How do you all make the choice on when to stop watering a plant like a seedling and move on to watering it until there is run off? My girls are at the point where i feel like you could call them a really big seedling or a really small plant. I keep getting very conflicting advice from other growers on how they should be watered. The same pic can make one person tell me ive underwatered and its bad for the roots and another tell me ive overwatered and seedlings only need a lil ring of water. I had some overwatering problems in the past but got that sorted out and theyve been doing much better recently. However, peoples response to my posts yesterday about transplanting them have me questioning if/when i should make changes. How do you decide its time to start watering it until there is run off? Is there a size or some other visual cue i should be looking for?
A small plant should get very limited water. A seedling only needs a few ml of water per day. Once a plant has put up a few nodes, you can start increasing watering quantity. A mature plant should be watered to runoff and then be left to dry out before watering again.
A decent rule of thumb might be this: never water so much that a plant is not capable of drying out the pot in more than ~3 days.
What I do is water to runoff when the plant canopy matches the diameter of the pot it’s in.
I water to runoff as soon as I transplant my plant.
Watering to runoff isn’t a problem with vegging plant so long as you wait for the pot to dry out. A small plant might take 5-6 days before needing watering again, but in the meantime the roots have been searching out the moisture.
If you keep watering just a little bit every day the roots don’t get a chance to develop beyond the little ring of water.
If I can be honest once I move from solo or nursery bags I start to soak them and wait til they dry out some I do coco not soil so I water more often than a soil grow but same for soil just not as frequent watering. Once my plant hits it’s final home or pot I start the soak til I get run off then as to not create any kind of buildup in the pot to mess with it at any other time later on in the grow.
I start watering to runoff after 2 weeks after transplant. I consider at this time she is in veg. I watch her after watering for her to show me she needs more water by the leaves drooping a bit then i water again. This tells me how long the soil holds the water and how long to go between watering. I dont know if correct but it is what i do.
I like to establish what i consider a drench to almost drought routine. I have found that if i water too frequently ( early grows ) that the roots dont dive deep because the moisture is always available to the plant. With a nearly drought routine (i pick them up every other day) and i feel that they are ready for water, i spend about 30 minutes slowly watering until i see just a tiny bit of runoff… i also use dynomykos and feed organic teas with molasses.
Making your roots search for moisture allows your plant to become more hardy up top while building the foundation down below, by the time youre ready for harvest, youll understand why every part of this plant is usable. I have to cut my plants down with those big shrub cutters with the 3 ft handles 
Im just now starting that routine at this size…
