Going to try soil and have questions

I've "tried" growing hydro 3 times and have been disappointed every damn time. I know it's me fuckin' up but I'm thinkin' it's time to go with soil.

My wife and I are both medical marijuana patients in Colorado so we can legally grow 12 plants. I want to grow big trees so would 5 gallon buckets/pots work well? If 5 gallons is big enough, I was thinking about getting a bunch of those Home Depot orange buckets for like $2.50 each. That should work, right?

I've also read where people start growing in small pots and then transplant every couple weeks until just before flowering. What benefit does this have over planting a 10" clone directly in a 5 gallon bucket filled with soil?

FoxFarm soil and nutes are the best, right?

Thanks for all your help and advice!

5 gal buckets a fine, its what i use. make sure to drill a ton of holes in the bottem to drain out the water. i like to do like 10 or 15 ish maybe more. really i jsut go crazy with a drill. about the transplanting part of your question.... i personaly like to start in the 5 gal buckets if i have the space for it. however some of my clones get started in smaller pots based on the open space in my veg tent. when you start in small pots roots run into the walls an can become rootbound and have there growth stunted for a while untill you get bigger pots. IMHO start in the 5 gal buckets. foxfarms is fine. i like to use roots organics soil and nutes but thats just me an doesent mean one is better then the other.

Do you know what Ph ? PPM ? Hardwater ? if you dont you should study on that .. before u do anything .. it all about the roots. for soil ph should be around 6.4 . for hydro the ph shuld be aound 5.5 or 5.6... PPM tell you how much nutes in water ...

Go get marjuana bible read it ... it helped me that how i learned ... good luck

growingforfun said:

5 gal buckets a fine, its what i use. make sure to drill a ton of holes in the bottem to drain out the water. i like to do like 10 or 15 ish maybe more. really i jsut go crazy with a drill. about the transplanting part of your question.... i personaly like to start in the 5 gal buckets if i have the space for it. however some of my clones get started in smaller pots based on the open space in my veg tent. when you start in small pots roots run into the walls an can become rootbound and have there growth stunted for a while untill you get bigger pots. IMHO start in the 5 gal buckets. foxfarms is fine. i like to use roots organics soil and nutes but thats just me an doesent mean one is better then the other.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info! +rep! I especially appreciate your knowledge of starting seeds/clones directly in the 5 gallon buckets. I'm going to order a couple books from Amazon on growing pot. Thanks again!!

WaRpIg said:

Go get marjuana bible read it ... it helped me that how i learned ... good luck

Click to expand...

Definitely a great idea! I'm going to order it now. Happy growing!

5 gallons is fine. It is easier to avoid over or underwatering a smaller plant in a smaller container and you can have the plants closer grouped under the lighting when they are still little in smaller containers. That being said however You can start in the 5 gallons if you really want.This is what i advise though. 3 transplant stages- start in 1 gallon pot, after 3-4 weeks switch to 3 gallon pot, keep vegging another 3-4 weeks(or more if you want, you are trying to get monsters after all.), transplant into the 5 gallon(you shouldnt have any problems from transplanting if you do it right, most of the time it doesnt even effect the plants when i do it,) and flip to 12/12. i'd maybe think about 7 or 10 gallons a plant as the last step in your case, ive been happy with my 5 gl when doing similar grows and i wouldnt be able to fit as many plants in so I have to stick w/ the 5 gallons but more root space is never a bad thing. well, besides the fact you need more soil than if you used a smaller container, which wouldnt be enough to make me think twice about getting bigger containers if i could fit them. the size of the root system and the size of the canopy should stay fairly balanced. So generally the larger the root system the larger canopy it can support is what im saying.
It is debate-able who is the best when it comes to nutes and soil. Foxfarm has never let me down yet, Thats my opinion on the matter.

i think the advanteges of transplants is you can shave more than a few inches off of the plants hight with still haveing the monster.. but if hights not and issue i gues it doesnt really matter.. and soil growing is not complicated at all 5 gallon bucket should do u more than fine.

and my plants never stop growing when the roots reach the walls

Thanks for the advice! My flower room is 88 square feet with an 8 foot ceiling. About how many plants do you think I should grow in this area with 5 gallon buckets? Also, if I use a 50/50 mix of Ocean Forest and Happy Frog soil, would I need to change the soil at any time or could I use the same soil from clone to harvest? I know I'll need to add nutes with every other watering once the plants are a couple of weeks old but I'm not sure about "flushing" I think it's called. Thanks again guys for all your help! I really do appreciate it!

If your going to make monster plants 6-8. You could use the same soil the whole grow no matter what kind you have. If your refering to the pre-harvest flush here what you do, about a week(some say 2, but just kind of cut back a little for a week before you stop) before harvest take 3 times as much ph'd plain water and run it through the soil and dont feed it anymore, It is advised you continue giving your plant/s blackstrap mollasses till the end however. A flush to correct nute burn or a fucked up soil ph or something is pretty similar, except you start feeding again after a while.