Confuten1
exploitin strengths - perfectin weaknessess
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whats a 2" ressy... is this the catch pan under the bucket?
also you say 5 gal was not big enough, can you give some info on your last grow
ie veg time, size, strain and ultimately yield?
Thanks for the fast response...
do the hempy buckets allow for salt to be properly flushed from our systems by just watering drain to waste, or is hempy not considered drain to waste?
Do you think you could have pulled a lb from a 5 Gallon??
I just noticed a cal def with some of my vegging plants only the ones with the chunky coco, others have canna coco in place of it with no defficiencies, im guessing that since their same strain its the diffrent coco i used, canna is precharged/flushed chunky was not. I did flush/charge it with 100ppm cal mag and 100ppm base nutes until i got a runnoff under 450ppm, anybody know if i should have had a lower runnoff when rincing the chunky coco. If i cant fix this then im jus gonna scratch the chow mix and go with the 4/1 perilite to coco mix like Dizzle...Having not run hempy's I can't answer all the question but can answer some and give you my thoughts on where Im heading with my setup
1 was in 5 gal buckets but upgrading to 15 gal- 25 gal totes
Thats were im headed after seeing dizzles grow!!!
2 im swapping out the cana coco for chunky coco per some comment Jalisco Kid made about this formual being"magical" (im sure he didnt mean that in the literal sence but i got mad respect fir dude and what he suggests)
Don't like hydroton personally, like perlite a lot better like Dizzle. I used hydroton for over a year but once I get my new setup going I am running with perlite. I did an experiment with really chunky mix, big chunky orchid perlite, and coir chunks and hand watered it; just couldn't keep it wet enough. I think coco chunks would be great if you are going to water them more often. I will probably run a similar mix of perlite, coco chunks, and a bit of regular coco.
3 I did DTW as hempys are done with bout 20-30% run off, feed them every3-5 days( i got lazy some times and i think my yield could be better with more frequent waterings, baseing that on some info Dizzle has posted. Also with the chunky coco/hydroton mix im already noticing they need to be watered more(vegging plants) which brings me to why not run a RECIRCULATING system, feeding them 2-3 times a day?
Two reasons for run off, 1) salt build up and 2) nutrient imbalance. Over time salts can build up if you keep adding more fertilizer to the rez/pot than the plants are using, which are still usuable by the plant. Also the plants can select nutrients out of solution that they want so you can get imbalances/lockout if the ratio of nutrients get to extreme in your res over time. If you water more often then you need less run off. Over time it will equal the same amount of total run off. Dizzle I think said he is doing continues watering and just has a tiny trickle each time for run-off. I feel more comfortable with flooding the grow medium espaciall witht the 60-40 hydroton/chunky coco "chow mix" to insure the whole root mass gets wet. i guess with other mediums there is more capilary action but it doesnt seem like that with this mix. So dripping with litle runnoff doesnt seem like it would saturate the whole root mass, or am i wrong?
4 I currently run H&G coco full line, if i did a recirculating I would run H&G aqua flakes right? No clue make my own fert.respect on mixing ur own salts, some day mee too, not yet though im still trying to master other things and have way to many progects/experiments going now.
5 how long do i go inbetween rezzie changes? I found that a week is good not so much that any difference in growth more just keeps everything nice and clean. I found that just crap would gub up my rez after about this point. However I have run over a month just keeping ppms and pH in line and didn't really see any negative effects. I personally am going to stick to a week however.I was thinkin a week 2 based on what i have read, i guess i wont know forsure untill, i see what my plants want/how they uptake nutes, Im leaning to mixing up a batch of nutes based on H&G recomended dosegage( they suggest u runnin hot, ive tried it with good results) but I wanted to let the PH drift a little as the plants uptake over say a week only topping off with RO and re PHing, Ive read that plants uptake some nutes better at diffrent PH so a drift(within reason ) might be benifical right? Also Ive follwed Dizzle and he flushes every few waterings withlow ppm so as they uptake and i top off it would kinda do the same thing right?
