3 ft Plant: Soil -> Hydro Transplant

Just wondering if anyone has ever done this. I just picked up a teen clone from a dispensary was wondering if a plant this old, about 2.5 ft tall, would survive a transplant from soil to hydro. Its sitting in what looks like a 1-2 gallon pot, not sure

It could...

Sure it would if you take care to do the transplant right. Your gonna have to transplant anyways since 1gal pot isn't big enough to flower anyway. Put it in a 5gal dwc. That type of system would be the most forgiving. I use a 6" net pot and get a wterfarm kit by general hydro. You don't neccesarilly need the top feed, but rather the water level indicator that it comes with. Then pick your medium. When you do it you'll just pull the plant out of the pot like transplanting to dirt, but you'll dip the rrotball into a bucket of warm water and VERY gently give it a sway motion back and fourth till you get most of the soil off. Then you simply set your roots up so that they are coming through the net pot into the water and hold the main stalk while you VERY gently pour in your medium. Once done the plant should be standing on its own. It'll be in shock for a day or so, but if you don't totally destroy the roots it will bounce back bro. I have done exactly what I just described. It looked sad for 2 days then exploded with growth just as I hoped. Good luck and don't be scared. Yes you need to be careful but this is a weed we arebtalking about here and it does bounce back very well.

Thanks for the reply, i think ill give it a shot

^nice post, will take into consideration

i was wondering the same thing, im in veg and im gonna be moving soon, so at my new location i wanna try DWC. so im tuning in!

-Trippy

It will survive. Iv'e done soil to hydro and hydro to soil with no problems. I just finished running two cheesequakes for about a year doing this.

ive done it with small clones in soil, but ive never tried it with such a big plant. I thought the shock might kill it, but if someone has done it before its worth a shot. I like dwc more than dirt personally

My only suggestion to add to the other solid advice here is that you may want to take a chunk of your soil out of the plant pot, add some water to it, let it sit for a little while (I dunno, an hour?) and then test the ppms and ph. You will want your rinse water and your first week in reservoir to not be too far off from what the soil measured out. This may sound like work, but it will provide a little less shock to your existing root mass.

By the way, I would love to see your trial - can you post pics of your process and update with your success or (and I don't wish it upon you) failure? I think folks would like to see your experiment because I don't know many folks who routinely switch from soil to dro' with a plant that size.

Good luck, and peace.

That's a very good idea. It would absolutley help others on the site dealing with the same issue.

Sure thing, im just waiting for the plants to heal up from the HST i gave them. Once they are ready ill transplant one and take pictures. Ill see how it reacts and if all goes well i plan on transplanting all of them

Btw if i take soil and put it in water to test the pH, the water its diluted into would have to be accounted for. You would need to take the volume, pH, ppm initial and then solve for the pH and ppm of the soil.

I may be way wrong here but would the meter give you an actual reading of the nutes? I have been told that a meter is useless if it was organically grown. Also why would you not leave it in soil, clone it, and let it flower? Then put the clones in the DWC after a couple of weeks and start again. Just a thought.

Add some super thrive to the water also. I just transplanted two Girl Scout cookie plants into hydro flood and drain and I used super thrive with some luc warm water and after one day they were perky and nice and blew up with growth.

Im actually considering that waterdog that way i could get the canopy i want too.

Hey waterdawg - I'm listening, hope everyone else is; I actually just came across something else stating the same thing! I've now read mixed messages on this subject, one stating to reduce stress by leveling out the ph for a bit, and another stating that the meters don't pick up on organic materials.

Also Bheem - you're logic makes sense too.

SO - any pros out there care to weigh in further? I am now more curious than ever, because I often shift dirt to 'dro - not all my collectives pitch hydro ready clones.

Peace all!

So I went ahead and did the transplant, couldnt take pictures because my hands were more than full.
Id have to say it was much more difficult than I had anticipated it would be. The soil was really hard to get off the roots because of how woven into the dirt they were. I lost a lot of root in the process.
I was not able to get all the dirt off without doing major damage to the roots, so I just went ahead and stuck them into the dwc bucket with id say about a fist or two full of dirt still on them.
To be honest ill be surprised if they survive all the shock and damage, and im not sure how bad all that dirt is gonna be for them sitting in there with organic material present. I dont think ill ever try this again on a plant this size, plus it was really messy

Quick take some clones 😥

I have plenty of clones from another plant, im not too worried even if these die its not a big deal to me. Im more interested in seeing if they survive and how resilient they are for this kind of transplant at this size. Ill update you guys if they survive or not.

My buddy who was helping me broke a branch which peeled some of the main stem in the process on one of them, anyone know if such a wound will be prone to infection? Or should I just let it heal itself? Will take a picture tomorrow

Just an update for those who are interested. Plants started to wilt and root rot developed. I ended up scrapping the plants which had been transplanted. I would not personally recommend trying this due to the difficulty of removing all the soil from the roots (unless you can manage to remove all the dirt without doing too much damage to the roots, which i found very difficult). I believe it was the remaining soil (organic material) which lead to the root rot. They survived for a while until the rot was significant. This was not something H2O2 would have helped (it was already in the water anyway). The rot was occurring at the base of the plant inside the net pot where the remaining soil was located.

From my experience I would only recommend soil -> hydro transplants for younger plant with smaller root systems as the dirt removal is much easier, and have successfully done so with clones from dispensaries.

Well you tried !