New Grower What's the deal with SLOW flowering autos?

[Dudeski]

You are in the best spot for information. @912GreenSkell makes the intra transplant pots, maybe he has a pic handy. He stunts his indoor girls due to space limits. It just takes time learning to read the plant. Im still learning myself. I dont think i would transplant indoors but once. Would square pots work better for space needs?

 

[Kels59]

You are in the best spot for information. @912GreenSkell makes the intra transplant pots, maybe he has a pic handy. He stunts his indoor girls due to space limits. It just takes time learning to read the plant. Im still learning myself. I dont think i would transplant indoors but once. Would square pots work better for space needs?

Thank you. Seems to me I just read someone does this with solo cups ... cuts the side and bottom out of inner one and slides a second one over it with just drainage holes for seedlings. I will check out how @912GreenSkell does it. Yeah, square pots would be better for space, but I already spent a small fortune on 18 of these 3 gallon airpots. Now wish I had 4 or 5 gallon pots.

 

[G.Leave]

Thank you. Seems to me I just read someone does this with solo cups ... cuts the side and bottom out of inner one and slides a second one over it with just drainage holes for seedlings. I will check out how @912GreenSkell does it. Yeah, square pots would be better for space, but I already spent a small fortune on 18 of these 3 gallon airpots. Now wish I had 4 or 5 gallon pots.

Thanks for the tag dudeski!
I do the instatransplant pots for autos both in 6" pots, and in large beer cups. In cups you can see roots developing at the bottom within 6 days, but i grow larger strains and semi-controlled stunt them by restricting the root base for 14-20 days. Its usually works well on larger strains.
But if you are looking for no root restriction at all I would go with something larger than a beer cup, perhaps a 6"pot instatransplant pot like below with an autoultimate, planted in pot at day 23 iirc

 

[G.Leave]

Here is some indoor stunted with large strains...kept in cups for 20 days to keep size down. 25" tall as a result

Same this plant had a 20 day stunt and is 25" tall(1.5gallon pot) pic from day 49

Not every time goes as planned...I overdid this toofless alien at 20 days in the cup and she stayed small as a result(maybe 14" in height)

 

[G.Leave]

Sorry if it was already covered...what medium are you using? What nutrients? How is your water PH? Distance of plant tops to light?

One thing i would try is choose a reputable breeder....lots of breeders on this site pull massive plants. Start it off with highly recommended genetics(not saying AMS isnt, but i am not familiar with them) and then its all on you guys. This holds true in any type of growing indoors or outdoors in any climate. The plant will only grow as well as the weakest ink in the chain allows. The weak link could be improper watering, too intense or not enough light, genetics, sour soil, too much or not enough nutrients, root restriction,water or medium PH, ill timed transplants, and on and on. Eliminate the potential weak links one grow at a time, and before you know it you will be pulling monsters! Personally i like the little autos!!

But i do understand wanting to pull monster yield per seed....I would take a look at Dutch Passions stock....stuff like daiquiri lime and autoultimate are just too big and awesome to ignore!!

 

[Need4Weed]

Here's a pic of my current grow just before I tied them down.

Here's some after pics.

Hope this gives you the ideal and welcome to AFN!
Btw, here they are today!

 

[EvilScotsman]

BINGO! i got it first time : ) woop woop.

ive just covered this in my journal so i reckon i know whats going on here...
please feel free to correct me folks im still pretty new but im confident ; )

people say not to transplant autos, but in my opinion, they are wrong. you’ve just got to do it at the right time and in the right way.

this is what i do mate
day 3 i think for this pic

7 days in the root riot, then chuck it in a 4” rockwool....

wait another 10 days......
.......

and bobs your uncle. 40 odd tap roots after 2 transplants. just dropped her onto an nft res so expecting something like this.....

from her in a few months : )
your stunting them by restricting the root space. if you want to transplant then id suggest having a read into doing it this way. rockwool is easily tranplanted into any media and wont let your plants become root bound.

 

[EvilScotsman]

haha i was gonna tag you skelly to show how to stunt them properly but realised half way through youd beat me to it.
i also second the notion of dutch passion. i wont be growing anything else for a long time : )

 

[EvilScotsman]

i’ll just point out aswell, as its something ive only recently learned. apparently if your plant becomes root bound they will only grow as wide as the root ball. hence why i went for transplant stunting as the problem and not ph problems etc. although they could always be a problem aswell but one thing at a time eh : )

 

[Kels59]

Thanks for the tag dudeski!
I do the instatransplant pots for autos both in 6" pots, and in large beer cups. In cups you can see roots developing at the bottom within 6 days, but i grow larger strains and semi-controlled stunt them by restricting the root base for 14-20 days. Its usually works well on larger strains.
But if you are looking for no root restriction at all I would go with something larger than a beer cup, perhaps a 6"pot instatransplant pot like below with an autoultimate, planted in pot at day 23 iirc
View attachment 838050 View attachment 838051

View attachment 838052 View attachment 838053

Ah, interesting. So you just bury the 6 inch pot with plant in your 1.5 gal container and the roots grow out the side like that? Main reason we are transplanting as much as we are is because tent is already pretty full with plants in 3 gallon pots when we start new plants so we have to keep the younger plants in smaller containers until some of the older plants are harvested. We really don't *need* to have that many plants of different ages going at once. Seems to me we can do just as well growing fewer plants bigger and get the same yield. Of course we won't be able to sample as many strains that way! Husband just did a lot of plants indoors his first two grows over fall/winter months so we would have enough to last a year or more, then he took a break from growing. Guess he just assumed more plants would produce a higher yield, but the way he was doing it that was not necessarily the case. Learning a lot here on how to do things better.