I find myself in a conundrum… 1st time grower, started with WAY more plants (17) than I need for personal use because my plan was a big window grow and I’m smart enough to know the results were to be dubious.
On advice of @Myfriendis410 I finally broke down and bought a 4x4 tent (biggest I can get here) and a good light. But I’ve already transplanted into big 20L pots, so unless I re-transplant down to smaller 11L pots, I can only fit half the plants in the tent.
I suppose that re-transplant to 11L pots (so I can fit 16 plants in the tent) is still an option and I welcome advice on the merits of that approach. Only half the plants have been transplanted so far.
But for now the plan is to put 9 plants in the new tent (half the crop). The question is what to do with the remaining 8 plants.
My [tentative] plan is to try and keep them in veg for the full duration (3 months) of the first crop’s time in the tent. Then I could move the (by then very large) 8 plants that were veg’ing for 3 months into the tent and flower them under LED light to hopefully get a much better result.
I’m thinking that this would be an opportunity to experiment with low and high-stress training techniques (remember I’m a total rookie, never did this before). But hey, I’ve got a full crop in the tent so if I screw it up it’s easy to write off as a learning experience. I’m thinking that I could try and “mainline” the remaining plants to create lots and lots of bud sites. The vids I watched say that topping plants 3 times to create 8 parallel main stems/colas is entirely possible but takes a lot more time in veg to do right. Well shit, I have 3 months to kill, so give it a try?
The other option is re-transplant the just-transplanted plants out of their 20L pots into something small enough that I can fit 16 of them into my new 4x4 tent.
I just found some 18L pots (only 2L less than my current pots) that just barely fit 16 in the tent. So starting to lean more toward putting 16 plants in the tent.
Problem is, transplanting from the little nursery pot into the big pot was easy. Root ball was formed and I turned the pots over in my hand and easily transplanted them into a ready-made hole just the right size.
How to get the plants out of the 20L round pots and into 18L square pots is not nearly so obvious. Is there a technique for doing this??
More importantly, am I right to assume that putting all 16 plants in the tent is the smart way to go? Seems like a lot of plants in a single 4x4 tent, but since I’m new at this and not good at training and topping and all that, more plants ought to fill the SCROG net much more quickly, I would think…
You know, you may be new at this, but you really can’t lose here. SOG and SCROG is not hard at all. My first grow I tried it all. I had enough plants to mess with and not feel a loss if one didn’t do well, as you are in a wealth of now. You can SOG them and have a bunch of buds, but not a bunch of massive buds. Still a nice yield. The theory is that less plants in a tent but teased up bigger buds is more yield, but if you are like me when I started, yield was secondary to just getting started. (It may be vice versa…side effect from any advice here from me, I may well be one hour into one joint of homegrown ) You can practice techniques like super cropping on a few branches. I did that first grow and it is not as hard as you think and can be forgiving.
I guess I would use the my new found windfall of plants to go wild and experiment with as many methods as you can in your environment and play it safe with a couple. If anything this will give you a good foundation of best practices for your own home environment and how many different ways you can get a plant to grow, whether tent or window or outside, depending on your goals for subsequent grows. I think you are in a win win situation here!
Edited: on transplanting, try a couple or one and see how it does. You should know in 24 hours or less. I have had a branch literally split open during a supercrop, and put honey and coban medical wrap on it and it never wilted. I think you may well be successful with little to not wilt. I would cut the pot off of them though and not pull it. Cut down two to three sides, carefully lay into new ready pot, and they should do well. Brush side roots off gently.
This is a photo of a male plant I had to kill last week. For fun I did a plant autopsy and checked out roots. This was a fabric potted plant. Most of mine are in hydro though. I thought that bulb at the stalk end was interesting. This was in a 7 gallon soft pt and the roots had filled it up.
I ordered all 16 of the 18L square pots that will fill the tent completely corner to corner. That will mean any fans or humidifiers will have to be strapped to the wall or hung from the top, but I’ll figure it out.
Will post a photo of the plants in the new pots after I re-transplant everything.
) You can practice techniques like super cropping on a few branches. I did that first grow and it is not as hard as you think and can be forgiving.
