How would you Germinate / Start your Seeds / Veg with LOS/OLS/No-till

Hey there,

I'm interested in the process of LOS/OLS/No-till but one thing that doesn't seem to translate from other "traditional" methods of growing is potting up / transplanting.

From what I've read, farmers are starting their seeds in the same pot/bag that they finish in. Which I've also read should be a minimum of 7 gallons. If my garden area is a 4x4x7 foot tent, using the same pot to seed method, would I just put 9 - 7 gal smart pots in there and hope for the best? Could a tent that size support 9 potential girls?

This seems counterproductive since if you're a new scout like myself (brand new to all this) who wants to run traditional, non-fem seeds, you would think you'd want to plant as many seeds as possible to pick out the males right? I've seen people do so in red solo cups and then transplanting / potting up to larger sized pots. This would seem against the no till/los/ols philosophy because you would be disturbing the soil (microbes / food web) in the process.

I'm curious how you guys tackle the germinating / seed / veg process with your own plants.
Thanks!

Hello greenfox,

I noticed nobody had picked this up so I will try. Your question touches on many points and I will do my best to address many of them. I am not doing no-till, but my soil is certainly full of life. I definitely don't know it all but have had success with my method and have refined it over many years. that is my disclaimer.

I start my seeds directly in 3" square nursery pots filled with Pro-Mix HP, then transplant them into their final containers from there. I have soaked the seeds in water before planting, but that just makes them more difficult to handle and more open to damage or infection, IMO.

I tried planting seeds directly into my living soil, but had a noticeable decline in my germination rate. As a result I went back to Pro-Mix HP for starting seeds. The Pro-Mix becomes part of my soil upon recycling.

Once the seedlings have emerged and are ready for a drink, I water them with a slurry of living soil and water. When their root system is well-established, but before they are rootbound I transplant them into full strength rich living soil or whatever the kids are calling it these days.

Container size minimum depends on plant size and veg time. 7 gallons is a nice size for the confines of a tent, but if you are growing smaller plants you can get away with 5 gallon or even 3 gallon containers. With the smaller containers you need to manage them more actively, watering more frequently and you should keep the plant in proportion with the container. These factors also affect the number of plants you can comfortably run in a given space. a 4x4 tent could be perfect for 1 large plant, 4 medium plants or 9 smaller plants. 9 females of any size is too much for a 4x4, in my experience.

when deciding how many seeds to plant i take into account that with regular seeds anywhere from 0 to 100% could be female. Usually it falls somewhere between 25%-75%. Don't plant more than you can handle.

don't get too hung up on not disturbing the soil when transplanting. the hyphal networks and microbes will be fine, just don't till

read One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. it seems to be the book that is at the core of no-till philosophy to me. If not it is a wonderful read anyway.

The are many ways to do this successfully, but you will never be done learning

What I do is make a light on nutrients mix for starting my seeds in and plant them in solo cups. I use 30 gallon geopots w handles filled with a pretty rich mix i make myself. If Im growing from seed I will take the plants from the cups and plant 2-5 per pot and take cuts of each. Sometimes I get luck and they show sex before transplanting but most times I just chop and drop any males or hermies that show up so they can be mulch. After harvest I take a knife and cut around the outside of where the cup was and pull out the cup shaped stem base and roots. Leaves a perfect sized hole for the next plant and the cycle continues. Im not disturbing the soil a lot and ive had no ill effects. My oldest pots are over 3 yrs old now and have a healthy ecosystem in them with a multitude of decomposers. Peel back my mulch and theres worms galore.

I do essentially the same as P-NUT, except in 1 gallons instead of solo cups. Remove old 1 gallon root ball and replant new.

I had issues starting seeds directly into no-till containers because of springtails. They would knock the emerging seedling down by trying to climb them. That would break the stem and instant death.
Went to the 1 gallons and I like the pre-veg time before going to the 15 gallon no-tills. I just use my normal soil in the 1 gallons. Usually just break up the old root ball that I pulled out and plant a new cut/seed right into that soil...

I had found a mix on here that was pro mix, with compost, ewc, crab meal and oyster shell flour. I added bokashi and barley sprout tea, modern microbes, some silica kelp and aloe to moisten it and let it sit for 30 days or so. Some seed companies 100% germination, others lower or differing germination. I have had as low at 10% and high as 86% different varieties but same company, so averaging 66% with that company, 6 varieties. Other companies averaging 90% with fewer varieties, seed is supposedly fresh etc so not sure if it is my soil or something else with the seeds, I am personally not going to change it.

I pot up from 72 cells into 2 inch pots to sex then into 4 inch for females, take cuttings then flower. This has been fine for lower light conditions to keep growth slow, just making sure not to over water and it's fine mostly some have needed a neem/kelp tea and once Epsom salts but after 6 weeks not needed but maybe only 6 plants and because I over watered them. After selections are made then to 1 gallon for mothers and we will see how that goes with just the soil.

