So, I had three moms stretching in the window and instead of tossing them out I figured I'd do a test scrog-run as a first timer. Now the three moms are doing good, as it seems, and they were real quick to flower. They look healthy and have grown tops from almost nothing to ~3 inches in a couple of weeks. This project is doing so good I'm getting excited about the yield, but what bugs me is the size of the pots at roughly 0.5 gal each... This is a hempy coco setup FIY and they seem to be fine. Should I risk the shock and general hassle of transplanting them into bigger pots or just let them go as long as they're green and happy?
Well your harvest will be directly affected by the size of the root system. So having a larger root system is beneficial. If these were clones, they would probably be just fine, but the nature of mother plants are to become rootbound, due to the amount of time they spend growing, compared to a cone - they fill the root zone out more completely than a clone will during a 2 week veg stage. This means that the plants are likely already root bound, or close to it before they've entered the flowering stage. If you can examine one pot to see if they're bound, or have room to grow, that should be the determining factor of whether or not to transplant. This early into flower, I would say go for it, as you won't know if you'll have a problem until you realize there's a problem. Better to be ahead of that than behind it. Or try swapping two out, and leaving two, then compare notes!
Yeah, I just checked the pots and there's not much room for roots at all. I'll go ahead and transplant into something a little bigger today.. I hope the shock won't affect the plants too much! Might be tricky to get the plant out of the pot, I'll probably have to cut the pot off. Thanks, Original, for the help.