Test Result - Pot Size vs. Yield

I've averaged harvesting 100 plants a year for some years in my perpetual grow and I'm always experimenting with one variable or another to increase/improve my product. For quite a while I've been growing "hot". Means I've been using fast, bushy indicas, daily nute-watering and micro pots to harvest plants after just 9-10 weeks in dirt. I veg clones about 3 1/2 to 4 weeks and harvest many strains after 5 1/2 to 6 weeks flowering. In my small pots I've been averaging 25-30 grams cured/per. Some of the small pots were as small as 7 inches square up to 1 1/2 gallon size. By switching from a smaller final pot to a 3-gallon pot has increased my dry take to 48-50 grams/per. Drawback is that my 8 x 8 flower room is a bit more crowded and that means that lower branches receive less light. I started removing the lowest branches so the bottom 6-8 inches of the main stem are branchfree. Allows for more water and nutes to reach the more productive upper branches.

Offered so other grow-nerds like me can better adjust our grows to meet our needs.

Good luck, BigSteve.

Forgot to mention that I'm letting the plants in larger pots flower 3-5 more days than before. Bigger plants take a bit longer to finish, I'm thinking.

BigSteve.

I was growing 8-10 plants in a 4'x6' flower room in 5 gal pots for about 2 years, and now I'm sort of duplicating your pot experiment. I too did the "shit-ton" of plants in a small space...I had around 50 plants in 1 gal containers and honestly I didn't care for the results.

I'm now inching back up to 2 and 3 gal containers and vegging longer and my yields are much betterer.....but am going with 12-15 plants. So far I'm not seeing a big difference between plants in 2 or 3 gal, but it's too soon to draw any conclusions.

I have been growing 9 plants under a screen in a 4' x 3' closet.
I used 5g pots, and pruned the underside of the screen, producing decent results
Not a big fan of the strain, so I am going to flower the mothers in 13g pots

So, this grow I am just growing 2 plants, in larger pots as well.
Interesting topic, I will update this thread with my results, too.

There's a minimum size a plant needs to be before flowering or the buds will suffer because there's not enough plant energy (about 16-18" FIM'd IMO). If you flower in soil and the pot is too small, you run out of good soil nutes, and even with added bloom nutes, the plant runs out of energy too early (no less than 9" for min. sized plant). After vegging to the size you want, you should put the plant in a bigger pot so you can add some fresh soil for flowering. After those considerations, canopy management & style dictate number and size of plants IMO.