Transplant question i can't find an answer to on here.

I bought some new soil i am gonna use. I am gonna go ahead and put my plants in a 3 gallon container. My question is can i get rid of the old soil thats in my plants or will it be too dangerous? I know the roots will be clinging to the soil..so i'd have to squeeze the old soil to get it to release from the roots. I know the new soil i have is better and it will give me somewhat of a fresh start. My plants are in these pics. https://www.rollitup.org/blogs/327777/blog9578-next.html they are about 45 days old...the ugly yellowish green on is fukin retarded i think. Born with down syndrome or something. I'd really like to replace the old soil with the new soil but not at the price of stunting them or damaging them.

you could scrape some out but the feeder roots are on the new root growth anyways so the benifit wouldn't out weigh the setback damage.

nah man just let soil dry and transplant root system as much as possible..keep shitty soil if the roots have grown in it. try to put rootball in new soil and bury up to the 1st set of leaves and water with some ph'd water..good luck

If your plants are 45 days old and you have then in pots that are small enough that you will only be moving up to 3-gallon pots you most likely have a root-bound situation going on so removing all, or at least most of the old soil would be difficult, but not impossible.

You can remove the plants from the pots they are in and lay them down and use a hose to wash away the soil. You can also take something like a 5-gallon bucket and fill it about three quarters or more full and repeatedly dip the root-ball into the bucket and remove the old soil that way.

The only danger is since your roots are likely very tangled you would need to at least somewhat separate them so when you put them into the new pots you could get soil around all the roots and not have air pockets. Unless you are very careful and take your time, while making sure to keep the root wet, you could damage the fine hairs on the roots and have a problem.

Unless you know for sure that your roots are not tightly tangled you would be better off moving up to a decent pot size, like 5-gallons, and scoring/cutting the sides and bottom of your current root ball about an inch deep so the roots would then push out into the fresh soil and there would be enough of it to make a difference and give them the room they need. If you don't cut/score the root ball your tangled roots will want to mainly continue to circle and intertwine with each other and will be very slow to spread out into the new soil and make use of it.

Silky Shagsalot said:

i've done this before with great results, ph the water. also, don't be afraid to hack off roots if you feel the need. this is also done with mother plants, it works.

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Someone can remove roots but if they do they should remove some of the plant too so there isn't an imbalance and not end up in a situation were there are not enough roots remaining to fully supply the above soil portion of the plant.

After all yaws advice i decided to transplant them. I just let what old soil fall away and kinda squeezed a bit and they all mainly stayed in a small clump. I got rid of alot of old shitty soil and there were an asston of roots everywhere side,top,bottom from the remaining clump of old shit. I didnt really get in there and press my luck. Above all the roots looked like they were growing great. I did not see any rootball action going on so i guess thats a good thing.