When it comes to growing good cannabis, you have to be focussing on every small aspect tocreate a perfect environment for your plants. Think about the perfect light and colour spectrum, temperature, nutrients, growing medium and ph levels.
Another thing that many people won’t think about is using the right pot that suits a cannabis plant. The most important job for a pot is keeping the soil healthy and protecting the roots which is quite important. So choosing the right pot is essential.
Yes, there are pots that are not perfect to grow a cannabis plant in and it’s a must to leave them out of your growroom. In this article we are talking about some aspects that makes a pot right for a cannabis plant.
Size of your pot
The first aspect of a good pot is using the right size. The perfect size can be different depending on your strain, if you’re growing indoor/outdoor and how many plants you’d like to fit in your growroom. The first thing you need to know is that bigger/longer roots, could end up in a bigger plant (with the right care and health).
So the more space it has to grow under the soil, the bigger it can get above the ground. Especially when growing outdoors, you could use very big pots and grow big bushes without having any problems.
However when growing indoor you need to think about the height and space of your room. Commercial growers often put as many plants as possible in their growroom so they use smaller, square pots and fill the whole bottom of the growroom with them.
This results in a lot of smaller, compact plants and it could cause some problems with air flow and plants overgrowing each other. Next to that it isn’t necessery to fill the whole floor with pots. Using less but bigger pots, with some space between them, could even lead to a bigger yield cause your plants grow bigger and healthier.
This is why growers never talk about the amount of plants when they discuss yields, instead they talk about Gram per Wattas the amount of plants is irrelevant because the difference in size. You might be having more Grams per Watt, while growing less plants then your buddy.
Colour of your pot
The colour of a pot could be a big deal when it comes to the health of your roots. Especially growing outdoor in a hot/sunny climate, the wrong colour could damage the roots badly. Most pots being sold in stores are black, when looking for pictures on instagram or growing forums you’ll see that almost any pot is black.
When growing indoor, the colour won’t be an issue as you are able to control temperature and lightning yourself. But when growing outdoor in hot/suny weather, the colour black will attract a lot of heat. This heat will be going into your soil and eventually will warm up your roots.
If there is one thing that roots won’t like it’s a too high temperature. When they are exposed too long to this they slowly starting to die (We all know what happen to your plant after that).
Using white pots can solve this problem. The colour white won’t attract much heat and will keep your soil cool and your roots healthy! If you can’t get a hold on white pots (which is hard to find sometimes) it’s a great idea to get some white spraypaint and paint them yourself or find any other light colour.
Nice to know: Most growers will use small cups for the first few days of the plant and many make the mistake to use transparant cups instead of white/coloured ones. Never use transparant cups as the light will go through and damage the new roots touching the side of the cup.
Material of your pot
Pots come in different colours, sizes but also materials. The most common material for a pot is plastic which can be quite good to grow cannabis in. When using plastic, make sure it’s solid and thick so no light can enter the pot through the material (this also damages the roots).
Another thing to keep in mind is that your pot needs some holes in the bottom so water can drip out when there is too much. This to to avoid water build-up and root drowning. (You can also puncture some holes yourself)
Ceramic/Terrocotta pots are something you should avoid when growing cannabis. This material is heavy to move ,will suck up water and attracts and hold heat quite well.
Lots of these pots don’t come with holes in the bottom which is also negative for your plant (You can’t make good holes without breaking the pot). As they might work good for other plants (succulent plants), we recommend to avoid them for cannabis.
Grow bags
A huge innovation that got more populair over the years are “grow bags”. You might see them in pictures or when visiting a farm. These bags offer major benefits for your roots! Grow bags are made from fabric which means they can be shaped in any form but they also let enough oxygen through it’s fibers.
The biggest benefit is that once your roots reaches the fabric of the bag, your root will stop growing and new roots will be formed which results in long, even roots without any un-necessery root growth/energy loss.
When growing in a plastic pot, once the roots touch the side, it grows back leading to “dubble” circling roots that takes a lot of energy from the plant without providing anything.
Air-pots
Just like grow bags, an Air-pot is another great innovation in the world of growing. I’ts made from plastic and has a very odd shape with lots of cones/holes. Also the bottom has a lot of holes which makes the pot very light and airy. Not many cannabis growers use them as it’s a guite new technique. Now you know what it looks like, we are going to talk about it’s benefits!
Like the grow bags, the airpot is made to get bigger, healthier and better shaped roots. Like I said: In normal plastic pots, the roots will eventually grow in a dubble spiral because they keep growing against the wall of the pot and have no where to go.
This takes a lot of energy from the plant and this new root growth is un-ecessery as they have nu real function (because they dubble up).
Air-pots offer a great solution for this kind of problem: Once the root grows to the side of the pot (through one of it’s holes) it will touch the air and the tip of the root will dry out and stop growing. This will eventually lead to the plant using it’s energy to create new side-roots growing from the original root (that grew out of the pot).
This proces will continue and is a bit similair as topping a cannabis plant: cutting of the main root using fresh air to generate more side roots that will consume more water/nutrients then normal.
Another great benefit of an air-pot is the fact that it increases the nutritional intake in yet another way. For a root to work properly it needs a perfect balance of water, oxygen and the right PH-levels. The air-pot is able to offer this thanks to it’s uncommon shape.
Because the pot is full of holes, an air pot will make the grow medium very airy and full of oxygen which is very positive for the roots. Next to that it’s also very hard to overwater and drown your roots because too much water will quickly drip out of the pot.
