Dutch Leach Trays + Small Pots + Blumats

This will my last experiment before going back to 3 gallon fabric pots if I'm not satisfied.

What I plan on doing is using five 6" fabric pots with three plants per tray, pushed them together to form one long slab-like bed of coco. Two of the pots will be empty and used as spacers between plants and for additional root zone. I'll water them with Blumats, which will be vital considering the tiny small pots will dry out quickly.

The benefit of this setup is less space taken up in my veg room, no transplanting which I usually do when I move the plants to the flower tent and then have to wait for the roots to catch up before flipping. But mainly I'm trying to create a very low soil profile to allow a low scrog net and prevent the need to dim my lights.
Plus I'll have more room on the floor of my flowering tent from when I'm climbing under the net to prune and defoliate. Right now I have flood trays that take up the entire floors. Also cleanup and resetting after a harvest will be super easy.

I'm going to pop some seeds in a couple of weeks. I'll update once things get rolling.

Any updates?

5footgreenfinger said:

Any updates?

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This cycle got pushed way back. The plants have vegged for about a month. I just moved them to the flowering tent and added the Blumats two days ago, but I haven’t had enough time to connect them to the water line and fine tune them all.

That’s only one tent. I’m not sure if I like the layout or not, and ran out of trays that I was using at stands, so I have to use a bunch of wood. But it seems like it will work. My sons birthday is today, so tomorrow I’ll get back to work.

How are blumats working for you? I tried them once or twice, mixed results. Res + tubes accumulate dirt + slime and they dont keep their settings as the dirt changes things, but managed to grow some beautiful plants with them too.

dizzyground said:

How are blumats working for you? I tried them once or twice, mixed results. Res + tubes accumulate dirt + slime and they dont keep their settings as the dirt changes things, but managed to grow some beautiful plants with them too.

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I've found that they have a pretty tough learning curve. I was using little pots, so it was hard to find the balance between too saturated and too drying out. I solved this by overshooting and then dialing it back until there was no runoff. I noticed the slim too, but then I made a little loop in the hose to keep it lifted off of the medium and it went away.

lusidghost said:

I've found that they have a pretty tough learning curve. I was using little pots, so it was hard to find the balance between too saturated and too drying out. I solved this by overshooting and then dialing it back until there was no runoff. I noticed the slim too, but then I made a little loop in the hose to keep it lifted off of the medium and it went away.

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How long of a learning curve was it? I know I might be jumping the gun, bit I'm trying to do as much research as I can. I'm going to have about 80 plants in 3gallon pots. Does the same dial 1.5 clicks back from a standing drop work for those size pots and do you have to readjust as the plants drink more?

5footgreenfinger said:

How long of a learning curve was it? I know I might be jumping the gun, bit I'm trying to do as much research as I can. I'm going to have about 80 plants in 3gallon pots. Does the same dial 1.5 clicks back from a standing drop work for those size pots and do you have to readjust as the plants drink more?

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I would test run a few plants before going all in like that. The 1.5 arrows wasn't enough water. I would start at the recommended mark, and if the coco was drying out I would adjust the knob until there was faster drip, then water and make sure the blumat was shutting off when it got saturated. Then do the same thing until they were pretty locked in. A few of my plants got overwatered and suffered. I realized that they didn't need to be very wet. Like it almost felt dry, but the plants weren't wilting.

I'm still experimenting. I think you'll be alright with 3 gallon pots though. If these little pots end up failing I'm going back to 3 gallons myself. I may keep hand watering once a day and let the blumats carry the watering needs in between. I'm not sure yet.

This time they were much easier to tune for some reason. I've had no runoff and only a few pots were partly drying. I've repositioned the tubes and/or nudged the water up a tiny bit twice a day. I think it will take maybe a week of fiddling to really lock them all in. If you were only growing a few plants it would probably only take a 3 or 4 days at the most.

I think I'm going to hand water them once or twice a week just to keep down salt buildup during this grow. My last harvest was pretty weak, so I just want to get through this one without any additional issues. I'll experiment with optimal nutrient strengths next time. I also started using tap water. The combination of RO + Jack's 321 + Blumats + LED + whatever other variables, were causing hard to figure out deficiencies. I don't want to add additional cal/mag or switch to Jack's RO formula.

I may not defoliate this time. I need to redo the leach tray setup because it will be almost impossible to climb beneath once I add the scrog nets. It's been a long time since I let them go au naturel. I'm not sure if I'll be able to resist plucking the leaves who are acting like big time jerks though.