My soil is modern mix, I just used leaf compost instead of fish and substituted neem for karanja meal. I ended up low on iron so I had to amend it before planting, if I'm being anal I should have bumped up the manganese, zinc and copper as well but they were adequate, will be bumping them up next round.

Same deal as growingcrazy, cut the stump wait a few days, rip it out plant back.

We just started putting 6-8 seeds per 20 gallon pot. Kill the males, let the females compete with each other for light and nutrients. Should make them stronger, hopefully more potent. But basically wait until they pop and grow enough to where you can throw down some cover crop seeds and top dress without beating them for light, than do that. Definitely through some worms in, some rotting wood too if you can find some clean forest wood.

I sprout 12 seeds in paper towels, put them in 3L airpots w/ blumats at 17-18 hrs of light for 5 weeks, flip to 11.5 hrs of light, sex them after a week to 10 days, up-pot the best 6 (if I get 6 females) into 5 gal root pouches, trim away the lower growth & let 'em fly. My space is basically 4x4x6T. I use a scratch organic soil mix recipe gifted to me by another member, Eighths-n-Aces. It will carry even 12 week varieties thru flower on water alone. They get occasional EWC tea when I remember. Under twin 315 lamps 6 plants fill the space entirely. Vegging longer gives management problems with stretchy strains & doesn't improve yield because the lower branches don't get enough light except with very open varieties. With branchy varieties four plants fill the space almost as well. The next time I do fems I'll put sprouted seeds right in to 5 gal root pouches to save myself some work.

12 plants w/ only 6 flowering is our legal limit in Denver so I just go with it. We get more than enough to smoke.

I germinate like this:
- Soak seeds in distilled water for 12 hours (usually over night) undisturbed
- Poke seeds. Usually all sink after 12 hr soak
- When a few seeds don't sink, I wait another few hours, then I put them into wet/damp paper towels and put those into ziplock bags
- Wait another day or two and periodically check on the seeds, usually I can see when most of them have sprouted through the ziplock bags/paper towels

Once the seeds have germed, I plant them into jiffy plugs. I let them grow until I see good roots on all and then transplant them into my modified Coot's soil mix into nursery pots before going into the same mix in 1 gallon pots.
These 1 gallon pots are my veg-pots.
How long I let them veg in there depends on several factors.
For example the strain. Heavy Sativa leaning strains maybe get a few weeks in the 1 gallon pots before I transplant them to flower.
Shorter/stouter or more Indica leaning strains, I veg for up to 3 months in those pots.
They all get topped at least once however and I have started to incorporate low stress training into my regimen as well.

Since I veg them usually quite long, I can sex them from their pre-flowers (I still have to test if I can use this method with stretching Sativa types though).

I run 5 gallon fabric pots for flower and do not change their soil at all.

When the time comes, I transplant the veglings from their 1 gallon pot to the 5 gallon flower pot. I just remove enough soil from the 5 gallon pots so the new veglings can fit in. Everything else I leave as is.
If there are any deficiencies arising or any nutrients are "spent", I top dress or use an ACT.

I also hear you on the plant numbers and that one should normally try to pop as many seeds in order to select from as many specimen as possible.
To me, going with 5 gallon smart pots was a compromise between this goal and the goal to have superior quality herb at the end.

And I am very satisfied with my decision so far.

In my system, I can still run up to 24 females in 5 gallon pots at a time (under a 630w cmh and a 315w cmh). Which is enough for me.



And you definitely don't have to plant the seed directly in the pot you will flower it in, in the end.
Someone definitely misunderstood the whole subject when they told you that.

The point of LOS/no-till is to not throw out or screen and re-use or whatever your soil.
The point is to leave it in the pots/beds and simply plant the next cycle in the same soil as the previous.

It is important however that you do not harvest your plant, then let the pot dry out and die out before you transplant the next plant into it.
You basically have to harvest and within a day or two (just to throw out a number) you have to have your next plant growing in that pot.
If you let the soil dry out and die out, then the whole no-till/LOS thing no longer works.

Oh and by the way: I usually give the plants a week or two under 18/6 in the flower room before I flip to 12/12 just so they get over the transplant shock, get used to the different light spectrum and start stretching their roots out a bit.

And I found out that if I veg in 3 gallon pots and transplant to 5 gallon for flower, the plants have a lot more issues as they don't have enough space to increase/develop their root mass if they were vegged in 3 gallon pots.

But going from 1 gallon veg to 5 gallon flower is working very well for me.

I could probably skip the nursing pots altogether to be honest and just directly transplant seedlings/cuts into the 1 gallon veg pots.
But instead I actually have an additional step before the nursing pots which is jiffy plugs.
Why you ask?
Because I need the additional space this affords me

This way I can have for example the next round of clones veging in the 1 gallon pots, with their clones (to select after and keep 1 or 2 as mums) in the nursery pots and the next round of seedlings (from the next strain I want to tackle) in jiffy plugs.

Then the rotation goes jiffy plug --> nursery pots --> 1 gallon veg --> 5 gallon flower.

Hope that helps someone somehow