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Originally Posted by stoneric
I've planted directly(seed) into my large pot almost exclusively. The times I have re-potted, I only did 1 re-pot. I didn't notice any difference in yield. I don't want to hijack the big guy's thread but I have always been curious as to why the necessity to re-pot. At the end of my grow I turn my pot upside down, give it a few taps and I have one big rootball the size of my pot sitting on the newspaper I put underneath the pot. I'm certainly not an expert but am I wrong for assuming that with the right watering techniques one doesn't have to re-pot?
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Its not necessarily "wrong" to put the plants in big pots right away, if you re using coco or some other medium. But imho, in soil its a no-no.
Your rootball will be less well formed and more stretched out through the compost. This means less yeld than could be had.
You also risk souring the compost, particularly through the early stages.
There is a reason why just about all gardeners, nurserymen and plantsmen pot on in small stages - it works better.
I used to plant my seeds out in 15L buckets, no potting up. The results werent "bad". Then recently, I learned about incremental potting up. Never looked back, the results spoke for themselves.
In a small plant/big pot combo, the soil holds too much water and the roots dont get enough oxygen. Then in a couple of days after you water, your top layer soil dries out quickly, while the lower layer is soaked. At this stage, you have a problem waiting to happen. You cant water again because you ll have overwatering problems and your wet/dry cycle is messed up.
With the correct size pot the 'dry out time' matches the size of the plant.
Heres what an experienced grower had to say about repoting, when i asked the same question a while back :
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Whilst potting up directly into a large pot that has a thriving microbial community may work on some occasions most folk would be better advised generally to put up in stages. This will result in a much better formed root ball where the plant is exploiting the total volume of the pots, one of the main benefits I've heard from this method is that the plant concentrates on making many fine feeder roots rather than a big tap root to secure it in place.
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