Perpetual Short Bus: A Crop Circle Story

soil grows, im refering to.

i know of people that do when transplanting well they don't cut it off but they make a slice around it i do it with my ferns and other plants that i have in my flower garden i nvr do it with my mj plants

Sometimes when transplanting, I try to untangle the roots so they have a better chance of taking off in a new direction. I know Hobbes used to slash a plus sign into spiraling roots when he found them. Usually by the time my roots start accumulating I'm moving the plant into a different container anyhow, but since I started doing everything in root pruning containers, I just get chunky, even rootballs. Short answer, I know of a lot of folks, including Hobbes, who cut into the spiraling roots of pot-bound plants to promote new growth and it makes sense to me.

after seeing the one pic you had of the party cup with holes in it for air pruning..i gave it a try...the haze i have now was my first test subject...i only had maybe 2mm of root come out the holes...which i would snip off...and holy fuck did it help...i transplanted the haze into a 1 gallon bucket...2 days after transplanting it...i had roots all over the bottom of the bucket (bottom is clear) now the roots are everywhere in the bucket...i dont see any reason to slice the roots doing it this way...they seem to explode after transplant

djruiner said:

after seeing the one pic you had of the party cup with holes in it for air pruning..i gave it a try...the haze i have now was my first test subject...i only had maybe 2mm of root come out the holes...which i would snip off...and holy fuck did it help...i transplanted the haze into a 1 gallon bucket...2 days after transplanting it...i had roots all over the bottom of the bucket (bottom is clear) now the roots are everywhere in the bucket...i dont see any reason to slice the roots doing it this way...they seem to explode after transplant

Click to expand...

The roots dont need to actually come out, just be exposed to the air-barrier, like in the fabric Smart Pots, for the air-pruning effect to be beneficial.

I am going to start veg'ing in 1 or 2 ga smart pots and transplant to 2.5 or 3.5 ga DIY air-pot/pails for lst/flower (until I get around to ordering some 1 liter Air Pots for seedlings and 10 liter 'Tender crop' Air Pots for veg-LST/Flower). The couple of plants I just potted up from 2ga smart pots to 3.5ga air-pails didn't slow down a bit, no transplant shock. The grow shop was all out of my 3.5ga black pails the other day so I grabbed some 2.5ga Tubs to use/compare.

I dont have any pics up in my thread yet for the past few days, since transplanting, but I will try to update my grow journal later tonight or tomorrow. I just found some nice pet-proof screen door mesh (black/plastic), at Ace Hardware, for my air-pails instead of aluminum mesh.

However you do it, it's definitely impressive to me how much easier they take to transplanting. There's a pic or 2 in the thread of what happens after a couple days in a new container, root-splosion. Instead of rootbound, they just get dense, developing hundreds of little side roots that take off when they hit open medium again. I hear good things about the smart pots, a friend of mine uses em and says his girls love it. The black mesh sounds like a winner, too.

thanks for the info. I'm thinking that I will do of my next grow based on the root pruning buckets and the other alf withthe "self watering" buckets

I was really hoping that I could get those two styles of buckets to work as one but I'm not really sure how to make that happen

Short Bus said:

However you do it, it's definitely impressive to me how much easier they take to transplanting. There's a pic or 2 in the thread of what happens after a couple days in a new container, root-splosion. Instead of rootbound, they just get dense, developing hundreds of little side roots that take off when they hit open medium again. I hear good things about the smart pots, a friend of mine uses em and says his girls love it. The black mesh sounds like a winner, too.

Click to expand...

Here are the 3.5ga pails I made the other day with aluminum mesh:







And the 2.5ga Tub I made yesterday with the pet screen:

Here's what it looks like. Not like this involved a lot of work, but I'm loving the functionality. So are my younglings.



Here's a look at the younglings. The right side plantlets were rooted clones a week ago.





Now I can use all of my veg room for vegging the big girls inside their buckets, so they can get their legs under them. At the moment I'm prepping a small crop circle in a 1 gal bag and a few SOG plants to keep it company while I restock my veglings. Also in the big chamber, 2 DWC buckets and and 2 untrained CCOB buckets. The plan is to run the tray of assted plants to fill space, then the 2 trial hydro buckets, then be back to my usual schedule of 2 CCOB buckets every 8 days.

