immobile from a general perspective. I suppose one could get creative to make it mobile. 11 gallon pots will still make some really nice plants. Many don't even go above 5 or 6 gallon and have great yields. You are changing how you normally do things, so there will be an effect on the production you are use to, to what extent, I'm not sure.

 

[santiago19]

I'm not really worried about the yield as such. I've done alot of topping and lsting, all I want to know is does my plants have a chance to rootbound from being in the 11 gal pots from november till april? They will be in smaller pots from september until november, when I transplant them into their final pot which in this case will be the 11 gals pending more replys.

I don't know what to do, an Ak-47 went rootbound on me last year being in a 5 gallon pot from October till December, only 2 months.

 

[farm420ok]

I would assume they will become root bound. But if yield isn't a major concern, then there is no big deal. It will still flower, assuming it has all the proper nutes, not over or under watered. Again, I'm no canna expert, but I am a fairly decent gardener.

My best tomatoes come from rootboud plants, because it's easier to fix any deficiencies, and they seem to respond better to nutrients than the the plants in ground that are not root bound. I simply assume the same is true with any plant. Rootbound simply means it won't grow any bigger.

 

[santiago19]

I understand, but in my case when my cannabis plants rootbound they become unhealthy and droop heavily, thus the reason I'm so concerned about the rootbound, I don't mind the not growing bigger after rootbound, prefer it in some cases, but if the not growing bigger was my only problem I'd start off with the 11 gals right on the spot.

The wheels are very a good idea, had the same thought, but it just won't work in my situation/grow area. (One of the reasons I'm wanting to go down to 45 Liter) I can't move the 80 liter at all without wheels, the 45 liters can still be moved with effort quickly in hazardous situations, but will still fuck my back..

 

[farm420ok]

Water. They will require more of it, especially in flower. They will perspire alot. The problem in wilting is not a root problem, imo. I would actually recommend a different medium then soil in this case, like coco, since it drains well. It would likely require watering 2x daily in coco during flower doing it the way you want, but I suspect that would help address the issue of wilting without over watering. It will require more care, so its a give and take. perhaps a drip system would help. I dunno, kinda reaching at this point.

You aren't the first person with this delimma, and won't be the last.

One idea that just popped into my head, what about a shopping cart and just leaving them in there. I see them in the garbage all the time that just need a wheel, or maybe they have been abused and unsuitable for shoppers. One mans trash is another mans treasure. Trying to think outside the box here.

 

[flashmp3]

Thanks for this topic and the discussion here guys! Very interesting! I was also wondering about root bound. I m currently growing multiple plants and had planted more seeds than need to be sure to have everything ready at the same time.

Grow space ready and running!

• flashmp3
• Jun 15, 2018

So I have to babies that won't have space indoor :

Green crack

• flashmp3
• Jun 20, 2018

Day 5 from seed

So as summer is coming tomorrow I was thinking of just put them outside on the balcony and let them do whatever they want. The thing is that they have to remain short (privacy). Also they won't have more than 7 hours of direct sunlight. I don't really care about the yields but would be happy to get even 1 oz for the two plants. So rootbound may be good for me if they keep developing and flowering well. I would have to put them right now to flowering to have small one bud plants but can't. I plan to just top them to keep them small. Considering the size of the pot (small rockwool cube in coco), they shouldn't grow tall