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enno said:
usually when i grow outside i plant strait in the soil,no transplanting at all,the few times i grew indoors i did the same with no problems(not great grows,but not bad).
can you please tell me whats the point of starting with a small medium and moving it later on.

thanks

PS- i have 99% success with planting strait in the soil

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Are you talking about planting straight into the final pot size? One good reason to start with smaller sizes that are proportional to the size of the seedling and then continue to transplant up is because it can possibly be difficult to give the plant the right amount of water and nutrients if the pot size is much bigger. Of course, as long as you know what you're doing, this shouldn't be a problem.

The other reason though has to do with root development. I need to read up on this more, as I don't remember it too specifically, but if you start out with a big pot, the plant will continue to focus first on growing out the taproot and these lateral roots, when this kind of growth would be restricted by smaller pot size. Essentially, the benefit from using a smaller pot size and waiting for it to fully "colonize" the pot is that you're ensuring as much of that surface area as possible is already completely filled with roots, before giving it more, and I think this is a more effective way of getting more roots based on the way the plant grows them (basically, it grows more roots in a smaller amount of time). More of the right kind of roots, of course, means the plant is more capable of maturing faster and yielding more.

Anyways, I'm sure starting off with the full pot size can work well, but a series of transplants up to that final pot size might work better. Not sure though, that's just my understanding based on what I've read.

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Magash said:
The key to keeping them small is to flower the cuttings as soon as they are rooted. In other words no veg time.

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