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Can I trim roots?
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Posted by wordwiz (My Page) on Fri, Mar 20, 09 at 19:53
| I have a Siletz tomato plant growing in a bucket that is about 2' deep. It is doing great but in checking it today, the roots are getting close to the bottom of bucket.
In your experience, can I trim the roots or do I need to "repot" it to a larger bucket? Or can I let the plant grow? It should have another three months of life left. It's a DWC system.
Mike |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Can I trim roots?
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| Once the roots hit the water bath, things REALLY take off! It's your call, but it's been my experience that if left in contact with the water 24/7, it's not long before the entire reservoir is full of roots! If that happens, just leave your air bubbler on, maintain the nutrient level and keep on growing. Now, it's growing as a "Ramp" and GROW it will! |
RE: Can I trim roots?
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| Leave the roots alone, they'll just keep growing and growing and try to fill up the pot. The only downside to that is that if your root volume gets really large you'll end up with less space for water and have to refill more frequently. This wouldn't be a common problem, though. Typically you have to grow a MASSIVE plant to get that kind of root system. Cutting roots shocks the hell out of plants and will arrest new growth for a few days. |
RE: Can I trim roots?
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| One of the primary advantages of hydro is that plants don't need a large root system to prosper. This chile went from radical pruning in photo 1 to fruit in about 90 days, photo 2. Notice that almost all roots are pruned to a nub. 
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RE: Can I trim roots?
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| Just let them grow you'll be glad you did, certain plants will die or grow very slow if you mess with the root system. Look at it this way if your were growing in dirt you wouldn't need to trim the roots and there no difference in hydro. That is why you keep the root zone dark, because the root zone is dark in dirt farming as well. |
RE: Can I trim roots?
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| Except that there is a humongous difference between hydro and dirt, Rube. There are a ton of advantages with hydro because dirt is limiting, so using trad farming as a guide for how to do hydro is a mistake. Otherwise, people like me who have a ground garden wouldn't also be doing outdoor hydro at the same time. Dirt doesn't need trimming because dirt limits the root growth in ways hydro doesn't. Plus, dirt isn't confined to a volume equivalent to a 5 gallon bucket (or whatever the OP is using). The roots spread out rather than just down and that is why we can grow tomatoes in 6 inches of soil if we allow the roots room to spread and use fertilizers. I wouldn't trim because of what hooked on ponics said. The root's will try to fill the pot, but they should be okay until after a first harvest. If at that point you choose to trim you are allowing time for the plant to recover. Personally, I say compost the plant and use cuttings to start new, though. I use 5 gallon buckets for all tomatoes with GH waterfarm hardware. It's essentially a drip system with dwc qualities. It works better than any other system I've experimented with so far and I don't trim roots. Might have to try it with peppers, though, like willard did. I can't ever get peppers to root after a cutting. |
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