Root Development vs Plant Growth

fdd2blk said:

thank you skunk. nice thread.



i believe you will have NO problems. looking at your plant to pot size comparison i can see they look just like mine. mine were bigger but the plant to pot size ratio looks exact.

Click to expand...

i thought that too. i have a vivid image of one of your trees in that relatively tiny pot, and it does look almost a scaled version... or at least on target.

I don't want to ruin this with plant overcrowding. So i'm going to sort the best ones tomorrow and concentrate on those.

I can't do a thing at the moment... plasterers are taking their time putting me a new ceiling in the kitchen, drinking tea etc... popping out for a pub lunch...

I need to raise the light... and give them todays feed, and separate them so they can grow properly.

Also, once the plastering has finished it means that I'm going to have to decorate the kitchen... lay new floor, tile the walls, breakfast bar.... I'm going to try and do it all in one day... get it out of the way.

I'm going to go tell those guys to hurry the feck up... I got plants that need feeding.

skunkushybrid said:

The second pic is of a plant given the best of the light. You need to remember there are currently 15 plants all scrambling for a 400w HPS. The third plant is of one that has been overshadowed by the others.

These plants like to stretch up and out. Give them the room and they will fill it.

Click to expand...

The structure of the second plants pic is spot on mate,nice and tight,i reckon your gonna get some nice super hard nugs from this lot.
The small pots will definitely help your buds to be tighter has always worked for me anyway and i was told to do it by a very old grower years ago,after i smoked some of his stuff and i wondered how he got his buds so hard on an outdoor grow

skunkushybrid said:

I can't do a thing at the moment... plasterers are taking their time putting me a new ceiling in the kitchen, drinking tea etc... popping out for a pub lunch...

I need to raise the light... and give them todays feed, and separate them so they can grow properly.

Also, once the plastering has finished it means that I'm going to have to decorate the kitchen... lay new floor, tile the walls, breakfast bar.... I'm going to try and do it all in one day... get it out of the way.

I'm going to go tell those guys to hurry the feck up... I got plants that need feeding.

Click to expand...

serve them some "coffee". tea is for old ladies.

fdd2blk said:

serve them some "coffee". tea is for old ladies.

Click to expand...

They've finished now... I can get on with the grow.

It'll be interesting to see this tighter nugs theory unfold... particularly when the strain I'm using (chronic x white russian) is not known for tight nugs.

My strain is a bloomer, out and out. Rather than sit there just getting all hard and solid like an indica, she blooms outwards, and constantly displays new bud growth right to the end just like a sativa. She has thin pistils whereas an indica has thick ones. The buds on her grow tight, but light and in much abundance.

Tightness of nugs comes down to genetics and quality of light. The reason why nat's uncle (or whatever) grew tight nug's 'even' outdoors is obvious, as he was growing using the sun. I would expect tighter nugs too... and look how much root a plant grown outdoors in the ground has.

Things are going to start kicking into high gear now... so here's the feed for this week, into 9litres of water:

Sensi Bloom A, 19ml
Sensi Bloom B, 19ml
MET Bloom, 12ml
Fulvic Acid, 12ml
Barricade, 1ml
Carboload, 8ml
Cannazym, 17.5ml
Piranha, 3.6g
Voodoo Juice, 36ml
Big Bud, 30ml

EC 1.2-1.4

The first pic' is of the 6 plants I've chosen to get the best of the light. The second pic is a weird bitch, two-headed freak brought on by the early stretch I encouraged the first 5 days. I've got another one too, with three heads... just remembered about that one. Either way, none of them have made it into the final 6.

The third pic' is of what these guys should look like approaching the end of flower. Plenty of side branches.

I'm itching to get those other chronics down... just a few more days and they can come down. I took one today... shouldn't have. Around an oz and a half when its dry, which isn't too bad, only the bud isn't ready.

The flowerers are doing ok. So too are the vegging indicas, which have been in there for 27 days. In all fairness to the veggers, I haven't exactly been boosting them up with feed and I have been neglecting the somewhat. They now feed twice a day.

Has anyone ever given 24 hour light half way through flower and see what happens? I may try it on the ones I have vegging at the moment.

These guys are growing exactly the same as if I had them in a larger container. I have 6 mystery seeds germinating at the moment, hopefully a couple will pop so I can study the relationship in a seed plant.

Meanwhile, here is a pic' of the favoured 6.

They looks pretty big now.... How long did you veg these for again?

Have you checked on the roots lately?? You'd think they would be rootbound by now....but they sure dont look it...

kt0s.6o4 said:

They looks pretty big now.... How long did you veg these for again?

Have you checked on the roots lately?? You'd think they would be rootbound by now....but they sure dont look it...

Click to expand...

They vegged for 18 days. I've checked the bottom of the pots and they are fine. I'm struggling for space even with 6 under the light. There's some nice bud heads forming too.

One thing I've noted is that so far, not only have I used less medium but I've also used less feed as well. I feel that in the larger pots a lot of space is wasted, and therefore a lot of feed too.

I can't wait to try the seed version of this.

Here is an indica plant, 28 days into veg'... The plant is also 14" high, and in a slightly smaller pot than the other 0.5litre. I've also not been boosting these up with feed the way I usually would. This is merely to demonstrate that even in veg' these plants are still nowhere near rootbound, even after 28 days veg' in this tiny pot.

On the blueberry i'm growing, i set them all going at the same time and they all more or less popped at the same time, 4 of them are in 6" cubes and the other one started out with just 1 4" cube, the roots were flowing freely from the underneath so i put another one underneath, I can't really notice a lot of difference in growth on the whole between the plants.

skunkushybrid said:

They vegged for 18 days. I've checked the bottom of the pots and they are fine. I'm struggling for space even with 6 under the light. There's some nice bud heads forming too.

