3 plants 1 container--What to do?!

So i got some plants from my buddy for free and want to grow outdoors in soil. There are three small plants, about 2 inches tall, pretty skinny, and they were all planted in one big rubbermaid container. The container is only 1.5 ft tall, 2 ft long and 1.5 ft wide. I think the soil he used is crappy cuz there's some flies and signs of mites already, plus some other plants sprouting.

I know I should transplant cuz of these poor conditions, but IS IT TOO EARLY TO TRANSPLANT?This is my first grow and I don't want to kill them. CAN I STILL SAVE THEM?!?

Please help! Thanks!

Well from personal experience, with my first small outdoor grow i started in a water bottle, with the top half cut of corse. Once i realized it would at one point need to come out of the bottle to let the roots grow big, i cut the the bottle to try and move it but he soil wasnt as packed down as i thought and my plant got fell out, roots and all.
Its been about 2 weeks since then and my growth is still possitive and by no means is my plant dead. Infact its 3rd set of leaves are starting to come up.

What im saying basicly is in my experice you should be fine with transporting them, even if you do the job a little sloppy, but i could be wrong.

Is there anyway you can cut 3 slices and get them out one-by-one. If they are small then they shouldn't have much of a root structure. You might just have to perform a little bit of careful surgery on each then transplant them to separate containers. A tiny, tiny bit of superthrive after transplanting could help them survive as well.

use a spoon to scoop them out

stickyikkigreen said:

use a spoon to scoop them out

Click to expand...

haha that sounds like a extreamly easy and simple solution that i wish i thought of when i transported lmao

Thank everyone!!

Yeah, I'm not sure what the root structure looks like, which is what's concerning me. Im just hoping i dont cause too much damage, so all i can do is be extra careful and gentle with em. I actually picked up some Superthrive yesterday. I heard it works miracles, so thought it would come in handy for this situation.

Haha definitely like the spoon idea...I was thinking of picking up some type of small trowel at home depot or something so that should work okay.

Well, i'm gonna be doing the "surgery" later today cuz i heard its best for the plants to recover over night, so we'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!!

Keep it green!

Good luck...What you transplanting them into?? Let us know how it goes.

I transplanted them about a week ago and it turned out to be pretty easy. I just dug them out with my hands and transplanted them into the new tubs. They were small plants with a young root system so there was no tangling between the plants, which made it easy to avoid harming the roots. The two smaller plants were looking pretty bad before the transplant and it doesn't look like they're gonna survive the shock. The largest of the three is still looking good tho, so let's hope it starts growing big and tall soon. I heard that growth is stunned for at least a week after transplanting and this seems to be the case.

I decided to go big with my containers and got 18 gallon tubs--they're outdoors so go big or go home right?! The only concern I have with such big containers is drainage problems. I added about 25% perlite to the soil with some sand, so I'm hoping this is good enough to avoid problems. Guess we'll see.

Thanks for all the advice!!