Living Organic Hydroponics

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hiiipower

hiiipower

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Been playing around with this, seems to be working so far...


Goal: hydroponic vegetative growth w/ organic nutrient density and flavor.

I'll try to be as simple as possible...
2 parts:
Hydroponic: RDWC/UC, no nutrients in water. Supercharged air(1.5lpm/g).

Living Organic: Top mulch layer 2-3" thick sits on top very top of clay pebbles/coco chips used in the 10" net pots. Using bokashi to rapidly decompose compost/mulch layer. Top layer should fully decompose in about 2-3wks, then add another layer to continuously feed microbes.

Not the best pic but you can see the white cotton candy type fungi growth on top of the compost/mulch layer. Going to town, devouring it!
Living organic hydroponics


Top mulch layer: Cover w/ panda plastic to block out light to allow microbes to fully decompose layer(light kills fungi).
Compost 4 parts
Cacao husks 1 part
Bokashi(gro-kashi) 1 part
Azomite 1/4 cup/plant

Wet Mulch Layer w/:
Lactobacillus serum
Malted Barley
Aleo Vera

Lactobacillus serum:
Use rice wash to culture LAB. Mix with milk for a few days until it curds, then 1:20 w/ water to use. Used as foliar also.

Foliar feeding:
Spray bokashi(gro-kashi in my case) on plants weekly to supplement w/ nutrients.
Spray LAB serum bi-weekly

I have not pulled off an entire run this way yet, veg through bloom. I've been trying it in my bloom room this time around and it seems to be working great. I'm almost completely off of my synthetic nutrients(i think their at 0.2EC in mid bloom right now) and plants look happy and healthy with no signs of deficiencies. The gro-kashi is just insane. Mykos on crack, I like to call it. Forms a thick white mycelial mat on the top of the mulch layer. After 10 days I can literally see the roots have grown up into the compost layer. All the fine feeder roots. And the roots in the water look even more blinding white and healthy after the first application of top mulch.

Will be getting a brix meter to test the levels in the plants. When the brix levels drop, add more compost and trace minerals(azomite) to mulch layer to give the fungi more food. At least that's the instructions that gro-kashi gives. Should be interesting to see if this part works out as they say...

Going to be switching my whole garden over to this since it has worked so well in my main bloom room. Next round of seeds are not going to be fed synthetic nutrients if I can help it.
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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Here's a bud shot, 5 wks in bloom.
IMG 0328


Plants have only hit 0.35 EC once. I'm guessing the plants are feeding quite heavily on the mulch layer because my EC is only at 0.3 today. With all synthetics I usually have to hit at least 0.6 EC at wk 4-5 bloom or else they get very yellow leafed and purple stemmed, as well as light and airy buds. I notice one of the plants is getting light green(I think its just a heavier feeder than the others). I'll post a pic of it tmr. But so far I'm happy with the bud density(not light and airy) and health of the plants, considering this is just the first run of this.

I have some seeds going, only 2 weeks old... So I will get to show a full run start to finish soon. Seeds are in they're 10" net pots, but I dont want to put the top 3" compost/mulch layer on until about 3 wks veg. It's really important that the roots come into contact with the soil almost immediately. So I thought I would wait until the seedlings have a slightly established root zone so it can grow up into the compost right away. Right now the seeds are in 0.05 Ec of pure blend pro tea. Not a purely organic start, but the pure blend pro tea is a really great easy way to start seedlings in my system. Maybe I'll get into making my own "start" tea, but for now this is good.
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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Compost for Mulch Layer...

Any super soil recipe would work. I use clackamas cootz' recipe, I like the simplicity and lower than average P...

Mix the cooked super soil/compost with cacao husks and bokashi, then apply 2-3", making sure the rooting cube you used is is contact with the mulch layer, so it touches the roots as quickly as possible. The water in the rdwc/uc below shouldn't be touching the compost layer. You have to hand water it occasionally to keep it moist(don't want the fungi to stop working). I water the top mulch layer on each plant every couple of days. Usually with a rotation of ro water, malted barley tea, and sometimes a lactobacillus serum. The lactobacillus serum is incredibly strong, don't over do it or they'll destroy your fungi. It's a balance of depleting the fungi to release nutrients and growing new ones to keep decomposting. I always want to see the thick white mycelial mat on top of my mulch layer. If there isn't then I would worry the plants aren't receiving enough nutes. Obviously, there's not as much compost in my small mulch layer as a whole pot of super soil or something like that. But it seems that if I can get the mulch layer to decompose fast enough I might be able to supply the plants with what they want. Pure speculation so far, like I said I haven't finished a run start to finish with only this. Still supplementing with synthetics at this point.

