Welcome to What’s Going on in Dave’s Grow? In this week’s update, I am going to transplant our vegging plants into 5 gallon Smart Pots in a Coco Coir mix with perlite.

Why Transplant?

So what is the benefit of transplanting anyway? Why not just start these seeds out in 5 gal. pots to begin with? Now before I answer I will say that I have absolutely thrown seeds in to a 5 gal. pot and waited for the sprout to emerge. I prefer to do a series of transplanting along the way until the plants are big enough to handle a larger container. Typically it goes in this order. rockwool cube in a cloning tray, 1/2 gal plastic container, 1 gal. container and then a 5 gal. smart pot.

I do this because I have found that when I start in a large pot, I have to make sure the entire 5 gallon area watered and I must make sure to keep that entire area saturated so the seedling can have it’s roots fed. This is extremely wasteful when it comes to mixing nutrients.

Nutrients are expensive and when I am mixing for 5 gal. containers, I typically make around 25 gallons at a time. If I have to mix for say a 1 gallon container, I am only mixing 5 gallons at a time. Also, the roots of the plant don’t get a chance to grow as they have a massive amount of space to develop in. This creates a weak root structure for the plant which means a smaller plant at harvest time.

By transplanting, you force the plant to grow a lot of roots in it’s confined space, once it is ready to move up, you allow the plant to fill the next size container up with roots thus building up large healthy roots. The next time you harvest have a look at your roots after you chop your plants down. A healthy plant should have a nice root structure and the entire container should be filled with roots.

Nutrients for this grow

So I decided to go with Advanced Nutrients for this grow. I am using the connoisseur for coco base. It’s very powerful so I am going around half strength (or 4 ml per gal.). The great thing about Advanced is that it is ph perfect which means you don’t need to ph your water when mixing. Very convenient for beginners!

A big thank you to The Vault Seed Company. I am excited to see the end results of these seeds. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have at david@thestonermom.com. You can see pics of this grow on my instagram feed @COHempGrower.