That wappa look nice in scrog
Strip LEDs in the garden of Paradise
- Thread starter Prawn Connery
- Start date
Buck5050
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Thanks for the great info on the setup, I believe I understand how the pots are set up now and with this set up can easily be converted to a full recirculating system. That simply is a brilliant and flexible system, As I stitch your pictures and info together in my head I realized that your in an attic and you said your draining into your garden?
Prawn Connery
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The hose runs out under the tiles in the roof and drips into the garden below.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
I used to grow Sweet Tooth x Sensi Star bred by BlueHemp Seeds in Switzerland. We called it "night night" because if you smoked it, it was "Good night!"
Tanlin for fungus gnats - it's natural and it works: http://cxhydroponics.net/project/tanlin/klx said:
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
If you don't have a good source of coco, you can buffer it yourself. I used to buy expandable coco bricks and flush them with warm water a few times to get rid of the salt, then use CalMag or a good coco nutrient for the final flush - but it was time-consuming and a pain in the arse.
If you have access to coco that has already been washed (flushed) and steamed (sterilised) and buffered (most likely with calcium and magnesium), it should be good to use right out of the bag.
For your question about adding CalMag, most decent dedicated coco nutrients will have a good ratio of Ca Mg, so I would look for a good base nutrient first and try that. I don't use any supplements and my plants are healthy - as long as I feed them properly! If you already have CalMag, you can water with that first to pre-buffer your coco and see how things go after that. But generally, with a good nutrient, there should be enough Ca and Mg in it to charge the coco and keep your plants fed.
If you're tap water is not from a limestone source and doesn't have much calcium or magnesium in it already, check the nutrient producer directions to see if they advise adding Cal-Mag to their formula using RO water.
Also, for maximum magnesium and calcium availability, set your pH to around 5.7/5.8 initially and let it rise naturally in the reservoir to 6.2/6.3 before you reset it again. For me, pH6 is a good alround pH for coco.
Keep an eye out for small brown spots, curled leaf margins and - in the latter stages - interveinal chlorosis, or yellowing between the veins on the older leaves first. These are all signs of Ca and Mg deficiency.
Do not overdo the phosphorous.
For me, less is always more: I start off slowly adding nutrient or additives if I have to to see if things improve. If they do, I add more. Always better to underfeed than overfeed initially.
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Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
You can use any shaped pots that work. I use round pots because they are readily available and I have always used them. I have grown plants bigger than 12oz in those 2-gallon pots, so they are plenty big enough for my needs this grow. If I get 2-3oz per plant x 8 plants, that's over a pound and I should be happy with it as a first grow.
As a general rule, 1 litre of pot space in coco should produce at least 1oz of bud. So 2 gallon pots (8 litres) should be good for half-pound plants.
With decent coco like Canna etc, I use it straight out of the bag. The way my run-to-waste system constantly flushes the coco, it wouldn't matter even if the coco had a tiny bit of salt in it - it would soon get flushed and charged by the incoming nutrient solution.
Have look at my first post where I describe how and why I use silica.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Cloth pots you could try, but remember: this is hydro. As long as you constantly water the coco using a drip feed or other system, fresh nutrient solution will draw oxygen down with it each watering. With an aerated reservoir, the nutrient solution itself is oxygenated. And as the plants feed and transpire, of course the roots draw even more oxygen down into the coco, as they are "pulling" (osmosis) nutrient solution out of the coco that is being replaced by air.
projectinfo
Well-Known Member
Yeah, cloth pots for me anyways isn't about bringing air somuch..... but actually "air pruning" your roots so you have more feeder roots instead of tap and anchor roots
Prawn Connery
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Two weeks and two days of 12/12. This is going to be a real squeeze. I can see some serious fan leaf plucking in a couple of weeks.
dannykay
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Beautiful mate, keep it up!
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
If you saw how root-bound my pots were after every grow, you wouldn't be wanting any more, lol!
But you've just reminded me: the roots in these pots go straight down into the catchment pot, as there's always a small amount of nutrient solution below the level of the drainage pipe the plants like to tap into.
I know air pruning's a "thing", but you do know that tap roots are also feeder roots . . . Root mass is root mass as far as I'm concerned. Look at DWC, NFT and aeroponics - no air pruning going on there, and they are among (if not the) the fastest forms of plant growth systems.
Buck5050
Well-Known Member
Do you defoliate? Seems like that is a dense canopy inside and the leaves bout 4 inches up from the pots are virtually in the dark. I never have defoliated before as it wasn't a thing back in the day. The more I have seen it done the more I understand it has it advantages.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
As a vertical grower, the only time I defoliated was when leaves grew into the light or were damaged by the floor fan.
