How can I improve poor drainage during early flower?

Hey there rollers,
Hoping someone could help me out with an issue I'm having regarding poor drainage leading to over-watered plants and what I'm concerned could turn into root rot or something down the line.

My girls are in 20 gal pots.
Soiless; promix HP.
It's now day 9 of flower but I've been having drainage/ overwater issues since bringing them into thier tents.
I don't think the LED lights (hlg 550v2) are hot enough to help out in drying the pots at all.
Tents are about 59° during dark hours and 73° during light.
I have fans blowing on the pots from 3 different angles to help dry faster.

If I water until runoff, it takes at least a week to fully dry.
I have experimented with watering much less, which was working for a while. But there were signs of nutrient deficiencies which made me thing there was a PH issue, so I watered until I got runoff again to try to balance out,
but now it's going to take another week for the pot to dry out.

Also when I did get runoff it seemed to be all draining from one side. I'm thinking since the 20 gal pots are big there's probably a large section in the center/bottomed that is clumped and not draining.

SO:

I want to be able to water more frequently. And I would like to be able to maybe break up some of what's not draining in the center/ bottom of the pot. Could I do this with a long thin rod or skewer? Poke through at the bottom and let some air in and break up clumps that aren't draining?
Or would that break roots and damage/ harm the plants ?

Any suggestions would greatly help. This is my first go at growing.

Already from reading I know to improve my drainage for next time to add a layer of rocks to the bottom of the pots, downsize the pots, and add more pearlite to the promix. BUT, I don't know what I can do now, in early flower, to improve my situation. So I'm reaching out to you guys. Thanks for reading all this and sorry it's so long.

Even after a light watering they droop and it takes days for them to perk back up. When only giving 2.5 gal at a time, it still take 4-5 days to dry out enough to water again.

You can skewer the soil with something to aerate it and allow water to get to any potential dry spots. Are they in a garage sitting on concrete? If so raise them up so they are not sitting on a cold floor. You can run an oil filled heater in the tent to keep the temp higher also. 20 gallon pots are overkill for growing inside a tent. You might think about going smaller like 10 gallon at most on your next run.

Hey thanks for the reply,
I was thinking about skewering but wasn't sure if that would damage the roots. I feel like there is probably a spot in the center most of the pot that has never dried out.
20 gal is definitely over kill I agree! Lesson learned the hard way on that. I am gonna do four, 5 gal pots in each tent next time. (Have two flower tents with one, 20 gal in each currently)

They are raised up already in plastic elevators that sit in the drain tray but yes under that is cold concrete.


Any tips for the skewering ? Like the limit of how much to do or should I not go too deep, or is it okay to really get in there and break up any clustered wet/dry spots without being too overly careful?
Noob question I know but I am new at this and really appreciate any/all help. Thanks

I never thought of an oil filled heater, I will look into that! Currently I am building an insulated room around the tents so I'm hoping that fixes the temperatures

Starseed.extracts said:

I never thought of an oil filled heater, I will look into that! Currently I am building an insulated room around the tents so I'm hoping that fixes the temperatures

Click to expand...

Building an insulated room around your tents will definitely help with keeping the temperature up. That will also allow you to either heat or cool the room your tents are in by adding a heater and air conditioner for year round temperature control. You're getting a little cold at lights off and that can slow down growth and effect yield an quality. And if the roots are staying too wet in a cold environment you risk other problems arising.

I grow in an unheated garage with a 4 x 4 tent. I put a floor on the bottom to keep the plants off of the cold floor. It's situations like this that the heat from an HPS is welcomed during the colder seasons. I run the light at night when it's the coldest and the temps stay around 75° F with lights on. The oil filled heater has a thermostat on it so I set that to come on around 70° so it comes on after lights out.

A little damage to the roots from poking through the soil won't hurt anything. But you should do something about the low temperatures as soon as possible.

With that panel, Get your lights on temps up!

Try 82f +/-

Okay sounds like I need to get my all around temps up, thanks for the suggestions! That floor plan looks simple and effective, definitely doing that for the next round.

And the oil heater seems like a great call too once I finish the insulated room. I believe I already have a little duel outlet sized thermostat.

Should have this room built in the next few days so that should help with the temps quite a bit.
Hoping that along with some light skewering to break up dry clumps will fix my poor drainage issue for the rest of this go.

Thanks for input, much appreciated!