GringoLoco
Well-Known Member
Gringo's T-Buckets
Why T-Buckets?
After trying so many methods of growing and having invested much of the past year behind one particular system, I decided it was time to re-explore my growing system options. I was also looking to develop an easy to implement system that would empower nearly anyone to grow their own ganja with little effort, minimal investment, and locally sourced supplies; simple enough, right?
My first grow ever, more than 2 decades back, was in soil, and although we did harvest nearly 4 Ozs of some of the best pot we had smoked up till that time, I would hardly have called it successful; we burned the shit out of those plants! Although I am of the strong opinion that nature's way works best when growing plants, I mean, nature has worked for plants for millions of years, why reinvent the wheel, right? But when it comes to soil, unless you mix it yourself, you can only guess as to the nutritional contents of it.
In comes Aero; Now initially I liked Aero, primarily because of the lack of medium in the whole equation! Mind you, up until this point the only medium I had worked with had been some crappy rockwool (grodan made a huge difference for me) and hydroton (can you say OUCH! not fun to step on barefoot), so medium was a thorn in my side.
Now don't get me wrong, the Aero systems I built do work, but had I known then what I do now, I may have only built one flower system, if any; the cloner and veg system do work great for me though. This is what I have noticed, with the cloner and veg system, most strains seem to handle the medium-less environment just fine, although some strains that will actually pop roots a week sooner when placed into moist perlite than in the aero cloner. Strains like this will usually grow differently in aero than in an environment with medium, medium which provides a buffer between the roots and the outside world.
One clear example of this is my Big Buddha Cheese; I wouldn't regularly recommend feminized seeds, but that is how I started, with single feminized seeds from The Attitude, so I won't knock it. When I popped my single Cheese bean, I was running Aero exclusively, and grew wonderfully during seedling and vegetative stage, once in flower, she blew up, I mean just got big almost before my eyes, but I quickly noticed bananas starting to popup every few nodes or so. Since then, every single one of the Cheese clones from this initial seed developed nanners; and not just one or two, but all over. The more she swelled, the more she seemed to hermie. I took it for granted that I must have gotten a hermie pheno, because in my opinion, she was not stressed; nice , lush green leaves, no stretch, massive fluffy, fruity smelling buds.
I was about to cull the Cheese altogether when I first started experimenting with the buckets, I took the nicest of the clones and popped her in a bucket. At 2 weeks in, I started my normal habit of plucking balls off the Cheese and was surprised to NOT find any nanners at all. Not only that, the buds seemed to be tighter, denser, and the smell was not fruity, but more of a salty, cheesy smell. She is currently at ~5 weeks in and is looking wonderful; I have decided to hold off culling until I've had a chance to sample the finished bud, but I have a strong feeling that I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Based on these and other factors, I'm leaning towards the belief that a plant can be stressed in ways that are not clearly visible to us, and one of these unseen stress factors could very possibly be due to the lack of a buffer in the root zone.
So I tried ebb and flow, as well as Deep Water Culture, both worked OK, but just didn't really grab me, each having detractors, primarily air and water pumps. My logic is, as indoor growers, we basically are playing God, an ever lasting quest to replicate mother nature inside; I've seen, smelled, and tasted amazing crops grown without any of that. With these variables, I eventually migrated to several Hempy Bucket threads scattered around numerous other grow boards.
A Hempy Bucket is a simple design which has been very successful in numerous gardens for many years. Basically you take any opaque container, make a small round hole 1/8th to 1/4 of the way up from the bottom, fill bucket with medium of choice (original design by Hempy called for a 50/50 mix of vermiculite and perlite, although he later revised it to 100% perlite), place cutting or clone in, water daily until the roots reach the bottom, which coincidently also acts as a reservoir, then water/feed when the container feels light - easy, peasey.
After having run the basic Hempy design, I found 2 minor cons.
First was the over spill. I always found it best to always pour water/nutes in until I had some runoff, to know the reservoir was full and to refresh any that might still have been left. Doing this required me to either lift and move the bucket over the sink to fill, or keeping the bucket inside of a tub; this nullified the portability of the individual bucket.
Second, I found that once the root mass reached a certain size, I sometimes miscalculated the weight or volume of nutrients left behind, leading to some instances of the medium completely drying out and the plant drooping some. By adding a second bucket, I get 2 birds stoned at once (Rickyism) - with the extra bucket, I can fill the reservoir and then some, letting the overage collect in the bottom bucket. Then that overage acts as a backup once the nutes/water in the primary reservoir has been depleted by way of the wick connecting the two.