Here's the compost for the mulch layer, cookin'. Mix it up. Water it down w/ bennies. Ready to use after 6wks.
IMG 0336
 
Purpletrain

Purpletrain

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I have never seen a closed loop organic DWC finish with out issues open loop appears to work but again its like flushing your money down the toilet
there has been tons of talk about it many claims but again a fairy tale story
 
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hiiipower

hiiipower

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Bloom room is looking good as the plants finish up, but here's the veg plants. These will be the first ones that get this new regime start to finish. Having already learned a tiny bit from, I'll be planting these slightly different than as originally planned. Here's the run down...

These seedling are 4wks old to the day. So far just 0.01 Ec of Pure blend pro tea has been used as nutrients. In my supercharged dwc the seedlings thrive at the ultra low Ec.

IMG 0367


10" net pot. Cloning cube is planted 3" below the very top of net basket. Left to grow like this for 4 wks, w/out a top mulch layer. The plants now have an established root zone that will easily and quickly grow up into the top mulch layer when applied on top. You can see the mixture below in the net pot is slightly wet, this is the water line. This is where you need to get down to. You can put pebbles or something in there at first to prop up the seedlings, but before I apply the top layer I got it down to the water line. This is somewhat important I think, as you'll see.
IMG 0370

Below: After finding that water line, I put down just about 1/2" of coco chips, a single layer. I don't want the top mulch layer to be sitting in water(I can hand water it if necessary). So this small layer goes down first.
IMG 0372

so far..
IMG 0373

Then I applied the Initial Mulch Layer. End result...
IMG 0384


To be clear...
I decided to make the first/initial mulch layer just a mix of super soil and coco chips, probably 2:1 ratio. I noticed on my last run that the roots will profusely grow into the first layer of top mulch that I apply. So no bokashi has been applied yet. I want the roots to grow into this first layer and get well established. Then I will start the layering of bokashi and super soil together. It's supposed to rapidly decompose, and I don't want it to rapidly decompose the roots that have grown into the first layer, that's why I made this decision.

The seedlings should do just fine in terms of getting nutrients. I will spray the grokashi weekly as foliar, and this combined with the tea and first mulch layer should be more than enough nutrients. I only ever hit 0.2 Ec in veg anyways...

Might have to cut some plastic strips and slip them around the circumference of the net pot to kind of build a wall to add the first bokashi/super soil layer, haha, that would be goofy, but we will see.
 
IMG 0376
IMG 0379
hiiipower

hiiipower

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The grokashi website itself is a great learning tool if anyone is interested in this. That's all this is. I just took that growing approach and applied it to my dwc system. That's kind of why I'm pretty confident it will work. It's gonna take some tinkering, sure, but the basis for the way of growing has been proven(not only by grokashi, but asians who have been gardening in that fashion for, a super duper long time, haha.) The grokashi people even use a "under current" watering system in their soil containers. No watering from the top. I've noticed if you keep the top layer too moist the fungi don't build such a white thick mycelial mat. Surprisingly they are thriving on the top layer most when it is just damp rather than soaking wet.
 
Savage Henry

Savage Henry

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I see this running DTW in coir, the roots start showing at the top covered in that glowing white hyphae. :)

Where do you source your coco chips from?
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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I see this running DTW in coir, the roots start showing at the top covered in that glowing white hyphae. :)

Where do you source your coco chips from?

Definitely. I would think this could be used to any growers advantage to get better flavors or what not. I gave a few of my buddies a small bag full to throw on top of their coco/perlite dtw. I'm really curious to see if it will live under the high nutrients they can feed with in coco, or have any benefit at all.

My chips are just from the local hydro shop, looks like they are hydrofarm "grow it" coco chips.
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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Well I was waiting for things for some "real" progress so I could show something cool, but I took all the pictures and now the camera won't upload the pics onto my computer, has a loose connection on it I think. So I don't have many pics, and I'm not gonna have any for a while, don't have the $ to fix that or get a new one right this second.