Those look great, rasputin, so do the plants in the background.

I'm super over Roots Organic soil. Their soilless medium is great shit and I recommend it, but the regular Roots is crap. Got a bunch of it for super soil, going off of Subcool's recipe. The super soil formula is great, my plants love it, except that the Roots just doesn't breathe and hardens into straight up dirt. So I'm adapting to super coco. More on that as I dial it in. In the mean time, I thought I'd share my recipe for starter coco since it's been working so well for me.

Short Bus Starter Coco (makes little plants big): Ingredients
1 block Botanicare Cocogro (or whatever brand you like)
3 quarts of hot tap water
2 cups perlite, more if you want it
1/8 cup of Kelp Meal
1 teaspoon granulated humic acid
1 teaspoon Epsom Salt
1 teaspoon mycorrhizae

That's it. Dump your powdered ingredients into the hot water and let it sit for a while, maybe half an hour, maybe more. Drop the coco brick in the bucket, stir the water and and slowly add it into the bucket. I usually dump some, stir until I hit dry coco brick, and reapeat. It takes a while for the water to distribute, maybe another hour, but it's better to wait than to have soggy medium. After the water soaks in, add the perlite and mix by hand to break up any clumps of coco. When you're done, you'll want to sleep in the stuff. Soft n fluffy, breathable and clean. I really think my plants get pissed about getting suffocated in mud.











Blam. 4 gallons of organic coco for around 4 bucks. This does not eliminate the need to feed. The pint of this recipe is to create an ideal rooting environment. The kelp meal stimulates growth of roots and foliage and the humic acid encourages rapid and explosive root growth so you can start pruning sooner. Like this here, about a week into veg.



Enjoy!

ThirdHyeOpen said:

I was really hoping that I could get those two styles of buckets to work as one but I'm not really sure how to make that happen

Click to expand...

I think that if you left your cover bucket intact (no drainage holes) and ran a wick through your soil and out through the holes in the bottom of the air pruning bucket into water in the cover bucket, you could maintain a small reservoir. I didn't watch the video on the site you showed me, just read the article, so I may be missing something. Purely speculation on my part, I've never used any kind of wick system. I'd keep an eye out for stagnation, algae, etc.

everything ls looking lovely in this journal.

Just a thought. By leaving out the drain holes on the cover bucket it could possibly restrict air flow through your medium causing root rot. I don't know that for sure but would guess to say it wouldn't be good. I do however love the little youngling cabinet. Very nice! And rasputin71 just wanted to say good looking buckets and how about a few pic's of that garden.

Pics are in my journal, linked in my signature line. I am just starting my 2nd grow and trying to go perpetual.

So I'm gonna have to wait on the 1000 watt for a minute, but I ordered a Ceramic MH bulb for my veg tent. Should show up next week. Awesome. Been wanting one of those forever.

Bus, since you didn't get the thousand....

Have you considered using (2) 2' 4bulb T5s as supplemental lighting? Put one on each end of the cage at plant level, that way none of the plants are ever without some type of direct light. Should help the lower part of the plants develop a lot better. Also, since each fixture is only 100 watts, you'd save a lil scratch on electricity (800W w/ supplemental T5s vs. 1000W w/ the big light).

What do you think?

hey short bus...i got a question for ya...im right now 1 week in from the 12/12 flip...i was thinking of transplanting m biggest party cup ccob into a 1 gallon bucket...would this be a bad idea seeing that its flowering...but because of all the growth its slow going..only a 2-4 pistils at each node right now..so its just entering flowering...will it hurt too much for me to transplant it now...and think i should tie the main stem down if i do it so it dont try to stand up after transplant?

Short Bus, you ever read any of RiddleMe's threads? He did a Balls to the Walls grow using nothing but the 400 watt CMH bulbs and they turned out awesome. The higher IR gave more resin production. If you haven't check it out the man is brilliant.