Watering amount & frequency in living soil

[Thai Fox]

Thought this may be of interest to you ….

Thanks for the video. Will go find their channel and have a further look. Definitely inline with the 5% at each watering advice that has come up in my research so far.

 

[Thai Fox]

Well, living soil doesn't need (or really appreciate) typical indoor "drybacks." You just don't want it waterlogged.

With fabric pots (even 20g) you might be watering frequently. It really depends on the plant, the ventilation, humidity, the soil makeup, and any mulch/cover plants.

I run living soil, but I use SIPS. They practically eliminate watering issues. So to answer your questions, the method I use for my living soil setup allows the plant to water itself just as it gets thirsty every time. Schedule for watering is topping off the reservoir every few days.

Well now I understand what you mean regarding sips, since you mentioned it I've spent alot of research across various threads. The sip one in the organic section I'm about 70 odd pages in so far. Really appreciate you and the other members chiming in, I've since made some changes to my set-up now, trialling is going well plus I've got another idea I may trial on one of the plants if current system isn't good enough. Cheers.

 

[Thai Fox]

No need to clean anything really the microbes digest everything your worried about
The world is convinced germs are real
Bacteria is real fungi and microbes they will eat it all I mean some people and countries clean using em1 microbes not disinfectants as they actualy cause bad bacteria to rise

I have had a bucket in a bucket for many grows never fed feed just topped bucket up they wick up not down it’s not chemical salts so it’s different
Water up wick
Not
Water down runoff

Did you have a pic of your wick system?

 

[Thai Fox]

I use 15gl or 20gl pots. Give 15s 1 1/2gl every other day and 20s 2gl every other day. Mid cycle I up 15s an extra 3/4gl and 20s 1gl on the non feed days to keep the top soil moist.

Feed is labs?

 

[the native]

Finger the soil
Get dirty
Finger another spot
Feeling wet ?
the ladies are happy

if dry , your doing somthing wrong lube up n try again

What a crack up

 

[Tilt_no_guilt]

Feed is labs?

I’m not sure what you’re asking.

 

[Thai Fox]

I’m not sure what you’re asking.

You mentioned on 'non feed days' I was just curious what you're feeding? I assumed you meant adding/feeding with labs/em1?

 

[Tilt_no_guilt]

You mentioned on 'non feed days' I was just curious what you're feeding? I assumed you meant adding/feeding with labs/em1?

I’ll give it some seabird guano, bonemeal, little kelp, molasses. I do EM1, Ful power, and SLF100 once a week. Non feed days it’s straight water. Sometimes a top dressing if strains need extra. What is labs? Haven’t heard that term

 

[Thai Fox]

Do you make a tea or top dress?
Labs is Lactobacillus/Lactic acid bacteria, EM1 is labs but has more yeasts and purple non-sulphur bacteria.

 

[Tilt_no_guilt]

Do you make a tea or top dress?
Labs is Lactobacillus/Lactic acid bacteria, EM1 is labs but has more yeasts and purple non-sulphur bacteria.

Good to know.
I’ve been top dressing every 2 weeks till week 6ish but that’s because I had to stop with no-till because of HLV cuts for a few months.. will go back to teas shortly.

 

[Tilt_no_guilt]

Well if I can just figure out the right top dressing I’ll stick with that. Had an issue with N too late in flower a couple runs but getting it figure out. Much easier then the old teas, had like 15 ingredients. And the anaerobic tea

 

[Thai Fox]

You ever put anything in the bottom tank? I see they say if you do that you should put the em1/ labs in the water tank and remove any airstones as they promote aerobic bacteria that will compete against the anaerobic bacteria from the labs.

 

[Tilt_no_guilt]

You ever put anything in the bottom tank? I see they say if you do that you should put the em1/ labs in the water tank and remove any airstones as they promote aerobic bacteria that will compete against the anaerobic bacteria from the labs.

