The Gee Spot - You Finally Found It

Day 28 of Flower
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The 10gal Lady that I supercropped is rolling right along. 11 days of autowatering is a beautiful thing😊. While it was watering I was in DisneyWorld Florida with the family.

Before I left I had to move The Mutant into the flower tent and the supercropping was sticking out over Mute's floor space so I released the supercrop from its restraints and it is now the largest cola over on the far right. It lifted up and settled exactly in line with the rest of the canopy👍

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Here are the two 1.6gal pots. They are also on day 28 of flower and you can already see the difference in cola sizes compared to the 10gal pots.

So I ran a silent experiment that I have run many times before, and its why I use cloth pots. I wanted you all to see the results instead of doubting and debating the process. The proof is always in the pudding.

You know how you read that its impossible to overwater cloth pots? Well for 11 days these 3 plants were in perlite tubs with the bottom 1-2 inches of the pots under water.

I just wanted everyone to see why cloth pots excel over hard plastic ones. The rhizosphere pulls air in thru the walls and the plant doesn't show a single detriment to sitting in a tub of water. They are still in a tub of water.

You can't leave it like that forever as the soil below the water line won't be used and in a 1.6 gal pot you need every cubic inch of soil, but cloth pots remove watering issues completely.
 
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Here is one of the 1.6gal clones I pulled out of the tent for a bit of fussing. Its day 29 and as you can see this pheno isn't exactly chunky but its healthy and when I flipped to flower it was, if I recall, 16 or 17 inches tall. It is 40" now. Thats a 250% stretch. The bud shots are of the 2 best tops.

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These are shots of the apex bud on the 10gal pot followed by a mid grade bud, and finally the least desireable top of all the colas.

As you can see, the least desireable cola in the 10gal pot is better than the main cola in a small pot.

Using small pots makes sense if you have difficulties lifting or if you are space-challenged, but if you are using small pots and you don't have to, you are missing out on a lot of much better bud.

These 2 clones were cut from the same mother on the same day and believe it or not, the little pot has been spoiled and the 10gal has been brutally super-cropped and stressed.

After 6 years and 17 crops with an enormous amount of testing I have determined that the biggest single factor, other than lights and environment, in having a successful outcome, is pot size. The biggest single thing after that is cold hydrolyzed fish fertilizer, as that is what relieves the stresses I placed on this plant.

So if you want to just sit back and have a really easy successful grow and you want to be able to be proud of your crop with minimal effort, spend a little more on larger pots with more soil, and use the fish ferts.

The brand I use is $65 a gallon, which is expensive, but 1 gallon has done all 17 grows and I still have 2 or 3 grows worth in the jug. Its where the money is.

I hope this helps someone who is not sure of a direction.

Now all that being said, if you want to really learn organics, then by all means use small pots, as you will encounter many kerfuffles but you will learn a lot. What you will really learn the most from using small pots is that you should use big pots in organics.
 
Gee64 said:
You can't leave it like that forever as the soil below the water line won't be used and in a 1.6 gal pot you need every cubic inch of soil
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Hi Gee, welcome back!
How high was your water level for the perlite swicks? How much space between the water level and the pot?
 
Gee64 said:
The water was above the bottom of the pot by about 1"
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That's interesting as I would expected the fabric pot to wick too much water.
 
Azimuth said:
That's interesting as I would expected the fabric pot to wick too much water.
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Why would you think that? My grow in fabric pots swicked perfectly. I will be using fabric pots for my up-coming los swick grow.
 
Carmen Ray said:
Why would you think that? My grow in fabric pots swicked perfectly. I will be using fabric pots for my up-coming los swick grow.
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But your pots are not sitting down directly in the water, but rather are connected to the reservoir with a wick if I remember correctly.
 
Welcome back Gee!
 
Azimuth said:
That's interesting as I would expected the fabric pot to wick too much water.
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Its due to the fabric pots. The air exchange is 360 degrees so putting the bottoms under water leaves a lot of air gap in the side walls still.

To be honest, bottom watering makes watering much easier, sort of, and is definitely extremely compatible with aero-clones, but at the end of the day I see no difference in the overall plant.

The roots look different but thats understandable as the plant adapts to the location of the water.

I say "sort of" because I use 1/4 gal/hour dripper heads (4 per pot) when I top water and they are on a timer to come on 3 times a day so I have no wet/dry cycle when I top water.

I still haven't tried a true SIP yet so my mind is still open and I truely hope a sip will outgrow my regular routine and the swicking with perlite, but to be honest I don't see how a salad strainers worth of air intake can out perform a cloth pots air intake.

I think sipping looks dramatically better if you are a hard pot grower but not if you are a cloth pot user with a watering routine that keeps the soil evenly moist constantly.

I will be starting some Durban seeds in the next few days, I just have to see what the calendar tells me for a start date, and I will use a hard sip pot vs a 10gal cloth pot in perlite and we will see. I truly hope the sip will do better as better is better, but what I really want is a way to start a seed or clone directly into its final pot to avoid transplant shock.