I have these pics of some plants I just finished, the quality was great, yield was down a little bit because I really just recently learned the trick to get them to feed heavy on the top organic layer. But here's the pics from the last round I just finished about a month ago. The growth was great, the buds just didn't fill in because I hadn't learned this new system enough yet. I fixed that now(below).

Plants are all yellow because these were taken the last day of flush....
IMG 0420
IMG 0425
IMG 0430
IMG 0435
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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Updated Method...

First things first... In my opinion, you should try to feed a plant in this system with same amount of nutrients that an equal sized plant would require in a traditional living organic/super soil method. This is very different in my system, because that means you have to jam all those nutrients into the very top mulch layers that I've talked about. So, I'm trying to accomplish this in a few ways.
1. Make a highly concentrated living soil to make your top mulch layers. I mix my Clackamas mix at 2.5x the suggested rate of nutrients & minerals.
2. Spray top mulch layer occasionally to speed up decomposition of the top mulch layer. Do not keep this layer soaked. The fungi grow in much higher numbers when the top layer is only slightly damp(visible numbers, where you can literally see the white thick mycelial mat on top).
3. Foliar feeding weekly w/ bokashi which has a light amount of nutrients and tons of trace minerals.

The way I see it, in a tradition living soil growing method, if you wanted to grow a 1.5lb plant in a 20g pot, you would have X amount of nutrients in that 20g pot. So if I want to replicate that 1.5lb plant in my system, I need to feed my plant a similar amount of nutrients. Maybe it doesn't have to be exactly the same, but I imagine this is just a good general rule to follow when thinking about how much nutrients to use in the top mulch layer.

Top Mulch Layers
I plant the seedlings in the 10" net pots, which I fill with only clay pebbles, then after 4 wks of veg I add the first top mulch layer.
1. 2" coco/perlite, applied @ wk4 veg.
- This serves as a dwc friendly layer for the top roots to grow up and into initially, very important for this to happen for the following layers of food to come.
2. Normal mulch layer(below), applied @ 2-3wks before bloom.
- Repeat every 2 wks max until wk 6 bloom. (5x total)
3. Half normal mulch layer, applied @ wk 8 bloom to help the plants finish out strong.

Mulch Layer Mix
In order(bottom to top)
1. 1/4" Cocoa husks/shells (bottom)
2. 1/4" Bokashi/Grokashi (middle)
3. 2" living soil/super soil (top)
- Mix 1/4 cup Azomite into the living soil before application.
Lightly cover top layer with cocoa shells to block out some light.

Mulch Spray
You can occasionally spray the mulch layer to speed up the decomposition of each layer. The best things I've found so far in order are... Only lightly spray the to mulch layers. Do not want to soak.
1. Bokashi/Grokashi tea, aerated for 24 hrs
2. Lactobacillus spray
3. Malted Barley

Foliar Spray
1. Bokashi/Grokashi weekly, aerate for 24 hrs with molasses.

And that's the plan.

In all honesty this whole thing did not go off without a hitch. About 10 days ago my plants were really bottoming out, getting yellow and purple and were absolutely starved. I was about 24 hrs away from adding synthetic nutrients into my dwc system. But I added a mulch layer, and sprayed it with the grokashi tea, and WOW. I have never had such dark dark green plants. They are crushing all the food right now. I can see this is easily going to work, was just a matter of playing around a little bit. It's very important to keep adding compost layers every 2 wks even when you don't think they need it. So I'm almost halfway through bloom now on this new run and I'm kinda on cruise control. I have 0 ppms of nutrients in the water right now. All I have to do is renew the water every 10-14 days, keep adding layers and spraying them, and I'm home free(knock on wood).

