Pot size for autos

[Papageno]

I have never grown any Auto flowering seeds before but just sprouted 2. In my experience bigger the pot the better the root system and better plant. However I keep reading how these guys don't get very big. I am wondering if anyone has tried to run them in different size pots and found say anything over X gallons is just a waste for an Auto. I have 15 gallon fabric pots and I am wondering if they are wastefully big for my autos.


Thanks!!!

 

[SquareHead]

I would say 15 gallon is way, way too big! The deal with autos is that they don't live long enough to fill out the larger pots. I have been quite happy using 3 gallon fabric pots for my autos. That seems to be about the right size without being too big and wasting soil.

Hopefully others will chime in with their opinions.

 

[jayboat]

I did the 3 gallon fabric pots of my last grow and i pulled around 320 grams from 4 plants (x3 kandy kush & 1 Northern lights) under a 600watt hps. I did have them under a 400watt led for there first 10 days. But i was very happy with my result

My current grow, i am using 5 gallon plastic pots and the plants are way bigger them my previous grow but they are different seeds (x3 fast and vast & 1 Peki ryder) and as its winter i no longer have heat problems.

To be honest i think 3 gallon are the standard for auto's cause that's what i've used last for my last 3 grows and i think around 4 out 12 plants would roots grow through the bottom of the fabric pot. Im only growing 5 gallon cause they were not be used for anything else and i thought id give a go.

 

[Papageno]

Thanks guys...I think I will go get a 3 and a 5 and run them side by side and in a few months I will post some results.

Best of luck to yall.

 

[Papageno]

Wouldn't ya know it...bitch gotta dick...Maybe next time. I have 3 left I will try a 7 or 10 gallon as well and put all 3 down in a few months after my standard normal ones are done. I have a few of the freebies going right now as well I need to finish first.

My first Feminized seeds and I get a male in 1 of 2...what a joke. I am gonna move him to a different location and harvest the pollen and breed a few popcorn buds on the female.

 

[whtelk]

I use 3 gallon only because I found I could get one more plant shoved in.... LOL. AND I was told NO topping an auto, sure worked out good for me.

 

[Papageno]

Male came back around... I would say they worked out but I am not really very happy with this result.

The experiment was a bust as the seeds did not germinate the same and the slower one took forever and was always behind and slower. The bigger pot will have much more final weight but I don't think it has anything to do with the pot. I think this is an F1 strain so it probably makes no sense to run this experiment.

But I am getting close to harvest. I have 3 more I will do in summer and possibly try pot size experiment again if they germinate evenly. I want to do a different grow fist. I have some better seed to get going.

That was a bit ago and they are still not yet done.

I also trained the bigger one so it would actually look a lot taller if I hadn't. But also the flowers would have matured less evenly.

I am sure that a 3 gallon would work fine for me moving forward given how little these things actually grow. Just feels wrong because I am too old at this and used to growing normal plants. Anything less than a 5 Gallon feel amateurish and a waste of time but I am sure I could make it work. I think my bigger problem was using a soil for a normal grow. I need to back it off a bit for these. Next time I will try a different blend.

 

[Emilya Green]

Thanks guys...I think I will go get a 3 and a 5 and run them side by side and in a few months I will post some results.

Best of luck to yall.

I am very curious as to the results of this experiment... please don't let me miss it.

 

[Papageno]

So that's what I was saying. The pics there are the 2 plants in different sized pots. I can't remember what I ended up with maybe a 7 and 5...I will measure it tonight but I recall I couldn't get what I wanted at the grow store so I settled for something close.

But the problem is the seeds grown in identical situations and soils worked very differently. One germinated much sooner and faster than the other. Those pics up there are from those original 2. The one on the right in the smaller pot has a smaller stem as you can see and very thin buds you can grab around with the hand. The bigger one has buds your hand wont fit around. So the bigger plant is in the bigger pot BUT it never was a fair race. The smaller one was always behind and smaller LONG before the pot size mattered and it never caught up.

I will take them down in a bit and when I pull them put I will post pics of the root ball to see how if they even got close to being root bound which is the real test. But these seeds did not ever have a fair go at it. The one was always way bigger and stronger from the get go. It popped up nearly a week before the second one. It was no contest even before planting them in these pots.


So I got 5 in the bunch and have 3 left. My next run is a bunch of seeds that are not autos I will be starting that in about 2 months as I just started my current photos on bloom. I grew these autos next to some regular photos and I SCROG'd out the photos while these guys bloomed away. The regulars are about 2 weeks into bloom so when those are done I will be running a handfull of fresh seeds to get some new strains going. Then after that run (so ~ 6 months from now) I will throw down those last 3 Autos and try again.

And just FY these are Blue Mystic Auto Fems. I think these may be an F1 which means it really isn't a fair test anyway. Does anyone know if this is a stable strain? What I am finding leads me to believe it is an F1 so this may be a futile test to begin with.