My biggest problem is when I grow from seed my plants get way too big in the 56 days of veg, so having a plant that grows faster in veg really only causes me grief.

Don't get me wrong here though, bottom watering ensures a gradient that is pretty much perfect, and eliminates runoff that removes calcium and other nutes, so its better. Remember my runoff testing earlier? 1365ppm. Thats a huge waste.

If you haven't truly figured out top watering then its light years better.Period. If you are a new grower that isn't interested in science and only wants yield-with-ease then its the way to go. If you are using hard pots and top watering then switching to sip/swick will truly rock your world.

I'm not arguing that and I will continue to use it, but I suspect the life-changing results are for hard pot growers. Smart-pot growers already experienced that when they switched to cloth.

I think your idea of a soil sip pad to place a cloth pot on is what will prove to be the very best, as it gives you extra soil, but the proof is in the pudding.

Perlite beds work pretty darn well and you can see the water level thru the tub so you can tell exactly how much water was used and literally watch it go down which if you pay attention, and I haven't yet, but I will, will tell you exactly which part of the daily life cycle uses the most water. Knowing that will really help if you are a synthetic user as it would tell you when to feed and when not to feed.

Ph changes in synthetics so feeding when the plants aren't eating won't give you the correct ph a few hours later or possibly the next day when they really start to consume, or they may have a constant intake all day long and it doesn't matter.

Bottom watering has already solved 2 of my major hurdles. I can clone directly into a 10gal pot now with no stall or babysitting/spoon-feeding (I actually see an acceleration) and I suspect my 1.6 gal pots will go farther than they ever have with there being no runoff, so bottom watering is definitely better, but the overall health and what not of the plant itself is pretty much identical to my previous grows.

I have had giant featherduster bags of roots ever since I have switched to cloth pots. I will know for sure on a Durban grow as I know the strain intimately.

I will readily admit though that having to move a 10gal pot with a bed of perlite really really sucks. My pots with the perlite are probably 80 pounds each so thats a contentious issue, but now that I know I just need to plant the clone with the pot in its final resting place.

Overall bottom watering is way easier and extremely consistent, and I greatly suspect my soil will go a lot farther, I just don't think I will see a giant explosion of growth, I got that in 2017 when I switched to cloth.

But fingers crossed🤞, I love it when I'm wrong👊
 
Azimuth said:
But your pots are not sitting down directly in the water, but rather are connected to the reservoir with a wick if I remember correctly.
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A misunderstanding it seems. I read that you thought that a cloth pot would wick too much water, you didn't specify the kind of wick. I thought you meant in general. Gee's answer is thorough and covers all the bases. I'm glad he explained all that. Thanks Gee.
 
I think that's right. And, it's not a competition. Each grower gravitates to the style they prefer for a multitude of reasons. Your cloth pots may very well grow bigger plants than a comparably sized SIP. It makes sense that there would be more availability of air all around the pot.

All the high growth methodologies like Hydro, SIP, SWICK, and Fabric Pots all share common elements from ample availability of both water and air, and especially air to the roots. They each do them slightly differently but all do both particularly well.

From there we each dial in our own grows. I've said on many occasions that I'm not trying to maximize everything on my end. My space is too confined to grow much bigger plants than I already do, and I don't really need all that much to begin with.

My contention is that every soil mix grower needs to try a grow with one of these options at least once. Simply by changing the container you grow in and how you water (which is sooo much easier to get right) you almost automatically become a better grower.
 
Azimuth said:
I think that's right. And, it's not a competition. Each grower gravitates to the style they prefer for a multitude of reasons. Your cloth pots may very well grow bigger plants than a comparably sized SIP. It makes sense that there would be more availability of air all around the pot.

All the high growth methodologies like Hydro, SIP, SWICK, and Fabric Pots all share common elements from ample availability of both water and air, and especially air to the roots. They each do them slightly differently but all do both particularly well.

From there we each dial in our own grows. I've said on many occasions that I'm not trying to maximize everything on my end. My space is too confined to grow much bigger plants than I already do, and I don't really need all that much to begin with.

My contention is that every soil mix grower needs to try a grow with one of these options at least once. Simply by changing the container you grow in and how you water (which is sooo much easier to get right) you almost automatically become a better grower.
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I agree 100%. At the very least its way easier and rock solid. At the very most it will totally change your world. It all depends where you came from.

Then there is the way it interfaces with aeroclones. Not much really impresses me these days but I was 100% blown away. The results speak for themselves.

I haven't yet pushed these plants either as I was just having fun cloning, supercropping, and disecting rootballs all on an outdoor strain that isn't really the best example of an indoor grow, and then fate dealt me a mutant and Keff gave us early sexing.

I can't wait to get some Durban going and really push this technique, AND I really hope a true SIP will up it all another notch.

I definitely owe Yourself and Carmen a huge thanks for all the Sip/Swick enjoyment I have had in this winter. Glad I took a winter off from growing🤣🤣🤣
 
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