From dwc straight into the great outdoors(soil)

Ok. There are alot of threads out there about moving from hydro to soil, but there doing it with fairly young plants.
Ive been growing outdoors for years on a fairly large scale. Last year I was forced to chop down my whole crop mid summer. That in turn forced me to start a pretty decent size indoor project.
I've really fallen in love with the indoor growing but spring is approaching and I can't ignore the free big bulb in the sky.
I like to veg my plants for a solid two months indoors before putting them out. The problem is that takes alot of soil and hauling the big pots a couple miles through the forest is back breaking
I got the idea of vegging them in dwc buckets so all I had to do is carefully wrap up the root ball and ditch all that weight. Just transplanting the bare roots.
Does anyone see any problem with this?
Its very important that it works out and I will just start them in soil if it's a issue. Just looking for a little experience from someone else here

Sounds tricky, I don't see this going well. Never tried it, hope you get better opinions! Good luck on your season!

Bugeye said:

Sounds tricky, I don't see this going well. Never tried it, hope you get better opinions! Good luck on your season!

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Haha. That's encouraging.
I'll see what others say but considering the importance of my summer crop. I should probably just try it on a few this year before risking everything.

I think the only way to pull it off without root rot is to remove about 2/3 of the roots beforehand. Let the roots start to grow back in Dwc before you transplant into soil.. I got root rot in one of my first Dwc grows and had to remove all of the roots.. when they started growing back good I put em n soil.... I wouldn't try transplanting the whole root ball.. good luck!

I've transferred 4+month old mothers from DWC to soil, right in the 6"net pot lid. The biggest thing is taking time to make sure the roots are surrounded by dirt, no air pockets. Wet the rootball and sprinkling dirt on/in it before planting helps get dirt in there. You want dirt IN the roots, it's what wicks moisture. Small waterings, 2-3 times daily for the first week or so until it adjusts, you need to keep the roots moist. I water inside the netpot area until it looks like it's acclimated, then water outside the lid to make it search for water.

Figure at least 2 weeks before it fully adjusts and stats vigorous growth again.

As a general rule if you remove roots you should remove some foilage as well. Helps compensate for the limited water uptake from the smaller root mass by limiting some water loss in the leaves.
Good luck

Thanks for the advice guys. I have a couple weeks to scratch my head on this before I fully commit.
I'm just getting too old to be hauling 5 or 10 gallon pots 2 miles through the bush.
I'll probably just try it out on a few this year and hopefully have lighter travels next year

james42 said:

Ok. There are alot of threads out there about moving from hydro to soil, but there doing it with fairly young plants.
Ive been growing outdoors for years on a fairly large scale. Last year I was forced to chop down my whole crop mid summer. That in turn forced me to start a pretty decent size indoor project.
I've really fallen in love with the indoor growing but spring is approaching and I can't ignore the free big bulb in the sky.
I like to veg my plants for a solid two months indoors before putting them out. The problem is that takes alot of soil and hauling the big pots a couple miles through the forest is back breaking
I got the idea of vegging them in dwc buckets so all I had to do is carefully wrap up the root ball and ditch all that weight. Just transplanting the bare roots.
Does anyone see any problem with this?
Its very important that it works out and I will just start them in soil if it's a issue. Just looking for a little experience from someone else here

Click to expand...

I'm doing something similar, I've managed to air prune the root structure moderately I plan to take a already veg plant (3 months plus ) and drop it in the ground in planning to use an auger from ice fishing plenty of mykos, and avoid air pockets so I plan to make a muck ish hold soil around is very rich I'll check back also plan to water with 5.8 ph water with minor clone x feed