Hogan,
Consider modifying your buckets and going UC earth style with 20/80 coco/ growstones or just straight growstones . . . those UC earth's look far more robust and just an all around great idea to me . . . my two cents
That's more or less the approach I'm taking; dropping a 5 gallon insert into the 5 gallon bucket I'd been using as RDWC, drilling a bunch of holes in the bottom and filling it with 25% coco and 75% hydroton. Topfeed irrigation, not sure if I'm going high pressure or low pressure/drip style. The UC Earth is just a recirc version of this idea, and for what I think I'm missing- or not- I may well just stick with dtw.
Dankworth was equating the exudates from plants' roots with 'shit' and I think this is inaccurate. What's been shown to exude from plants' roots is mostly glucose, up to 1/4 or even 1/3 of the total generated by the plant during the course of the day spent photosynthesizing! Why would plants willingly dump so much of their hard earned energy into the soil? They're deliberately feeding a huge array of microbial life that then benefits the plant by breaking down key substances into forms plants can use, helping to transport these directly into the plants' roots, and effectively increasing the effective surface area of the root system, often by orders of magnitude. More benefits are even now just coming to light in this field of study, but this is obviously a mutually beneficial arrangement, a.k.a. symbiosis.
Clearly, the plants are gaining far more than they're 'losing.' The biggest problem with RDWC is that while this same process is going on, the microbes the plant wants to feed can't hang on- they're floating about in the soup, as it were. Since they can't organize around the plants' roots and operate as they've evolved to, they tend to die, requiring reapplication of teas on a very regular basis, at least every few days or so. Failure to do this leaves the attractive food source available for opportunistic pathogens- and sooner or later they'll show up.
So, does RDWC leave plants' roots swimming in shit? No. Swimming in sugar? Yes, and in some ways, this is worse. But it's still energy, and in a proper substrate this energy can be effectively directed back into beneficial activity on the plants' behalf. That's where the coco comes in- it creates the structure necessary for the plants and the microbes their exudates are feeding to coexist together and create that mutually beneficial environment known as the 'rhizosphere.' Combine this activity with 75% hydroton, which acts as a vertical nutrient film technique to spread highly oxygenated solution down through the root mass, and this becomes a very powerful life support system for the plants. Inocluate this substrate with a biodiverse group of beneficial bacteria, fungi and the like, and you have an easy to maintain, highly enriched environment for the roots, which then feed the shoots, which then get the nutrients that encourage the flowers and oils we're all craving.
I'm just a wee bit frustrated that it took me this long to figure out why RDWC hasn't been working.