Out of habit I throw the stones in. I haven’t heard about not adding them but that makes sense. I’m starting to brew the EM1 to stretch it. See how that goes. Only using a cup for 40gl barrel so would be nice to get it multiplying and add more cheaply

 

[Thai Fox]

Out of habit I throw the stones in. I haven’t heard about not adding them but that makes sense. I’m starting to brew the EM1 to stretch it. See how that goes. Only using a cup for 40gl barrel so would be nice to get it multiplying and add more cheaply

I also have one in each tank at the moment but will look into it a bit more if going to add em1. I seen hyroot, greensthumb and various other members mention about the airstones.

 

[Thai Fox]

Hi,
I would like to give another little update as a thanks to all those that commented on this post which helped steer me in the right direction a couple weeks ago Fuck I've been busy reading I tell ya haha

After going through all of your replies a couple of times I ended up making my way over to the organic section and went down the sip, swick, wick, hempy, intainer build design rabbit holes and managed to get through quite a few very long and short detailed threads. It appears the posts are not as active over the last couple years and looks like several of the old school members that were providing solid information hadn't commented in many years either but still the information is all right there to browse. I think I took about 100 or so screenshots to go back over to help let it sink in. I did notice though that many profile names that offered me advice on here I also seen throughout the different posts I was reading. One thing I really liked reading over there was how everyone is super diy and actually helping each other out on their different projects.

Anyway, I appreciate all the help ladies and gents! I think the system I've put together here looks okay for now, more than likely will tinker with it as I go along but I'm pretty happy to leave it as is and jump straight into growing once I get back home. I'd have changed many things about my design to be honest if I knew what I do now after reading for what seemed like an eternity on those posts haha but all good, we are always reusing and repurposing stuff on different jobs around the house.

So here's what I've come up with before shutting shop and disappearing for a few months. I decided I'd try out two different set-ups, both seem to be working great over the last week. Have a look, see what you think. Cheers.

This is 1 of the prototypes that's incorporating a plant stand sitting on top of a pot saucer (pretty similar method to one of hash hound's designs) Underneath is a cut up smart pot and under that some rope which wicks the water to the bottom of the grow bag sitting on top. Here it is here.



This below is the other style, same thing but I've removed the plant stand and added a netpot setup that's lined with weed mat and filled with 50/50 pumice/coco and a couple inch pumice bed for pot to sit on. The bottom tank allows a bit over 7 gallons with a 1" airgap to underside of pot saucer. I've set up some lines making things easy to fill or drain and also hooked up a little airstone for each tank.



I then decided to see how I'd go getting some fungi going as I can't source any Gro-kashi. I mixed up my own top dressing with some crab meal, neem cake, barley wheat, bio-char & some tricoderma. Covered with garbage bag and checked a day later and everything looks to be coming along perfectly. I then gave a drink with some labs that just finished fermenting.


That's about it really, I liked the idea of using round containers as they're much stronger than the rectangular ones I have used for other projects in the past, but mainly I like the ability to be able to rotate the top on top of the bottom tank to acces all sides of the plant without needing to move the water tank around. I also like the top saucer completely covers lip on bottom tank stopping evaporation and stuff falling down inside.

*Sorry but would anyone also be able to have a quick look over my rough temp/humidity/vpd/ppfd starting points please.

I decided to have a quick play around running the tent yesterday afternoon as it's my first grow indoors and everything is new to me. I had a crack at 3 different settings, all within good VPD range I believe. First for the seedling stage I set around 220ppfd, 26°c & 75%rh. For the veg stage I went about 700ppfd, 27°c & 65%rh. For flower I was 850ppfd, 28°c & 55%rh. I will try get under 50%rh for end of flower but that's about where I thought I should aim for. I will use the photone app and vpd graph to try keep things lined up the best I can, along with recording things if I remember. Basically looking to aim for that 78-80f I see mentioned alot when running led and then just making my way from 75%rh in prop to 50% by end of flower.