Soil and Hydroponics Together - Any Experience?

I read about a grow setup where the bottom 1/3 of the grow medium is a hydroponic (perilite, clay pellets) and the top 2/3 is soil
The bottom "hydroponic layer" is flooded and drained regularly (ebb and flow?) with plain water, while also watering and nutrients on top, on the soil.
Anyone have any experience growing this way?

My idea is this
-fill the bottom 1/3 of a large grow container with clay pellets
-lay down a few rows of inter connected drip feed irrigation tubing on top of the pellets with a tube that runs up and out the top of the container (for watering)
-put a soil mix on the top 2/3

I have a plant that I'm transplanting in the next few days and thinking to try this system

Any comments or suggestions?

You'd be better off using coco rather than a soil mix.

As far as the rest of the stuff with the drip irrigation, I think your over complicating a fairly simple idea. Either flood and drain OR top drip, its called top-drip for a reason, the irrigation fittings are going to get clogged with dirt if they are below the soil, especially when the pump shuts off and tries to syphon back as well as the dirt is going to slowly erode from the bottom up I would thnk, no?.

Edit: there are things called smart pots or earth pots or some shit (not the air prune containers) but they self water from the bottom as well as they would let you flush by pouring through the soil from the top but its 2 different chambers, one for dirt/medium, one for water/nutes and has some kind of wick (or roots sitting it solution) that allows the plants to take what they need when they need.

Yeah you are building a headache here. You should go with one or the other. There is no reason to feed from the top and bottom at the same time, all you will do is drown the plant. I agree with the coco if you insist on doing it this way, top feed until the roots have reached low enough for the flood and drain to work. Also, why use drippers for flood and drain? Just use a pump that fills the res for x amount of minutes, with the excess flowing back into the res (which will of course be mud if you try this shit with soil).
One or the other, otherwise you are going to fight the hell out of yourself.

Thanks guys for the input!
I do think keeping it simple is the best
but.....

Theoretically one could just use the soil-less grow medium on the bottom and soil on the top and grow just like you would in a normal soil grow, the advantages obviously better drainage and aeration
Ive seen this suggested alot

What I'm talking about is just to put the tubes over the "hydro" layer and pouring some water down there from time to time
No pumps or resivoir - simple

Whitey - will the clay pellets (hydroton) i want to use erode and dissolve?

Where does the water that goes into the "hydro layer" come from? straight from the tap? How do you get the water to flow through your tubes? a pump! You will have to have a res for this, other wise you won't be able to ph the water, or check it in any way. And with soil + water + res = mud!
You are forgetting about drowning the plant though. Soil is absorbent so it will wick the water up from any flood and drain. Now feed it from the top too and you are going to drown your plants. Seriously, you are just imagining here, i have set up many hydro systems and understand how they work, and honestly in most cases it is extremely different than soil (DWC for example), and requires a different growing methodology than soil.

The water comes from a tube sticking up out of the soil and flows through the tubes by gravity
ya tap water - ph balanced
the tubes would be in the hydroton layer so gravity would pull the water down and not through the soil
soil wicking the water up may be an issue but I think this could be solved with an appropriate watering schedule

the original idea came from here http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1534.html

Thank you for reading this thread!

Well looks like you have a fairly sound plan, seems like a headache in the making, but keep us up to date, i would love to see this in action.

Bad idea, there is zero advantage to trying something like this. The two methods are mutually exclusive as of now. Nobody (read, real smart growers) has been able to work out an "organic hydroponic" system that actually works. You need to understand how each functions, then you'll understand why they're not compatible.

Thanks Trueno
Did you read that article where I got this idea?
Do you think that this system would bring any benifit?

I hope it doesnt turn out to be a messy experiment!!!!!
The only problem is I'll have to figure out how to gauge if this technique makes a noticable difference as opposed to not watering the bottom

Wolverine, since you seem to know what youre talking about why dont you enlighten us
instead of me having to read a thousand more articles about growing

Why wouldn't this be advantageous?
why they're not compatible?

