soil Root prune and move hydro to soil

[JesterJoker]

I have a couple over wintered plants that I'm moving from some hydro buckets to 5 gallon pails with soil, and ill put about 2 inches of stones and holes in the buckets for drainage.

I have some promix laying around, but I also have some potting mix for flowers but its a pretty high nitrogen.

I'm sure either way they will grow, but what is your experience with root pruning? the roots are very large, I'm thinking of hacking them in half to fit them
in the buckets good, with space to grow.

I just dont want to transplant them and have them be root bound.


so should I do promix and nutes?

or

generic MG potting mix and supplement some bloom formula to get it closer to the P and K ratios I need.

 

[LGHT]

I can't comment on the roots, but I would definitely go with the Pro-Mix and just buy liquid ferts. I would try and get 3 separate ferts like the GH Flora Basic series so you can cut off the nitrogen and just focus on Phosphorus and Potassium when they are fruiting. This will give you a lot more control over what the plant gets and when it gets it unlike the MG pellets.

 

[frosty]

I have pruned roots a few times with nothing but good results. Even still it makes me nervous. The rule of thumb is never prune more than 1/3 of the roots.... Though I have done more. With your season I would do as little as possible because you won't have to worry so much about the plant becoming rootbound and dying or stunting.

Forget the rocks pro mix is not going to pack that quickly and you want the room for the roots.

Just my limited experience

 

[AlphaHydroponics]

I have had to do this before with a sick plant.
Ended up hacking of a good 50% or more of the roots, and pruning equal amounts of the top of the plant before putting into Pro mix style blend. Watered with chlorine free H2O/ pH neutral. I gave it a week or two adding water only, before gently introducing nutes (mild/ diluted concentration) and gradually introduced more as it recovered.I am pretty sure i used diluted spent GH nutrients, but it could have been anything. Hope this helps!

 

[JesterJoker]

I have some flora series, and some Jungle Juice which is the same formulation.

I was going to use the Lucas formula, I was using it with good success with my last batch of peppers.

I can't comment on the roots, but I would definitely go with the Pro-Mix and just buy liquid ferts. I would try and get 3 separate ferts like the GH Flora Basic series so you can cut off the nitrogen and just focus on Phosphorus and Potassium when they are fruiting. This will give you a lot more control over what the plant gets and when it gets it unlike the MG pellets.

my question though is.. when using a soil-less mix like promix, how often should I be watering with nutes?

 

[LGHT]

I have some flora series, and some Jungle Juice which is the same formulation.

I was going to use the Lucas formula, I was using it with good success with my last batch of peppers.

my question though is.. when using a soil-less mix like promix, how often should I be watering with nutes?

That's a tough question, but it all depends on what method of fertilizing your using and the growth stage of the plant. Can you give more details of where your at? If your not sure just go with the GH fert chart for the flora series and you should be fine.

 

[JesterJoker]

I have a couple severely overwintered plants (currently in hydro buckets), that are living still but have almost no leaves on them right now. I sort of let them be just on water for a while to keep them alive, but I see very dark dense green foliage coming back out on some of the plants.

I'm sure if i mixed up equal part formula they would perk right up in a few days under that light.

The story are the plants are about 1 year old. I have

1 - chocolate bhut
1 - brainstrain
1 - butch-t

I had a bunch of posts showing growth in the bubble buckets last year.

all in small 3 gallon hydro buckets, these things became monsters, because I had nitrogen levels to high. I had some light over them and they were doing ok but flowers kept falling off, so I went to the point
of getting a 8 bulb T5 setup (400+ watts). After turning this on, I saw peppers almost instantly, flowers were staying and producing peppers. I got very busy with my youngest child and let them almost die, but I kept water levels up.

There running most likely on pure water now, almost no nutes in the feed water tanks.

my 3 options that went through my head.

1: Clone off the mother plant and give them some nutes to keep them alive, if the clones take, ditch the mother plant
2: Root prune and then transplant outside and let nature take over
3: hack off anything about 13 inches or so, and turn them into some bonchi (bonsai) style pepper plants, and keep them inside, but put them in some decorative pots

But going with any option I can still clone out some of them and have a decent 1/4 to 1/2 inch stem as a base which should support some amazing growth, and give a good start to them, while keeping them a controlable size.


plus on the side I have my almost dead salvia divinorum that perked up when I gave her a nice light source, so my peppers will have company growing.