Topping vs Breaking vs Bending vs LST - a photojournal

Transplant day
Blech. I hate transplanting a bunch of plants at once. Add 12 more to these 5 today. And then, of course, I was out of soil and perlite, so I had to go get some - closest open place is 25 miles away. They didn't have the brand of compost I normally use (or ANY organic compost!), so I got the "cleanest" or most fertilizer free soil I could find - Hyponex. It was the only one that said to feed immediately after xplant. Blech.

So anyways, in case you are wondering, my soil recipe for this batch is

2 Cu Ft Hyponex Potting soil
1.3 cu Ft Perlite
1 Cup Powdered Dolemite lime
2 Cups Greensand
1 Cups Kelp meal

Mix well and serve. Makes approx ~ 25 gallons of soil. I have started to regularly add the greensand, lime and kelp meal when I make a batch of soil - I don't tend to feed much in veg and figured it might help them get a kickstart, and make the overall soil a little juicier. I should convert a bathroom and go hydro it'd be a lot less work...


Details and changes

I did not "water in" these plants tonight, as the soil was very wet to begin with, even after mixing it up and letting it air out a bit.
I did foilar feed them a little early on the schedule, but since I was x-planting tonight...
I will continue each ones "alternative" treatments on friday, giving them'all a little time to settle into the new pots (except the LST will start tomorrow as to not lose the "bend")
Lighting has changed to 2x40watt Daylight(6500k) tubes and 4 x 26 watt Daylight CFLS (6500k)
Light schedule became 18/6 today

Onto the transplanting!

Control plant

Topped Plant

Broken plant

Bending/crushed plant

LST'ed plant

Some of my pics didn't come out so great :( They were all pretty rootbound as you can see from the pics. I loosened the rootballs gently to get an idea of density, and they were all fairly equal. The control and the bent plant were the most rootbound, and had the most coiling at the bottom.The bent plant was the hardest/toughest one to break apart. One common condition through them all was they were very dry at the bottom, but the top of the soil appears moist. If merely giving a visual inspection on a larger scale, I likely would have passed these over. This is why using weight of the container is useful to judge when they are or are not ready to be watered.

This part of the session, I will X-plant them to larger containers as they warrant, rather than keep them all in the same size pot. Here is where I expect to see some major differences in size and shape, and, provided everything goes right, I will flower them in about 4 weeks and compare yields/overall size/health/ease of maintenance, etc etc.

We'll see how they deal in their new homes, and update this thread soon! Gotta go deal with the aftermath mess now (sigh).. Did I mention I should go hydro? ;)

Great update Tokudai...thanks again. I noticed you have a fair amount of perlite in your soil mix....more than I have tried to use.....I wonder if that's part of the reason I suck at growing in soil. :wtf:

I have used a few of these methodes in my grow, and I got to say connering (another form of topping), isd the best thing to do. To change the cola shape. I like to bend also, just keep an eye on how much room the roots have and your good to go. . .

any new info man? i would sure like to read up on it