12/12 from seed questions

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Deedoubleusee

New Member
I'm starting to flower my dwc vegged plants tomorrow. I'm germinating some seed right now and I want to soil grow them under my 600w hps along with my prevegged plants to get a little more out of this grow. I bought some ffof locally. I'm wondering if this would be worth it and will they finish around the same time? Also, what size pot should i start with? Do i need to transplant or just keep in tthe same pot? I have a close to one gallon pot, a 1.5 gal pot and a 2.5 gal. Which should i use? This is my first soil grow also.These are sativa dominate seeds I believe. Used them last grow and I they took like 12 weeks flower ><
Thank you for your time and help
 
FFOF might be a little hot for seeds to start in. Also make sure you finish transplanting before they begin to flower or you'll get dirt in your buds. I would start in solo cups of happy frog, and then in 3 weeks once they begin to flower I would put them into 2 or 3 gallon buckets.
 
Yea I may mix half and half OF and HF
I think I'm going to put in final pots right off the bat 5.8L. Should I use tap water of about 200ppm? Or r/o at like 5ppm? Or add cal mag to the ro water?
 
If you're growing 12/12 from seed then a gallon pot would be the maximum size you need, and actually a little too big. I'll go dig up some pictures of my 12/12 from seed plants and edit them in here.


Ok here is a photo of six plants grown 12/12 from seed in solo cups. This is well before harvest and they got quite a bit fatter, but not taller. This photo was the last one I have of the six together. There had been a glitch in the watering system the week before and as you can maybe see one of the ones in front dried up and died- and a couple others suffered a little.

image36684.jpg



Before you say jump to the conclusion that they'd be stunted from the small containers- it isn't my impression that they were. I've done several of these small plants since then, in one gallon pots. The two rounds I did after the solo cup ones were vegged for a few weeks under 18/6 lighting- so they got a bit more daylight time in before going to 12-12 and were slightly bigger.
Here is a Lemon Venom plant in a 3 litre pot- vegged for over three weeks before going 12/12. Topped once. I think even in one gallon pots you could expect them to be about the same size as the ones in the solo cup size containers. One gallon would be a bit too big for them in terms of overwatering risk. I like to be able to soak a plant down and not drown it as it sits there wet for 8 days. This Lemon Venom is about as small as I would want the plant/pot size ratio to be. I like to be able to soak them down and have them dry within 5 days. Going 12-12 from seed, especially in soil, I think a 1/2 gallon pot would be fine, and add extra perlite.
IMG_76098.JPG


IMG_76157.JPG
 
Thanks for your input. It's greatly appreciated. I almost potted them up in 5.8L pots so like 1.5gal I guess. I'll put them in the next size down from 1.5. I think they're one gallon. Like a giant solo cup. So the main issue with the bigger pot is that you can't water thoughouly enough without overwatering. Is this why people transplant into bigger pots?
 
It really makes life far easier when there is a good pot-to-plant size balance. The plant thrives because it can be fed thoroughly with runoff, and then dry out again in a respectable time period (less than a week is ok but 3-5 days is better). Roots need oxygen, and a constant wet state is terrible for cannabis. (DWC hydro has bubblers to supply the oxygen).

A theory for transplanting up one size at a time is that it builds a much better root system. Roots like to shoot to the outsides of the pot and bunch up there. If you do several transplants over time you should have a way more even root structure. Or so many knowledgeable people say.

Mostly it's just the watering issue that I find to be the huge factor though. Overwatering cannabis is really not a good thing, and it's so easy to do in an oversized pot. And so difficult to undo.

You can work around it if your plant is in a pot that's too big for it. You can dribble water around the edges, mist it, soak a little in from below, and kind of pussyfoot around the situation, but if you ever water it fully, it's going to be bad news.

You want the size ratio where you can just go in there and soak them, and know they'll dry out again in a few days. It's way harder to screw things up that way, and you much more control over managing nute levels.

Different mediums hold different amounts of water and oxygen. Soil can be the heaviest and wettest unless it has lots of perlite or something like that. Coco is more aerated and harder to overwater, except in the early stages. Pure perlite seems impossible to overwater at any stage. The perfect plant/pot size ratio changes a bit depending on your medium.

Most very young seedlings of any kind are in that sort of danger zone where you can't fully soak them without trouble. I premix and moisten the peatmoss soilless I use, before I plant the sprout in it. Usually I don't need to water after that for the first two weeks of growth.

People do that with autos- put it in the largest sized pot- because the things have such a short life span that anything that slows them down, like transplants, should be avoided. There are even a few growers that like to keep photo plants in their final pots from day one. Personally I really don't like having an oversize pot. You can't water it well without drowning it. You can't flush it if there's a problem or achieve any runoff to wash out excess nutes. It's way more tricky to keep it healthy. It sucks.

In some of my first grows I overwatered a lot because I didn't know about the concept of a wet-dry cycle- and the plants totally hated me for it.
 
I have problems watering in soil I always over do it really need to learn that less is more


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I have not ever invested in perlite would you recommend it or could u achieve the same if not better results with just soil and more accurate measures of water


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I've never grown soil. But, perlite makes drainage better allowing more oxygen to the roots. Im sure its worth it if overwatering is a problem for you.
Do you use tap or ro water? Wondering what I should use
 
The grow isn't at my home so I have to keep everything simple and the taste from soil is the best one day I would really like to try hand watering in Rockwool or some form of hydroponics because the yields so much better arnt they


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Not sure. I yielded half pound from 5 plants in a DWC system. I used home made hoods out of cut rubbermaids with cfls and a cpu fan in the top venting heat. Ran about 750w of cfl. Stupid lol. I just bought a 600w hps system so well see what I yield this time around. Hoping double if not more. This will be my second only grow. First time usin hps
 
Deedoubleusee said:
Awesome man. Got it! Thank you very much. What did you water with. Tap or Ro water. And do you add cal mag to your RO?
Click to expand...

Personally I use rainwater just because that's my setup where I am (middle of nowhere)
- which is basically the same as RO. I add calmag at about 5ml/gallon.
 
I use a 3 part system grow micro bloom and I bought cal mag not to long Ano been putting 10 mill in ten liter of water along with the nutrients after the plants are about 2.5 weeks old


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Yes. I grow in soilless though, which means my medium has no added nutes- basically it's a form of hydro. I mix the calmag in to my reservoir of rainwater in the veg room at 3-5 ml/gallon as a base. It ends up being 150-250 ppm For my youngest plants in the first few weeks I use only that calmag mix as a fertilizer. My calmag contains 2% N, which is quite a lot- almost as much as the Grow nute I use. It works very well to use the calmag mix as a grow nute until they're about 5 or more inches high or so then I start to bump it up a little with added nutes.
But- if someone is growing in soil, they probably don't need to add calmag, at least in the early days. I'm not a soil grower so can't comment on that really. Dolomite lime should be able to supply cal/mag for a soil grow.
At any rate- when adding calmag always factor in that it's a nutrient containing quite a lot of N.
 

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