One more cool thing I forgot to mention about this system. It's biomimicry(it mimics organics/nature/biology). Take a rain forest for example. The soil in a rain forest is typically notorious for being incredibly low quality. The ground has been watered so hard for so long that it completely washes away any available nutrients to the plants. Not to mention, when a forest and grown trees that are all hundreds of years old, you can guarantee that all those trees have fully consumed all of the nutrients that are below the surface. The roots systems are so large that there's pretty much nothing left in the soils of an old forest of any type. The way the trees and flora and fauna exist is strictly by the leaf litter that gets rapidly decomposed on the top mulch layer of the forest floor. I was recently tracking a bear in the woods for a friend of mine, and noticed this incredibly fuzzy white spots all over the forest floor. If you took a close enough look, it was bear shit. The mycorrhizae had come up from the forest floor to engulf the food it had just been given. Along with the leaf litter every year, this is how an old forest creates life for itself. My system mocks nature quite closely actually, which is ironic because it's hydroponic haha. Now that I think about it though, I remember on the jamaican strain hunters video that they visited an outdoor garden that was on the edge of a stream. It was so swampy that they could literally pull plants in and out of the ground/swamp like it was a hydroponic system. Very crazy to see actually. So I guess that at least some place in nature my system is being replicated, or at least I'm replicating nature slightly. One way or another I think that's pretty cool.
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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Doh!

I'm more than halfway through bloom, everything settled in and is going great, but I've simply run out of room on the top to add more mulch layers. The microorganisms just tear through each layer so quickly that I've added new layers every week. It fed the plants great, I even overfed the plants by putting too "hot" of a mulch layer on initially, leaves curled over terribly and twisting like nitrogen burn usually looks like. I'm 4" above the net pot, I had to shove thin pieces of plastic into the 10" net pot to build a "wall" around it to add additional layers. But I'm out of space. I can't add more layers, it'll just be a crazy mess. So unfortunately, I had to hit the plants with synthetics. I'll finish out the rest of bloom with just pure blend pro tea at the necessary Ec. Bummer, but I'll get it next time.

So the 10" net pot itself is simply not enough space for the size of plants I'm growing(1-2lbs). Next round I'm gonna take a 15g air pot, cut a whole in the bottom to slide the 10" net pot through, then cut the sides down to about 6" tall. This should give me room to add plenty of mulch on the top w/o running out of space. It will take the microorganisms longer to eat through all the extra compost and food, and I won't need to add so many layers to the point where I run out of space to do so. I know this will be verging on an octopot system. But where an octopot set up uses more soil than water, I'm trying to use more water than soil. Like I said before this way I can get hydro growth and true organic flavor.

I'm excited. This round I proved to myself that I could feed them sufficiently even at peak bloom via this method, I just have to make a few last adjustments, and I'm confident I can finish the next round using only this top feeding method. If I can figure out an "early veg/start tea" to use at the very beginning(rather than using pure blend pro tea for the first 5-6 wks veg until the roots grow up/into mulch layer to eat), then the whole growth cycle would be living organic.
 
Minitiger

Minitiger

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Doh!

I'm more than halfway through bloom, everything settled in and is going great, but I've simply run out of room on the top to add more mulch layers. The microorganisms just tear through each layer so quickly that I've added new layers every week. It fed the plants great, I even overfed the plants by putting too "hot" of a mulch layer on initially, leaves curled over terribly and twisting like nitrogen burn usually looks like. I'm 4" above the net pot, I had to shove thin pieces of plastic into the 10" net pot to build a "wall" around it to add additional layers. But I'm out of space. I can't add more layers, it'll just be a crazy mess. So unfortunately, I had to hit the plants with synthetics. I'll finish out the rest of bloom with just pure blend pro tea at the necessary Ec. Bummer, but I'll get it next time.

So the 10" net pot itself is simply not enough space for the size of plants I'm growing(1-2lbs). Next round I'm gonna take a 15g air pot, cut a whole in the bottom to slide the 10" net pot through, then cut the sides down to about 6" tall. This should give me room to add plenty of mulch on the top w/o running out of space. It will take the microorganisms longer to eat through all the extra compost and food, and I won't need to add so many layers to the point where I run out of space to do so. I know this will be verging on an octopot system. But where an octopot set up uses more soil than water, I'm trying to use more water than soil. Like I said before this way I can get hydro growth and true organic flavor.

I'm excited. This round I proved to myself that I could feed them sufficiently even at peak bloom via this method, I just have to make a few last adjustments, and I'm confident I can finish the next round using only this top feeding method. If I can figure out an "early veg/start tea" to use at the very beginning(rather than using pure blend pro tea for the first 5-6 wks veg until the roots grow up/into mulch layer to eat), then the whole growth cycle would be living organic.