6 what would be the best method to to off the rezz, i.e. just add water as needed or add water and nutes as top off?
Depends. I know some that like to start with a high PPM and then just let it drift down over the week, so they just add water. Others like to keep the ppm stable. I lean more to the stable side. I keeped mine at 800ppm until two days before res change then just added water.As you metioned above plants uptake npk diffrently, so I wold think keeping stable ppm would be dangerous reguarding building up to hot on the npk that they are takin up less off?
7 if i did DTW again with more frequent waterings, could i jus use the runnoff? if the ppm comes out higher than what was put in can i just adjust ppm by adding more RO water and rePH?
Once you start using the run off it is no longer DTW. Again there is a big debate about nutrient ratios getting messed up. I think if you are going to go drain to waste do what dizzle does and shoot for just a little bit each time. If you are going to go reciculating, well I would really get a lot of run off. Overkill never hurts.For you recirculating guys, If I had say 125 gallons of grow medium, how big of a rezzie and how much feed would i mix up at a time? changing every week?
8 reguarding question 7, when one speaks of salt build up, is it jus excessive nutes that didnt get uptook by plants, thus being reusable, or do these "salts" some how get motified into something plants cant uptake?
Nutrients are still avaible to the plants. Big thing is over time plants use different nutrients in different ratios. For example they might be using up the nitrogen a lot faster than phosophurs so over time you might see a nitrogen def. This is why they say change your rez every week or two. Just to reset the nutrient levels (also get ride of any bad stuff growing or debrie).
9 the 2 inch rezzie on the hempy 5 gals worked good, I did a root autopsy and everything was real healthy. When i run bigger containers should i keep a 2 inch rezzie or go smaller. Im just concerned about a gallon or 2 of water sitting stag that long. I mean is that water uptake in the hempy rezzie propotinal to the size of roots mass or...??
I would think (and again no actually experience with hempies) if you want to water less get a bigger rez at the bottom of the pot. If you are water a few times a day with a big bucket then you can use a smaller rez, of just let water drain out the bottom. From my understanding the rez at the bottom is just a way of not having to water as often but still getting the benefit of hydro do to capilary action. I think there is an upper limit on how big you would actually want it as I am sure salt build up would be a huge problem if you tried to water to infrequantly. Also I feel hempies would be limited in how big a pot you can use as capillary action can only occur so high. Had to learn the equation for one of my soil classes. Therefore for hempy's a short fat pot would be a lot better than a skinny tall pot as if it gets to tall then the tops would remain dry. Yeah im leaning towards the totes dizzle and everybody uses for the MPBs but not stacking them though, I would go 75% full of medium so the would be shallow and wide, I guess if i was going recirculating and often, i wouldnt need a rezzie huh?
Im going to do hempies first for the simple reason is it is very flexible to start while I set everything up. As I dial in my system I am going to just go to continues drip reserculating personally (with no standing water in the bottom of the pots). Again I like to keep it simple, I have tried all different timing schedules and stuff for drip and personally just like continues. No timers, no worrying about if you need to increase the watering frequency. I did that in strait hydroton. Worked great, really healthy roots. One pump died and they actually can go a long time without needing to be watered. I hand watered 2 times a day for 2 days and they didn't have crazy growth but still were growing and no sign of water stress. Once I got a new pump they took off right away.
Well hopefully this starts some discussion.
Cheers
sorry you asked so many questions that it didn't seem you knew what the hell was going on. saw your pics and those look great. i would stick to 5 gallon of straight coco because it is already airy and even when they are 4 weeks into flower you will still only need to water every 5 days to waist. i'd be worried with 20 gallons, it would be more difficult to maintain the ec and ph in the medium. i'm walking away from using perlite. do one plant in a larger container and see if that makes a winning difference for you. you will know next run. i've got something like that in 5 gallon 7 and 10. all coco, they are all the same size about, i don't think 10 was worth while. 7 seems good for me at 4 per light horizontal.
but i'm not going to waist money running nutrients down the drain all day because i added so much perlite to my mix
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