Why "T-Buckets"? Although there are many names to call our wonderful herb, I've always been fond of the term 'Tea' used by Jazz musicians back in the roaring twenties, not only that, but the basic design uses a T-Shirt as the wick, so I figured, why not?
Okay, so let's get to it.
What's needed for each bucket?
(2) Opaque container of the same size - what size? That depends on many factors, primarily light and space. Good rule of thumb - more root space usually means more bud.
Enough Medium to fill one container - What type of medium is up to you, many seem to work just fine - my mix, 1:1:1 Rockwool, Perlite, Vermiculite
Wick - Now normally cotton would not be recommended as it does get broken down quite quickly, but since these will only be used once for no more than a few weeks, all is good. Rope, nylon, cotton - basically anything non-toxic that absorbs liquid should work
Something sharp to make a hole with, I use my Fiskar garden shears
How Do I make one?
First we take our buckets
Then we make our hole, not too big, but enough for water to drain
We then take our wick and place half of it in inside the bucket with the hole, and the other half out
Now comes the medium. The mix I am currently working with consists of rockwool mini-cubes/croutons at the bottom of the bucket, followed by a layer of perlite, and topping it off with vermiculite.
Here is an example of what the layers end up looking like:
When moving a clone from the veg system to a bucket I found it best to snip of the end of the roots, it triggers a growth spurt and helps to help with transplant shock too.
I like to place the first half of the medium in, then I make an indent in the middle and then grab the bottom of the root mass and pull it through the medium making sure the roots touch the bottom.
Being as I like to grow using BioActive practices (I find the term organic inappropriate), the first feeding I give a plant when transplanted is water, Stress Zyme, and Mycorrhizae.
What do i feed them?
Here is one of the best parts, you can feed these things practically anything! Yes, even box store bought brand name nutes have thus far worked great as long as you follow the 1/4 to 1/2 strength recipe. I do plan to go into specifics and do side by side comparisons of different nutes. Something that will work for those that have a recirculating Aero system running, these bucket's will do just fine with the nutrient solution you would otherwise drain when mixing a new batch. And another big plus of the buckets, almost no nutrient waste!
More to come...
Why T-Buckets?
After trying so many methods of growing and having invested much of the past year behind one particular system, I decided it was time to re-explore my growing system options. I was also looking to develop an easy to implement system that would empower nearly anyone to grow their own ganja with little effort, minimal investment, and locally sourced supplies; simple enough, right?
My first grow ever, more than 2 decades back, was in soil, and although we did harvest nearly 4 Ozs of some of the best pot we had smoked up till that time, I would hardly have called it successful; we burned the shit out of those plants! Although I am of the strong opinion that nature's way works best when growing plants, I mean, nature has worked for plants for millions of years, why reinvent the wheel, right? But when it comes to soil, unless you mix it yourself, you can only guess as to the nutritional contents of it.
In comes Aero; Now initially I liked Aero, primarily because of the lack of medium in the whole equation! Mind you, up until this point the only medium I had worked with had been some crappy rockwool (grodan made a huge difference for me) and hydroton (can you say OUCH! not fun to step on barefoot), so medium was a thorn in my side.
Now don't get me wrong, the Aero systems I built do work, but had I known then what I do now, I may have only built one flower system, if any; the cloner and veg system do work great for me though. This is what I have noticed, with the cloner and veg system, most strains seem to handle the medium-less environment just fine, although some strains that will actually pop roots a week sooner when placed into moist perlite than in the aero cloner. Strains like this will usually grow differently in aero than in an environment with medium, medium which provides a buffer between the roots and the outside world.
One clear example of this is my Big Buddha Cheese; I wouldn't regularly recommend feminized seeds, but that is how I started, with single feminized seeds from The Attitude, so I won't knock it. When I popped my single Cheese bean, I was running Aero exclusively, and grew wonderfully during seedling and vegetative stage, once in flower, she blew up, I mean just got big almost before my eyes, but I quickly noticed bananas starting to popup every few nodes or so. Since then, every single one of the Cheese clones from this initial seed developed nanners; and not just one or two, but all over. The more she swelled, the more she seemed to hermie. I took it for granted that I must have gotten a hermie pheno, because in my opinion, she was not stressed; nice , lush green leaves, no stretch, massive fluffy, fruity smelling buds.