Man, I was wondering what was going on with this grow. I just re-read this log in a coherent state (or as coherent as I'll ever be haha) and it seems like so much work. Don't you think that it'd be easier just to go the straight organic soil route, without all of the feedings and layering in of mulch layers every week and shit? It seems tedious haha. I mean, I'll admit, I'm the laziest motherfucker in the world, kind of. At least when it comes to my grow, I wanna make things as simple as possible. Put everything in the soil and call it a day. I do occasionally add coconut or aloe or fulvic or humic acids, occasional sprouted seed tea here and there, but I don't have a feeding regimen or anything. I just kind of do things when I want or when I feel like it should be done, but for the most part I really only water.

My latest grow I've been more "on it" as far as utilizing all of the shit that I have at home (the aforementioned coconut, SST's, humic acid etc) and the plants are clearly happier than any grow I've done before; they won't stop praying. But everything is in the soil, so adding a bunch of stuff to my water probably isn't necessary. It might be because the soil is older, been recycled once and seems like it's getting better than when I first grew in it. It might be because I'm being ever so slightly more dedicated to adding a few things here and there to my water. Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like as much work as you're putting into this grow hahaha!! The only work I'm really putting in is lifting those motherfucking seven gallon pots in and out of the tent haha.

You do realize that once you add synthetics, that's it, right? You're gonna have to stick with that for the rest of the run. I mean, I think. I'm only basing that statement off of everything I've read re: organic vs synthetics. If you did that during veg, you could get away with it, but at this point in the flowering phase, I think you're gonna have to stick with synthetics. But I don't know shit, so I'm probably totally wrong haha.

Anyway... Let's see those bitches! Honestly, though, and I'm only saying this to you as a friend, not trying to be Mr Fucking Know-It-All because, like I said, I don't know sheeeeiiittttt, but if your goal is truly organic meds, it seems like it'd be sooooo much less time-consuming if you just mixed up a big ol' batch of Cootz mix and called it a day.
 
hiiipower

hiiipower

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I know it seems complicated but I'm trying to be so detailed to show exactly how this works. It's not labor intensive at all. Just a lot of thinking and tinkering going on right now, that's all. All I do is mix up a big batch of Cootz mix, then apply it 2" thick every 2 wks. There's no need to water it like I first thought, it stays moist if you raise the water in the dwc up high enough. Then a res change every 2-3wks. It's not nearly as labor intensive as a regular/synthetic hydroponic garden, and not much more than a regular organic soil garden. Plus the system can go unattended for 7-10 days. But the goal is organic meds with hydroponic growth, not just one or the other. A seed vegged in dwc will grow 2x or more as fast as it would in soil(I've watched it in my own room many times, without fault). I like to think it will contribute to final product as well. Since the metabolism of a hydroponic plant is so incredibly high, I think it improves the organics also. Just a theory so far, I'll have to wait till next round is over to find out the conclusion.
 
Minitiger

Minitiger

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I know it seems complicated but I'm trying to be so detailed to show exactly how this works. It's not labor intensive at all. Just a lot of thinking and tinkering going on right now, that's all. All I do is mix up a big batch of Cootz mix, then apply it 2" thick every 2 wks. There's no need to water it like I first thought, it stays moist if you raise the water in the dwc up high enough. Then a res change every 2-3wks. It's not nearly as labor intensive as a regular/synthetic hydroponic garden, and not much more than a regular organic soil garden. Plus the system can go unattended for 7-10 days. But the goal is organic meds with hydroponic growth, not just one or the other. A seed vegged in dwc will grow 2x or more as fast as it would in soil(I've watched it in my own room many times, without fault). I like to think it will contribute to final product as well. Since the metabolism of a hydroponic plant is so incredibly high, I think it improves the organics also. Just a theory so far, I'll have to wait till next round is over to find out the conclusion.

Ah, okay. I think what I meant to say was what you said: it involves a lot of thinking haha. I don't wanna think too much about my grow (or anything else), even though I do think about my grow constantly haha. I like what you're doing, it sounds really interesting to me.

I'm gonna take some pics tonight, probably. I'll post them in my log tomorrow if I do take pics. Swing on by and check it out if you feel the inclination.
 
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