Watering strategy for plants in pots to big? (coco)

Hey guys, I was just wondering how to water a plant in a pot that is too big for it, as due to a noob mistake I up potted from starter pots (almost solo cup size) to 10L and 12L smart pots (around 3 gallons pots) I started to get a nute deficiency on the right-hand side plants at 1/4 nutrient strength so i upped it to 1/2 which was a little too much as the leaves of the guys in the bigger pots started showing sign's of nitrogen toxicity ...

I'm running coco 60%/perlite 40%, using the H3ad formula for coco with cal mag (GH micro and GH bloom at a ratio of 6/9 per gallon) , feeding daily to 20%-30% runoff (as I'm using tap water)

from what I am seeing the plant that I still have in the little container can handle a lot of nutes but the bigger potted guys seem to get overfeeding symptoms when fed the same strength solution .. is this because the ones in the bigger pots have more to eat from so they kinda snack all day and overfeed themselves? whereas the guy in the smaller pot basically can't overeat due to the fact that he will go through the nutes in his container much faster and have none left to overfeed himself?

should I just water the plants in the bigger pots way less like every second day as compared to every day?

Some advice would be great from the experienced growers here.

Over watering/feeding the roots after transplant to larger pots I think. Id give them less when watering maybe. Plants do best on daily and multiple feeds in soiless after getting rooted well like your smaller plant is doing, no roots no appetite essentially.

This is a great read on coco and roots:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=338851

Ibechillin said:

Over watering/feeding the roots after transplant to larger pots I think. Id give them less when watering maybe. Plants do best on daily and multiple feeds in soiless after getting rooted well like your smaller plant is doing, no roots no appetite essentially.

This is a great read on coco and roots:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=338851

Click to expand...

thanks for the advice man, and thanks for the read it was very good ... yeah, I think 90% of my problems atm are too big pots to soon ... lesson learned haha for next time ... that's why I was using bag seed for my first grow instead of the mango seeds I have and some white widow autos as well.

next time I think I'll go little starter pots, then maybe try and get some like 3-5L pots then go the bigger air pruning pots ... or is 10/12 just too big in general I only wanna grow little indica's and I only have 160cm of height (5.2 foot)

King Loki said:

get some like 3-5L pots then go the bigger air pruning pots [...] I only have 160cm of height (5.2 foot)

Click to expand...

i would not use pots larger than that for your height, that's more than plenty in coco

You can grow large plants in small containers using coco, its similar to hydro. The 3 gallon (10-12L) pots you have are fine, just gotta get the watering thing down after transplant is all. Could always fold the edges of the bags down kinda like rolling up pant legs and fill them with only like 7 liters of coco. What kind of light are you using?

Vacuum the white stuff off, so you get more evaporation. Get the pots off the ground to increase drainage, and let the roots in the bottom get some air. Let them dry until the coco is about as moist as bags of stuff usually arrive. Then give them just a days worth of water. That might mean weighing the pots to see what a days worth is. 1ml=1g / 1L=1kg. You can get away with no runoff for about a week, if you lower the food content, to account for them not really using it. Actually.. some people have gone full cycle without runoff, but a week is about my limit. Then I must water through.


Edit:
A little more on weighing. Dry is the moisture level the bag comes at. Weigh the pot at that. It's your dry weight. In your case, now give them half a liter. You can measure that with a jug, or 500g on the scale. Wait 24 hours and weigh again. Now you can see what they drunk in the last 24 hours.

Lets say your dry weight had been 3000g and you took it to 3500g with your half liter. 24 hours later, you might find it's 3250g. So you don't need to water. If however it weighs 3100g, then your plant drunk 400 in 24 hours. So you need to water with 300 to give yourself the dry weight of 3000 plus the 400 your plant wants for 24 hours. 3400g

You can know 4 pots individually, but batch watering is fine. Just find the one drinking the most, and make all the pots follow that weight example. They must all learn to live on the same regime if you want it easy.

I very much doubt you will drink more than half a liter in that first day. However, the coco does have more moisture in reserve, and plants running out will slow there usage. There is a margin for error. But each day remember the weight you took them to yesterday, and weigh again. So stay above dry (dry being as supplied).

I would likely have them in 5" pots, with a dry weight of 300g and watering them to 400g, with runoff being around 600g. Once they were using 200g day, I would want to take them past the 500 required, right past 600 to get runoff. No more weighing required, just daily runoff. Then once the pot can't get though the day, repot. Or, give a second splash of 100 about 6 hours before the proper watering. Just to see them though.

My little photo over there shows a pot and plant size relationship I'm happy with. That's not getting potted up again for a while.

The size of you pot is fine. Watering every second day is fine. Do you know your ph and ec? I'm not sure what is going on from the picture. But I suspect the issue lies elsewhere