Transferring plants now so any quick feedback would be appreciated! Yes I know I should’ve asked earlier!
Can I use crushed plastic water bottles as drainage in the bottom of grow pot? I’ve heard ppl doing this for regular flowers & plants but not sure with bud. I want to reduce the weight of my pot. I know plastic degrades but at an astronomically slow rate, so would this effect ph levels later in grow? If so any good lightweight ideas for drainage mediums?
I wouldn’t do it since its literally something you’re consuming and I just don’t know how much your ferts will wear at the plastic putting it possibly into your plant
It obviously keeps water safe do drink & plastic pots or solo cups are often used to grow in, even used water bottles to grow starters. This is my reasoning to go ahead and do it but I’m gonna have to wait a bit longer to get feedback on the above question!
@MedMan1878 I would pass on doing this. Why? Because we don’t feed the plants with water of 7.0 pH or higher. So this puts your water as slightly acidic. This should speed up the decay of the plastic bottles. How fast does it degrade? Good wuestion.
I’m transferring from a 3 gallon to 6 about 2 weeks away from flower. So they shouldnt be in the pot for too long. So If I’m going to do this I might as well on a test plant and share results. Although I’m starting to get flashbacks of that movie Dark Waters with the DuPont Teflon lawsuit and the gum cancer. Maybe I should do a follow up from this 10-20 years from now to let everyone know if im alive and my teeth aren’t all black. Tnx folks
This stuff is supposed to be made of the same stuff plastic soda or water bottles are made from. I don’t want to get into the argument about what plastics are truly safe, I wrote extensively on that somewhere on here once upon a time, and so you’ll have to decide if PETE plastic is safe enough for the use you have in mind.
Thanks for the tags fellas.
I’m using plastic hard pots for my indoor grow.
I’ve used plastic buckets and barrels for outdoor grows.
But I’ve never used water bottles for drainage.
Maybe add some extra pearlite to your mix instead. And lots of holes in your pot.
Bottom and up the sides a bit.
Would be my choice over adding water bottles into my mix.
Two questions. What kind of pot are you transferring into?
What is your grow media?
Is the green container a heavy ceramic pot that weighs a bunch on its own?
Some soils, based on their ingredients would be heavier than others.
I’m guessing cost is the issue with the plastic. I don’t think it’s gonna save all that much and it’s more of an experiment. And I love experiments. There was a cat on here who did something with a bear can split open underneath the soil with three layers of all kinds.of stuff . Il never find it but his girls came out just as awesome as anything else grown in here. If Mac G doesn’t have a problem with it your golden…he’s forgotten more then half of all growers on this site will ever learn.
Kinda funny because my photo plants i added a big bag of tan aquarium rocks to the soil all mixed in i wonder if it did anything good or just slowly packed its way down the bucket with the water weight and soil getting wet. I havnt noticed my plant ever having a problem but its a 6 foot tall 4 foot round sativa photo thats been growing over 6 months now. Just about finished finally