One thing I've noted is that so far, not only have I used less medium but I've also used less feed as well. I feel that in the larger pots a lot of space is wasted, and therefore a lot of feed too.

I can't wait to try the seed version of this.

Click to expand...

Interesting... I'm currently flowering a range of pots from 5 gallons to 1 pint. All of which were raised from seed. I have noticed that in my past 5 grows, the plants have not utilized the full 5 gallons of media. I also did not use as rich of a nutrient mix as you have, however from first glance I would agree it is a waste.

skunkushybrid said:

Here is an indica plant, 28 days into veg'... The plant is also 14" high, and in a slightly smaller pot than the other 0.5litre. I've also not been boosting these up with feed the way I usually would. This is merely to demonstrate that even in veg' these plants are still nowhere near rootbound, even after 28 days veg' in this tiny pot.

Click to expand...

Ye thats another thing that i think people get confused about,pot bound and root bound.
When i was learning i was taught that root bound is good and pot bound is bad.
Pot bound to me means when the plants roots are so tightly bound that the plant cannot grow anymore due to the confines of its pot.
Root bound just means that the plant has made a tight root ball and the roots are showing all around the sides of the medium if you remove the pot.
Having a tight shapely root ball is actually good for cannabis,in my opinion anyway.
Being pot bound is bad for any plant

natmoon said:

Being pot bound is bad for any plant

Click to expand...

...and when do you feel this pot bound you speak of occurs? You have already stated that you did this experiment back when I was in nursery school. So I'd appreciate you sharing your opinion. how long would I need to veg a plant in a container no larger than a regular can of coca cola before the plant becomes pot bound? How large would this plant get before the dimensions of its container became a hinderance to it's growth?

skunkushybrid said:

...and when do you feel this pot bound you speak of occurs? You have already stated that you did this experiment back when I was in nursery school. So I'd appreciate you sharing your opinion. how long would I need to veg a plant in a container no larger than a regular can of coca cola before the plant becomes pot bound? How large would this plant get before the dimensions of its container became a hinderance to it's growth?

Click to expand...

As soon as you see the plant in questions growth rate slow right down assuming all other conditions are perfect.
Its impossible to say how long exactly,but i would hazard a guess that growing as you do that as long as the water has a decent amount of oxygen in it that you will be able to get away with growing a hardy indica in that same pot from start to finish.
The main problem that you will have is that the weight of the buds may try to tip the small pots over.

I have several plants in coffee cup size pots that will be ready for the chop in 4-6 weeks.
I wont be repotting them at all and they grow just fine.

Also i wasn't trying to state that you were confused just in general people confuse severe pot binding with healthy root binding

natmoon said:

but i would hazard a guess that growing as you do that as long as the water has a decent amount of oxygen in it that you will be able to get away with growing a hardy indica in that same pot from start to finish.
The main problem that you will have is that the weight of the buds may try to tip the small pots over.

I have several plants in coffee cup size pots that will be ready for the chop in 4-6 weeks.
I wont be repotting them at all and they grow just fine.

Click to expand...

You got any pic's of these plants in the coffee cups?

I already know about the weight problem... although in pots these size it's the actual plant that will get too big, no need for it to get any bud. As you can see from the pic' of the indica, the plant is already too big for the pot, yet it keeps growing.

I'm also feeding from the bottom on the flowerers only, and they are hardly getting any oxygen. I just let them soak it up. The vegging plants are being fed from the top. So, 4 weeks veg and no such thing as root bound, nor this pot bound you speak of.

And how long is start to finish?

Heres one of them i planted as seed on the 1st of september in a small pot.
It is 30" tall and has about 5 weeks left.
It should provide me with a 32-33" stick of bud in the end i hope.
I burnt all of my side line testing plants(plants not directly under the light) to varying degrees including this one. My unstable as yet ppp x blueberry was the worst and is half dead,does not like strong nutes at all

How does that plant stand up? it looks in the pic' as if it is leaning against the wall, so ordinarily would you tie it up?

That's some serious nute burn... not a single fan leaf left and even the little leaves are showing signs of burn. That plant is going to struggle.

Also, what strain is it? It's tiny side branches suggest indica. How long did you veg' the plant?

I think so far the experiments are shaping up to confirm the original hypothesis, that the actual size of the root system, doesn't have anything to do, independently, with the size or healthiness of a plant. As long as the plants are getting the nutrients that they need to maximize the amount of light they are getting too photosynthesize. It would make sense that the plants in nature have large root systems, seeing as they have pretty much all the light they can handle, and that in general each cubic foot of soil has a set level of nutrients in it (varying by region of course), so in order to find more nutrients to maximize the sunlight, it has to have as much root surface area as possible. I think FDD's outdoor plants are also a great example of this, his plants are massive compared to his pot size, because he feeds them enough nutrients. I have also seen plants (my own) which did not have enough light or nutrients, but were in very big pots, and the root system was larger than the upward growth.

I would be interested in a side by side comparison of 2 plants grown outdoors in the soil, one which just gets rainwater and watever nutrients are found in the soil, and another which gets a good feeding of nutes right around the base of the plants. Then when the grow is over pull out the root system to see what the size difference is (if any).

p.s. on a side note about the B-vitamins, Ive been looking at experimenting with my GF's pre-natal vitamins, which have 4 or 5 B-vitamins in them. I don't know if these are the right kind, but if so, they could be a cheap and easily available additive.