This time around, I'm gunna have to do what I'm gunna have to do!
I'm going to leave them until the stretch is over and then I'll start removing some fan leaves. I don't mind a bit of shading at this stage because, as I mentioned earlier, it promotes stretch in the undergrowth which brings more bud sites up closer to the canopy. If you start removing fan leaves in the early stages, those lower branches don't stretch as much and you end up with quite a disparity.
This time around, I'm gunna have to do what I'm gunna have to do!
I'm going to leave them until the stretch is over and then I'll start removing some fan leaves. I don't mind a bit of shading at this stage because, as I mentioned earlier, it promotes stretch in the undergrowth which brings more bud sites up closer to the canopy. If you start removing fan leaves in the early stages, those lower branches don't stretch as much and you end up with quite a disparity.
projectinfo
Well-Known Member
Yeah I'm hoping with fabric pots raised an inch on a flood table with promote a more even root structure. I've done Dwc I know what you mean. But in a soil type medium where space is limited...... And having long tap roots circling around the bottom are concentrated and struggle for food and get hotspots of salt build up... In theory man. I'm not a fucking scientist don't get me wrong. We're just talking hypotheticals right. But if you see a picture of an air pot roots their very uniform throughout the entire medium. Maybe better for drainage and nutrient uptake.
What do you think? Have you ever gotten root rot with your soggy setup and roots going into the catch bucket?
What do you think? Have you ever gotten root rot with your soggy setup and roots going into the catch bucket?
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
The feeder hoses are attached to stakes which push into the coco to hold the lines in place, but the ends of the hoses are open and just dribble into the pot. With two hoses - one on either side - capillary action ensures all the coco gets a soaking. I'll try to get a photo later.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Never had root rot in coco, as there's a constant flow of fresh nutrient solution going into the pots every couple of hours or so.
If you haven't grown in coco before, you need to give it a go to see what I mean. The only similarities it has to soil is good moisture retention, buffering and anchoring for the roots. Other than that, it's as efficient as hydro and grows huge and healthy root systems.
The closest I had to root rot was when my main drainage hose blocked and the pots started filling up with water. I could smell something wasn't right and growth started to slow. Sure enough, they were all sitting in half-buckets of water. But because there was still fresh solution going in, it wasn't too bad. I cleared the drainage hose, flushed all the pots with fresh solution, and everything came good again.
Pythium is pretty much in everything. Spores are blown by the wind, it's in natural soil and water, and insects carry it. Healthy roots that get lots of oxygen have a natural defence against the pathogen, which prevents root rot developing. But in warm temperatures, two things happen: oxygen does not dissolve as readily in water, so starts to dissipate; and pythium reproduces faster, which increases the parasite load on the roots. Eventually something has to give.
The beauty of coco is that, even when it is wet, it's fibrous structure traps air, so it is impossible to overwater as long as you have good drainage.
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
Mate, there are two things I've learned about growing.
1. If it works, it works
2. Reliability trumps performance
All the theory in the universe doesn't beat real-world results.
Likewise, you can have the most efficient system in the world, but if it is prone to blockage or breakage - blocked lines, pump and timer failures etc - then the loss of an entire crop puts you right back to square one.
Good growing is really a balance between performance and reliability - just like motor racing or just about any other sport.
Maybe you can try both set-ups on a flood table to see what the results are. That's the only real way to determine if cloth or air pots have a real-world advantage over sealed pots in a run-to-waste system.
My initial thinking is that with a sealed pot system, every time you water it, the soaking action pulls air down with it into the root zone. The air and nutrient solution can only go in one direction - sucked in from the top and expelled out the bottom. This ensures delivery to the entire root zone without any bypass.
It also ensures proper flushing of excess salts.
With an air pot, there might be the possibility of nutrient solution going in the top and not making it all the way to the bottom of the pot, as water takes the path of least resistance. If the pot is root-bound, and water can leak out the sides, it just might follow that path. Or, you may have to use a little extra nutrient solution to ensure the entire pot gets a soaking. I can certainly see where the extra evaporation and leakage would cause you to use a lot more water, so you might have to refill your reservoir more often.
I'm certain air/cloth pots would work, but how much better growth would you get? I don't really know.
I do know what has worked for me over the years, but that doesn't mean your proposal isn't a better one. If it works, it works.
Just make sure it's reliable!
Prawn Connery
Well-Known Member
4mm feeder line, as requested.
projectinfo
Well-Known Member
Any reason you didn't fill the coco to the top?