Customizing Pots for Strains
When choosing your pot size for the season, there are a few things to consider. How much space do you have? What sort of yield do you hope to get? How much media are you willing to prepare? (Check out Oregon Growers explaining how they choose their pot size.) If you want to get the most out of each strain, however, there are a few more factors to consider.
Expert California Grower’s Opinion
Kevin Jodrey:
People believe that if they have a 300 gallon pot, they’ll get a better yield than in a 65. That may be true if you’re in the central valley and you’re running blue dream, but if you’re in a shorter compressed season with a heavy indica, you’re not going to be able to do that. And you end up, you’re going to spend a lot of time and money building this incredible soil biology that you don’t need because of the extensive size of it. And so, I think depending on where you live, using the right soil size, the right quantity, it’s all a target. You know, for me, this size pot is designed to be a mid-June put-out on an indica morphology, October 1st finish. So, it should give me this time frame to work with on a 65 gallon platform. I don’t expect to see this plant to have an ability to do more than 3 ½ pounds. But that’s the plan, and that’s what it should do and it’ll let us most efficiently use that at that level. And I think that people just have to learn how to utilize it correctly, where they would say to you, “hey, now that I can get configurations of pots…” – People would be able to design the pot to fit the strain and you would end up having a lot more accurate work with it.
According to Kevin, growers need to factor in their climate and what sort of strain they are growing. Blue Dream is a sativa-dominant hybrid strain. A sativa, especially in the climate of the central valley, will have enough time to utilize a large pot. However, if you’re in the mountains of Garberville, CA running indica, don’t waste media on a huge pot.
The Future
As education grows and each strain is more thoroughly researched, fabric pot manufacturers may start selling pot sizes specific for strains and climates! This is Kevin’s hope for the future. For now, just keep doing all the research you can to make sure you’re maximizing your potential! Good luck.