No you won't. .cannabis is a "cleaner plant" it pulls contaminates from its growing medium and stores it in the plant. Hemp is planted in radioactive and heavy metal contaminated soil to clean it. They have been using it to clean up radiation at the Chernobyl reactor site. This is why so many people get bent over what people use for nutrients and additives, bad nutes could literally poison you if they contain heavy metals/contaminates/etc.
Most metals have a much higher rate of blood dosing when smoked vs eaten. (does depend on the form, and the metal, I know aluminum and sodium are things that are worse when smoked).
Just use lots of rockwool. Get rockwool plugs, rockwool cubes, soak some rockwool in water and tear it down to the size you want. And I agree with the smaller net pots- besides the tipping aspect, I can't see any real advantage to larger ones. Also if you dont have any sort of top feed/drippers, you basically don't need a medium. If there were neoprene collars that could somehow support the damn adult plant, those would work too (this would be dumb tho). Unfortunately have to hold the damn thing up somehow.
and this. you could probably use whatever the hell you want. I bet you could use styrofoam packing peanuts- anything that won't get eaten away by bacteria. I actually have no idea why mineral/rock based media is preferred at all. Most of them have almost 0 cation-exchange capacity, are oddly ph sensitive (meaning they fucking dissolve somewhat), usually contain some trace bad metals (lots of aluminum) and some other weird contaminants. Also read somewhere that humics/fulvics helps dissolve metals out of the rock material... so why the hell are we using rocks again?
I made so many aluminum pipes in high school, 3-4/week at times. I went to a voc/tech for machining and it was a good way to make $$ on the side. Opps, sorry for the Alzheimer's. I smoked out of one for most of that time too.
I've been growing around 30" plants in 2"collars in net pots, no medium in lp aeto/nft rails. I did have a pvc support structure, but most of my strains didn't need it. If you used silicone to glue the 2"collar into the net pot, then stack a 4" and 6" collar and net pot as the plant grows, again gluing them in and also together, I think it would support a decently large plant. A simple tripod support on top of the 6"collar could provide plenty of support.
Everything's going to kill us.....
What are airsoft BBS made of?
Sweet! So stacking collars does work. I really think I might try that and pellets next time, I feel much better about that. Agreed that everything will kill us eventually, but one of the great things about hydro is getting to put exactly what you want in the solution- If i can get the rocks and shit out of there, I'm all for it. I'll save my cancer for the liquor, nicotine and red meat.
Yeah the rockwool 'croutons' (i like that) sounds like a good way to go too. This current grow is mostly rockwool in my 3.5" cups, then just some hydroton at the top mostly to block light.
Ah yes, the pool noodle. Wonder what type of plastic those are. I know they use foam for the lettuce rafts, gotta be some safe foam out there.
Stacking collars was just an idea, I've never tried it. Seems sound in theory.
I have found any plant greater than 10 inches tips. This way needs some,sort of anchoring system.
I had that problem too. When they start tipping, i tape a tomato cage with the legs cut off to the lid. Then the plant can lean on the inside of the cage and they stay up straight.
I use 3.5" pots, all my plants but one have tipped so far lol. I guess I don't care much so far. As long as it's not pinching or cutting into things.
Itd be nice for my dwc screen lids in my signature.
And cheap.
That's why you never dump the bag before running water through them... poke a bunch of holes with a pen sized apparatus that's not gonna break and leak ink all over your grow stones as you stab away like the shower scene in psycho at the bottom 1/3 of the bag, then cut the top off the bag (all this with the bag sitting in a tub or slop sink) and run water through with a hose or tub spout (the tub spout is tough, u gotta keep moving the bag around) and just keep running water through until it comes out clear... from there dump it into a container and treat it how you would prior to use; and your good... same goes for hydroton... works lovely...
