First hempy when to start nutes?

I am interested in learning hydro. I have been around the forums a little while and done a lot of reading and 3 grows done using organics in soil. I got a 5 gal hempy bucket alongside my soil grow. I failed at my first seedling in perlite, I guess I need a rootbound plant before it goes it perlite. So what I did was start a seedling in a small coco planter that the roots grow through and I tore it up good to allow better root penetration into the perlite. The coco cup is filled with promix with mycos, so there is some place for the plant to get nutrients right now. It have its first two sets of leaves, I think about 9 days old. I think the rootshave just begun to reach the water resevior at the base of the bucket. Only been using ro water for now. I have GH nute line and will be using the lucas formula. I dont have a ppm pen yet and I use the ph drops from gen hydro. I diduse nutes on my first soil grow and have a little experience with getting my nutes ph'ed to about what they should be, between 6.0 and 6.5, right? Im new at hydro so I appreciate any response and help.

Coco doesn't have any food for the plant, so you need to start feeding the little buggers pretty much right off the bat. As soon as the first set of leaves form after the cotyledon, I feed em' a 100 PPM solution between 5.8 and 6.2 PH, and as long as they continue to look happy and grow, I keep on feeding them. As they grow more leaves, I up the feed to 150, then 200, then 250, until they are into the veg phase and out of the seedling phase. I start them in solo cups and transfer them into the buckets once they start outgrowing the cups, but before they become root bound.

Dealing with hydro, you really need to get a PPM and PH pen though, as it is FAR less efficient "guessing", and potentially hazardous to your plants.

Best of luck.

Oh forgot to add I have ten plants total, most are reg seeds and a 5x5x7 tent, and a 400w and a 600w air cooled hoods. So this will be my first 1000w grow. And I think the strain I put in the hempy bucket was Khyber kush from rare dankness.

So you mix nutes every watering, correct? Never plain water. And how often to water obviously depends on water usage of the plant but approx every two days as a starting rule of thumb?

If anyone that reads this knows of a good value ph ppm pen. I will search on here through old threads but sometimes new products and deals make the old info not as relavent.

Banana444 said:

So you mix nutes every watering, correct? Never plain water. And how often to water obviously depends on water usage of the plant but approx every two days as a starting rule of thumb?

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Yes feed with every watering.
If you have a perlite hempy then you should water lightly every day until the roots hit the rez. If a coco hempy then you can wait to water until the rez goes dry.

WattSaver said:

Yes feed with every watering.
If you have a perlite hempy then you should water lightly every day until the roots hit the rez. If a coco hempy then you can wait to water until the rez goes dry.

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Thanks thats what I have been doing. About 1/8th strength with the lucas formula. Seedling is as healthy as the ones in soil. I have a lot to learn with hydro. Hoping to have a small setup built later this year.

Banana444 said:

Thanks thats what I have been doing. About 1/8th strength with the lucas formula. Seedling is as healthy as the ones in soil. I have a lot to learn with hydro. Hoping to have a small setup built later this year.

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going to be fun..I started 100% perlite hempys and I love it...like everything you get better as you progress..
my advice with the little experience i have is to feed constant but keep it low..they burn easily i think with this hempy style IMO <--could be wrong but o well..im under leds and not much heat here but i still water every other day or should i say fill back the rez? heh anyway..im sure you will love it regardless..and like I said..its fun dialing in the plants as you go

One thing I noticed when I replaced the water, roots havnt reached the res, I checked and ended up taking the seedling out of the coco soil cup and placing it in the perlite, still with some soil. I was not growing thru the coco cup. Its still doing just fine. I now realize I had a similar style of grow last time I vegged, I would always fill the bottom of my pots will 2" of perlite, and for a while I would just fill the pot holder and it would just suck the water up fairly quickly.

Im hoping I can get an answer in this thread, I hate whoring up theboards with new threads. I have been measuring ph and I mix a gallon of nutes at a time and keep an aerator in it. Ph seems to always be on the rise. I measure my runoff and its between 7-8. I try to get the ph to 6, but I am using gh ph drops right now. Which I am comfortable using for now. Would love to buy a good ph meter since I plan to run hydro in the near future. Anyways ph seems to always go up and I try to drain off old nutes before watering with fresh ph'ed nutes. So far roots have not hit the bottom but are close. And seedling, at about 2 weeks looks as healthy as anything else in the tent, in a good way. Im worried when the roots do hit the res, my ph will be off. I could add a drain plug to the bucket, which would allow me to drain off the old water before adding fresh. Part of my problem, I believe, is I started in soil and transplated that directly into the perlite. Could soil ammendments, like lime be the cause of my ph going up? If so whats the solution? Pick out most of the soil, it would be tedious but doable,flush heavily to try to flush out any lime. The soil is promix w mykos that I started it. Or just dont worry about it? I will be ordering rockwool cubes, maybe tonight, so I dont have this problem again.

are the plants happy?

Its only one that I have in the hempy bucket. It looks fairly healthy compared to the soil grow but it does have a red purplish stem. I see what you mean, I wont do anything drastic as of now, exept try to remove some of the soil delicately with a spoon and replace it with perlite. Wanted to know if any of you other hempys measure ph of the runoff. Since perlite is inert it shouldnt affect ph, right?

Also I have been watering every day to two days with phed nutes. I have to ph it everytime I water because the ph is always going up, so maybe its not the soil? Is it normal for ph to change in a bucket with an airstone in it?

put it this way...all i can say is stop sweating those stuff so much...
since ive been running hempys ive never checked runoff..no need to atleast as of yet...
there are just those that take extra measures to grow the plant and some that dont..im one that doesnt take extra miles as i am a lazy grower lol i admit that everytime
but what im getting at is...just make sure that ph is right goin in ...i dont even have an air stone in my rez..i just fill it with my nute mix and the plants drink it 1-2 days later..ive even read some people doing hempys dont even check ph EVER..just straight tap water and a little nutes lol...i dont check ph either since ive been using advanced nutrients ph correct line..i just add shake and water after checking it first couple weeks and its always right..so thats another reason i got those nutes also..i hate adjusting ph..time killer...
and the soil thing in your bucket...i dunno too much of what that can be causing/affecting but if it was me ...if my plants were happy i wouldnt give 2 hoots lol..and plus some people with hempy buckets even top it with soil..so i dont think it should be a problem per say

but just keep doing what you're doing..when they hit rez you will see that overnight shoot up..then from there just feed em light and just increase it a tad every week and see how she responds to the "more food"..
reading about this stuff makes it sound way more complicated lol learned that the hard way

Soil will not harm a hempy as long as it's above the rez.