JHashmore
Well-Known Member
If you are growing organic in 1 gallon pots I suggest you top dress weekly, I use home made earth worm castings and use the dragonfly earth medicine stuff, i like the natural mystik for foliar once a week for IPM and the veg and fat flowers for foliars maybe every other week when they are applicable. I have witnessed with 1 gallon soil grows that when the roots max out in the pot, in a late veg or early/mid flower it seems the plants go through a stress event and don't look so good, drop lower leaves to promote growth at the top and plants stall for a bit but if you are actively top dressing often youll notice that the feeder roots at the soil level come alive and will eat your top dress quickly and you won't notice stress. Or if stress has occured the plants will rebound once you start actively top dressing. The plants will eat the feed pretty quickly so youll always have room top dress later.I'm running organics too, but I have my SSDD in 1 gallon pots. I was actually hoping for a male. I do way better growing in big pots so I'm sure I've been stressing the hell out of them.
Cannabis is a top feeder anyway so as long as those roots are used to searching and you are top dressing ( 3/4 cup castings with some amendments like alfalfa/rock dust/malted barley etc or something like Gaia green 444 or power bloom or the DEM stuff ($$$ so i use for foliar) you will be golden and will experience way less stress to the plant and it can actually grow for a loooong time in a 1 gallon doing this. If you forget a top dress and those roots aren't really surging with life a compost tea fills in but be sure to top dress to get those roots going and mulch over that, I use either leaves or fir bark mulch which is a nice indoor mulch, i dont green mulch 1 gallons.
I use leaves outside, indoors just be careful with leaves cause they can have insects on them, hasnt been a problem yet but spider mites live in my yard outside (blackberries,strawberries) but never seem to go after my weed plants outdoors, ive got companion plants and herbs and flowers around them though.
Switching to flower after week 2 seems to work well for 1 gallons. It allows room for thr roots to strwtch in the pot during early flower and fill it up then the roots switch to eating your top dress with minimal stress.
I used to think 1 gallon was no good but this summer I experimented and kept plants alive for months outside in 1 gallons top dressing to see how they did and they will continue growing for a long time top dressing. At the end of the day 1 gallon is not my preferred soil size but if you are just looking to see what a strain is like they work well, they are just high maintenance.