I have three white widow plants growing in a single 5 gal bucket, you don't have to tell me I am already aware this is a bad thing. I have a small closet I'm growing in and one 5 gal was about all I can fit. They are growing under 6-26 watt cfls and a 20 watt flouro. They seem to be growing just fine. they are about 5 weeks in and I have began flowering to determine the sex, one is clear as day female and the other two have yet to show. 1. When the other two do show can i remove the males and leave 1-2 females in the 5 gal and still be okay? 2. Would I be better off taking out the female/s and putting her in an entirely new bucket? if so can someone reccomend a good soil mix I can buy from Lowes or Walmart.
how do you plan on getting the females apart from the males and planting them in thier own bucket without taking the chance of damaging the root system?
This question is spot on. The question then becomes, do you try to wrangle and sort and tear them apart.. or maybe just cut them apart... either way it will stress your plants. They will have to spend a good amount of energy repairing and re-establishing their root systems before they can go back to producing. Grow bags are great for those situations where clunky Pot sizes and dimensions are awkward.
depending on how isolated the plants are in the 5 gal bucket... if you dropped several seeds in one spot, you'll most likely kill everything trying to separate it... if they're spread around the bucket, then you're fine... you're not going to get a good yeild at best, and at worst they'll choke each other out prior to flowering if you leave them be... my suggestion is a few drops of Superthrive in a Kelp extract presoaked soil (anything but MG).... just buy some peat moss and perlite for now... I'm almost positive Walmart carries Superthrive, and it'd just be a joke if you can't find peat moss and perlite there. I really recommend worm castings, but normally (for God knows what reason) only hydroponics shops or mom n pop farm supply stores carry them. If you're doing risky transplants without Kelp extract to help root development, big wag of the finger to you sir... Be extremely careful not to crush the veins of the plant when you separate everything... if it's in one clump, dig around it with some excess, then shake the dirt gently off the roots in a dark room and go to work (very carefully). Make sure your transplant pot has been prepared and the soil pre-warmed. Normally you can save 1 at least...
They are spread around the pot each about 6-8 inches from the other, If i end up with only one female and pull the other 2 will the female be fine if I cannot extract all the roots from the 2 males? should i even bother trying to pull out the roots, once the males are dead the roots will die as well can the female use these roots as nutrients, or is leaving them in there bad for the female?
get your female out now for sure, day by day it gets more and more risky to transplant with multiple plants... at 5 weeks they'll have some decent root development... man... just seperate the plants and hope for the best.... the female should be fine if you take the right precautions... the other two i'd go ahead and separate too it's just gonna be more and more of a bitch to do later... kelp extract and superthrive man... good luck with it
I only have room in my closet for one five gallon bucket, basically if the other two are male and I pull them the female will still be unhealthy?
if you disturb the roots on a plant it's not gonna like it... but superthrive and kelp extract are GREAT for root development... so it should counter-act the unhealthy part of it... my only problem with transplanting right now is that you just stressed them into flowering... so transplanting after that's not the greatest thing ever... but na man your girl should be fine... if you're sure that one's the one you want to keep, and you can only keep one, then yea just pull the other two before the roots tangle any more than they have... if you want to move the female over to the center of the pot you can, since you're already disturbing it anyways, might as well... it'll be fine, no worries...
ok ok... well if i was in your position what i would do is.................... cut the males down leaving a tiny little stem sticking out of the soil from the males. Probablitly of them coming back to life to spoil ur yield is not even 1%. more like .001 ya know. i just wouldnt do a transplant with your roots entangled with the other living roots. wat i would do like i first stated uptop is until i knew that the male roots are disenergrating. Then i could condone a transplants. thats what id do, i woulndt take a chance of my girls developing shock and losing her. Lezzyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
So its agreed that the female needs to be moved to another pot instead of left in the one with all the roots