From the top they look like this...and don't forget the camera adds 10 lbs.


bigger one

smaller one

And they were not mature yet and looked like this still when I took those.

 

[MassMedMan]

Word has it you should plan for a gallon per month of growth, .i know, but if you have the soil I'd try a 15 for the heck of it. I use sevens now, have used 3,5, and sixes. But, I'm tempted to try a fifteen. I'm running some autos on Doc's kit that typically veg four to six weeks, but with or on Doc's they're vegging still two months in, although I think they ate stretching now, still rare to veg an auto for that long so I'm thinking I'll try a 15,'i hate to wonder. I have the same strain auto in a 3 and 7 gallon,,, I'll see if I can get a side by side. If you saw the three (which I topped) beside the seven, which i LSTd... You'd run them in sevens.

I've got just about thirty autos under my belt, over a dozen of the same strain (candy kush)

Just my pesos

 

[Z3ro]

At the end weigh the tops and also wash the roots and stalk free of soil then weigh those. I'm wondering what kind of root mass you end up with and how it relates to pot size and yields.

 

[Papageno]

Yeah what I am saying is this round was a bust. I would gladly do all of that if I thought it was fair to compare these 2 plants. The only thing I feel I can take away from this grow is did the bigger one get root bound. The smaller one simply never had a chance and was way behind the whole time long before the pot could have mattered.

I have 3 more which I will try again this summer after my next grow. If it all works out I will do all of that and post the results...but I wont do a 3 gal. I will probably do a 15, 10 and 5...assuming they sprout well. I will document the whole grow for you maybe do a journal...assuming they come up and are are reasonably similar.


Not to mention this was my first run at autos with a new lighting and ballast setup. I was still working out my adjustable ballast and light position on this grow. I made a few mistakes. I also wouldn't use the soil mix I used this time on Autos again.

Next summer I will use a lighter soil blend and have my new tent / fan / lighting more dialed in and do a much better job.

 

[Papageno]

I am an engineer and worked for 15 years in semiconductors making transistors smaller getting more die (chips) on a wafer. I have spent much of my life doing scientific experiments and analysis. I grew side by side cannabis experiments for over a decade back in the day... Trust me when I say this experiment was a bust.

 

[Papageno]

And by the way...all you have to do is look at the stalks of those two plants in the side by side pic to see the difference. The bigger pot is substantially bigger...MUCH bigger then the pot alone could have mattered. What isn't obvious (and thus why I added the training pic) is the bigger one is bent over sideways nearly 90 degrees and is still a bit taller. They are not even close in mass...way more different than the pot size could have done.

 

[Z3ro]

Well as a comparison experiment it may be a bust but it still looks productive. I wouldn't be disappointed in that.

 

[whtelk]

I too have found that the bigger the pot the more massive the trunk will be..... better roots. Fit in as big as pots as you can.

 

[whtelk]

My next grow I am going with air pots.... Seeing good results on a friends grow.

 

[Papageno]

Interesting...I have not seen any concrete data on airpots doing anything more than what the manf. claims... which does not improve growth above ground. But they never intended them to be used in our types of grows so they may have not tried to experiment with that.

I would be interested in seeing real data in some side by sides for those with fabric pots. I have too much already slated for the next year in my grows to try that but maybe in a year or so I will try one to see. Hard to believe that it makes that much of a difference though given how they work and what they do.

 

[Emilya Green]

Interesting...I have not seen any concrete data on airpots doing anything more than what the manf. claims... which does not improve growth above ground. But they never intended them to be used in our types of grows so they may have not tried to experiment with that.

I would be interested in seeing real data in some side by sides for those with fabric pots. I have too much already slated for the next year in my grows to try that but maybe in a year or so I will try one to see. Hard to believe that it makes that much of a difference though given how they work and what they do.

The airpots look very interesting and I will be watching several grows to see how they do compared to the cloth smart pots, which I am convinced work well to produce superior root balls. Superior root balls mean more buds, so I am currently changing over my operation to generic smart pots... I bought 7, 7 gallon containers for my next bloom.

 

[Papageno]

Yeah I agree... I use fabric for my important grows...things I am going to SCROG and run long.

I only use plastic for quickies. I have some clones from some females from this run I will run in fabric and might scrog next...but I have a bunch of regular seeds that could be males or females so I will run those in smaller pots but just enough to get some good clones and then start blooming them to see what I have. I might use fabric...I just picked up a handful of 7 gallon fabric pots yesterday. My plan yesterday was to run the current clones in the 7 gallon fabrics and just do some LST to save a little space and not scrog them. And run 1 of each of the standards I have and hope a few come out female.

I will clone everything so I know I have some females and then start the next grow with the intent of running a full SCROG on some known stock. And at that time I might run the auto fems again. I really want to save those for when I am comfortable with all my new equipment so I can get a good run at this experiment again. Maybe next spring after 2 more full grows.