Thanks

No i didn't read the article, i may, but not right now
No i think it will stress the fuck out of the plant (two different methodologies).
It will be messy as hell, plan on it.
Get 2 identical clones one in each system, same atmosphere and have at it, i would def subscribe, but expect hell followed almost def by fail. But the only way to advance things is to try new, so more power to you on this.

bren226 said:

Wolverine, since you seem to know what youre talking about why dont you enlighten us
instead of me having to read a thousand more articles about growing

Why wouldn't this be advantageous?
why they're not compatible?

Thanks

Click to expand...

I could literally type for hours on the topic, but I don't have the time. Just go one way or the other; organic or chem. You're making things much more complicated than they need to be. The way organic "nutrients" work is by soil microbes breaking them down into usable forms that plants can take up. The chem ferts that you'd have to use in the lower res will inhibit the microbe population in the soil above. Not to mention it's not good to layer different mediums, as you get water pressure differentials... I could go on...

You have to read a lot in order to understand how things actually work.

K.I.S.S. keep it simple stupid!

No ferts in the lower res just water
anyways not really a reservoir cause it wont be closed to be flooded
just water dripping down through the hydroton layer

I dont understand about water pressure differentials
how much water pressure is there going to be in an open container?

And theres lots and lots of info from pro growers about putting perilite or hydroton on the bottom of the grow container in a regular soil grow
Are you saying thats not good?

Good advice everyone keep it comin
Either im gonna do this stupid thing or not so......

Were not saying that it wot work, least I'm not, its a weed, it wants to grow, all were saying is, get ur feet wet first, figure out what works for u, then try and. Go all out, but do what u want, ur grow, id suggest, just go with A DWC, very easy, and very effective

bren226 said:

No ferts in the lower res just water
anyways not really a reservoir cause it wont be closed to be flooded
just water dripping down through the hydroton layer

I dont understand about water pressure differentials
how much water pressure is there going to be in an open container?

And theres lots and lots of info from pro growers about putting perilite or hydroton on the bottom of the grow container in a regular soil grow
Are you saying thats not good?

Good advice everyone keep it comin
Either im gonna do this stupid thing or not so......

Click to expand...

Yes, I'm saying that a "drainage layer" is bunk. It creates "perched water table" because of the different absorbtion/wicking capacity of the differing mediums, and effectively just reduces your container size by whatever depth layer you put in. It doesn't help drainage at all, it actually impedes it. There's a paper on the topic floating around somewhere, but I'm not going digging for it.

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8m.html

They explain perched water tables and what causes them at that link. I don't understand how hydrotron would act as an impermeable layer to cause a perched water table.

Only someone who doesen't get it would come up with something as farfetched and complicated as this.

Mr.Brown said:

http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8m.html

They explain perched water tables and what causes them at that link. I don't understand how hydrotron would act as an impermeable layer to cause a perched water table.

Click to expand...

It doesn't create an impermeable layer. I meant to add the disclaimer that I don't believe "perched water table" to be the correct term in container applications but the effect is similar. You create a zone where the water stops draining as rapidly because of the different mediums, causing the bottom of the "soil" to stay more moist than it otherwise would. Roots don't grow down into the drainage layer (unless continually moist, which causes over watering). Anyhow, I'm tired of explaining.

I don't really think that there is a "good way" to combine hydro and soil. As wolverine has said, organics rely heavily on your soil web and microbiology, where as that is not existent in hydro. Having half of your root system feed off of synthetics while the other half (or whatever ratio you were saying) feeds off microbiology probably wouldn't turn out too well.
Also, two different mediums means two different watering/feeding cycles. So unless you were really careful and completely separated the two layers (which I doubt is even possible) you'd have an extremely moist over-watered soil layer. Maybe aero pointed away from the soil would work? Probably not though.
Furthermore, your medium doesn't really make all that much of a difference. I prefer soil b/c it's cheaper and tasty. You may prefer hydro, nothing's wrong with that, but stick to one medium. If you want an "organic" hydro grow, try aquaponics on for size. That's the closest thing to an organic hydro grow that I can think of. (Organic nutes in hydro is total bs imo, but some people swear by it. So, to each their own.)