I was about to cull the Cheese altogether when I first started experimenting with the buckets, I took the nicest of the clones and popped her in a bucket. At 2 weeks in, I started my normal habit of plucking balls off the Cheese and was surprised to NOT find any nanners at all. Not only that, the buds seemed to be tighter, denser, and the smell was not fruity, but more of a salty, cheesy smell. She is currently at ~5 weeks in and is looking wonderful; I have decided to hold off culling until I've had a chance to sample the finished bud, but I have a strong feeling that I'll be pleasantly surprised.
Based on these and other factors, I'm leaning towards the belief that a plant can be stressed in ways that are not clearly visible to us, and one of these unseen stress factors could very possibly be due to the lack of a buffer in the root zone.
So I tried ebb and flow, as well as Deep Water Culture, both worked OK, but just didn't really grab me, each having detractors, primarily air and water pumps. My logic is, as indoor growers, we basically are playing God, an ever lasting quest to replicate mother nature inside; I've seen, smelled, and tasted amazing crops grown without any of that. With these variables, I eventually migrated to several Hempy Bucket threads scattered around numerous other grow boards.
A Hempy Bucket is a simple design which has been very successful in numerous gardens for many years. Basically you take any opaque container, make a small round hole 1/8th to 1/4 of the way up from the bottom, fill bucket with medium of choice (original design by Hempy called for a 50/50 mix of vermiculite and perlite, although he later revised it to 100% perlite), place cutting or clone in, water daily until the roots reach the bottom, which coincidently also acts as a reservoir, then water/feed when the container feels light - easy, peasey.
After having run the basic Hempy design, I found 2 minor cons.
First was the over spill. I always found it best to always pour water/nutes in until I had some runoff, to know the reservoir was full and to refresh any that might still have been left. Doing this required me to either lift and move the bucket over the sink to fill, or keeping the bucket inside of a tub; this nullified the portability of the individual bucket.
Second, I found that once the root mass reached a certain size, I sometimes miscalculated the weight or volume of nutrients left behind, leading to some instances of the medium completely drying out and the plant drooping some. By adding a second bucket, I get 2 birds stoned at once (Rickyism) - with the extra bucket, I can fill the reservoir and then some, letting the overage collect in the bottom bucket. Then that overage acts as a backup once the nutes/water in the primary reservoir has been depleted by way of the wick connecting the two.
Why "T-Buckets"? Although there are many names to call our wonderful herb, I've always been fond of the term 'Tea' used by Jazz musicians back in the roaring twenties, not only that, but the basic design uses a T-Shirt as the wick, so I figured, why not?
Okay, so let's get to it.
What's needed for each bucket?
(2) Opaque container of the same size - what size? That depends on many factors, primarily light and space. Good rule of thumb - more root space usually means more bud.
Enough Medium to fill one container - What type of medium is up to you, many seem to work just fine - my mix, 1:1:1 Rockwool, Perlite, Vermiculite
Wick - Now normally cotton would not be recommended as it does get broken down quite quickly, but since these will only be used once for no more than a few weeks, all is good. Rope, nylon, cotton - basically anything non-toxic that absorbs liquid should work
Something sharp to make a hole with, I use my Fiskar garden shears
How Do I make one?
First we take our buckets
Then we make our hole, not too big, but enough for water to drain
We then take our wick and place half of it in inside the bucket with the hole, and the other half out
Now comes the medium. The mix I am currently working with consists of rockwool mini-cubes/croutons at the bottom of the bucket, followed by a layer of perlite, and topping it off with vermiculite.
Here is an example of what the layers end up looking like:
When moving a clone from the veg system to a bucket I found it best to snip of the end of the roots, it triggers a growth spurt and helps to help with transplant shock too.
I like to place the first half of the medium in, then I make an indent in the middle and then grab the bottom of the root mass and pull it through the medium making sure the roots touch the bottom.
Being as I like to grow using BioActive practices (I find the term organic inappropriate), the first feeding I give a plant when transplanted is water, Stress Zyme, and Mycorrhizae.
What do i feed them?
Here is one of the best parts, you can feed these things practically anything! Yes, even box store bought brand name nutes have thus far worked great as long as you follow the 1/4 to 1/2 strength recipe. I do plan to go into specifics and do side by side comparisons of different nutes. Something that will work for those that have a recirculating Aero system running, these bucket's will do just fine with the nutrient solution you would otherwise drain when mixing a new batch. And another big plus of the buckets, almost no nutrient waste!
More to come...
How are things looking now?
