male and female plants in a bucket?

[carl1078lewis]

Hi everyone,

1st post to RIU. I've done a few grows a few years ago, but then moved into an apartment and didn't feel safe about growing there. Now I'm back in a house and able to start up again. Previous grows were ebb and flow and DWC hydro grows of 4-6 plants each in large (15-20 gallon) rubbermaid tubs. I have some Lemon Skunk seeds saved from my previous grows, which are currently 3-4 years old but still viable. I've started 12 seeds, 10 of which have grown into nice little seedlings with 3 nodes on each of them currently. They're about 3 weeks old now and growing in a small DWC tupperware box setup. I just started some super-weak nutrients (100 ppm) about 4 days ago to ease them into a nute feeding routine. I'm using the basic General Hydro nutes. The seedlings are currently being lit by a 50 watt LED grow lamp and a 23 watt CFL bulb. They seem to be doing well, although they're a little small compared to most pics I see here on the forums at week 3. I'm chalking this up to not a whole lot of light in their current setup, and the LED lamp is a real unknown. I've never used one before and I have no idea how much it's really contributing to their growth. For what it's worth, the plants are at least growing straight up towards the LED lamp, rather than bending towards the one CFL bulb, which is promising.

My seedlings will soon be going into my 'real' grow room-- I've been waiting on some panda paper to show up and then I'll get it built ASAP. I have plans for a 4 x 4 foot room with about 7 feet of vertical space. I have five 3.5 gallon buckets for the grow with 6 inch net-pot bucket lids. I've got the buckets connected together with tubing and will have a reservoir to keep the buckets topped off easily without having to manually fill each bucket on a regular basis. I have a 400 watt HPS lamp ready to go as well.

So here's my question . . . I have 10 seedlings and 5 buckets. I don't really want to ditch half of my seedling if I don't have to. My seeds are non-feminized, so I'm guessing half will be male and will need to be cut down. I'm not planning to veg these plants for too long-- maybe 3 more weeks, or until they're about 10-12 inches high. I'm wondering if I can get away with putting 2 plants in each bucket rather than just one per bucket. My concern is that if I get a bucket with a male and a female plant, and I cut the male out, I'll have the roots still in the bucket, which will be dying off and rotting away. I'm guessing that this would be bad for the remaining female plant, but am wondering if I could get away with it anyway. My guess is that if the plants show sign of sex by week 2 of flowering and this strain takes 8-9 weeks, there will be 6-7 weeks of the remaining plants having to deal with rotting roots in the buckets with them. Plus, since all the buckets are hooked up together with tubing, possible 'bad stuff' from one bucket may wind up in all the other buckets. So any thoughts? Could I make this work by regularly changing out the nutrient solution to keep things fresh? Or is this just a bad idea all around? Could rotting roots actually somehow work as 'nutrients' for the remaining plants (probably not)?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Also if it sounds like I'm doing anything else that's fairly stupid, please let me know. Like I said, I've grown before but am no pro, and am fairly out of practice and trying a new hydro system and nutrients as well, so lots of variables I'm not too sure about here. Thanks very much for your time and help.

 

[Huel Perkins]

I run a dwc system with 5 gal buckets and run two plants per bucket without any problems.

Maybe try to make some sort of temporary divider in the bucket to keep the root masses separate until they show their sex, just an idea...

 

[carl1078lewis]

awesome, thanks very much for the response. It's great to hear others have gotten away with this. Did you cut down any males or have all females in your 2-per-bucket setup?

Last time I did a DWC grow was 4 plants in a 15 gallon rubbermaid tub, and you couldn't pull one plant out without taking the rest with it, the roots were so tangled up. I wasn't sure how good my seeds were after almost 4 years so I started way more seeds that I had buckets for. I'd just hate to throw out a seedling that MIGHT be female though! My hope is that by starting the flowering when they're fairly small I won't fill the buckets all the way up with roots or grow through the ceiling in my grow room.

My hope is to get a mother from this batch and do clones for future runs so I don't have to worry about culling males next time around. Thanks again for the help!

 

[Heisenberg]

If you expect reality to cooperate with you, you might be disappointed. You can bet that if half your plants are male, they will be the ones together in the same buckets, causing you to ditch an entire bucket, and leaving you growing two females in another. Luckily that will be ok if it happens, jus not ideal since your buckets are a tiny bit small. You can also just remove a male without much problem. Just cut the roots you need to. You should avoid cutting large feeder roots, but the others are fair game; up to about 20% of the root ball can come off.

As for dead roots in the res...you'll have this anyway. You can do three things. You can run a continuous sterilizing agent to discourage nasty stuff, you can add an enzyme product to break down the dead material, or you can add beneficial microbes which will break down the roots AND ward off the nasty stuff. I highly recommend adding beneficial microbes, along with being meticulous about proper res conditions.

Sounds to me like you'll be okay, and should be a good learning experience. Reminds me of my early set ups, which taught me a lot. Good luck!

 

[Huel Perkins]

awesome, thanks very much for the response. It's great to hear others have gotten away with this. Did you cut down any males or have all females in your 2-per-bucket setup?

I only grow frow clones so i have never had do deal with pulling males.

 

[carl1078lewis]

Heisenberg, thanks very much for the pointers. I found your thread on breeding beneficial microbes and will give that a go.

Perkins, future grows will definitley be mostly clones, except when starting new strains. Just getting started for now and that means from seed this time around.

Thanks again for all the help!