Question About Dripping

[jakedasnake]

Hey folks,

New to drip systems, was always worried about leaks prior to building my new room. Two grows under my belt with hand watering. Hoping for better growth with drippers.

I have 5 gal smartpots w 50/50 coco perlite in them.

I have 2, 1GPH drip heads per pot and they are spaced about 2" to either side of the main stem. This leaves about a 5" gap to the edge of the pot.

Do i need to invest in more drip heads and run for shorter times?

Girls are 3 weeks from cloning and are just now settling into vegetative growth under the 1kw MH.

Video here for visual learners

Oh and btw the folks at ICmag are not responding, would love a helpful community behind me.

- Jake

 

[Spectre]

If you start feeding those small plants 4x per day in that big pot you're not going to get the full potential out of them. You need to let the medium dry a few times to establish roots first, then hit them with multi-feeds.

Plants will get huge in 5 gallons once feeding is dialed in, so maybe consider using smaller pots in the future. What's your plan for flowering?

 

[jakedasnake]

I agree - I'm not watering 4x a day yet, that's the eventual plan though. I currently just keep the medium barely moist as coco tends to initially bind up and then later release Ca+ & K+ if it drys out. This causes less uniformity to my nutrient load in the medium. These girls are getting a quart every day or two.

I like to go to the 5 gal pots right from clone as I don't like transplanting, id rather wait out the slower initial veg growth until they explode. Might slow me down a little bit, but no hassle of transplanting.

I clone under CFL's, veg with 1000w of MH, then once the canopy expands I'll run 2k of MH for a few weeks until I flip to 2,000 watts of HPS.

 

[Spectre]

From my experience with coco, getting too wrapped up in the chemistry behind everything only leads to more confusion, especially in veg. I was the same way before. I wanted to know the exact numbers behind everything so that I could perfectly plan every step. This only leads to frustration if you don't have much experience. What will help you more is learning to use wet/dry cycles and proper container size to develop a thriving root mass.

I understand that you don't want to transplant, which is fine. The roots will eventually catch up, but keeping those big 5gals even slightly damp is hindering your rooting ability. You want to let them almost completely dry out before hitting with full strength nutrients (1.6EC for me) with a good amount of runoff. Do this a few times and your roots will fill the whole pot.

Flowering is a different story. Once roots are fully established, you don't want the pots to dry at all. That's when multi-feeds come in and you can start worrying about your ratios and all that good stuff.

Remember, roots first!!! Best of luck!

 

[jakedasnake]

Thanks man, I understand that getting obsessive can lead to more harm than good.

I took your advice and am down to one watering a day and the ladies love it. Im gonna let them run unwatered tomorrow and dry em out a bit.

Second VLOG update is up now, considerable growth in only 3 days.
I plan to use this thread as a grow diary, so check in occasionally and let me know what you think could be improved.

- Cheers, Jake

 

[jakedasnake]

New growth looking good.
I took spectres advice and let the pots dry out a little. I am doing 2 feeds per day now that the roots have clearly established. I feed about 600ppm total

Rez contents

• 200ppm calimagic
• 200 ppm Canna coco a
• 200 ppm Canna coco b
• 1ml bleach
• ~20 gal of tap water. Starting ppm is 30.

I know I'll get blasted for using bleach, but I have had rez funk in the past and cant afford a chiller. I have seen no ill effects with the bleach and at that low of a ratio its 1ml in 75708ml of nutrient solution, its barely anything.

When it comes time to flower I'll drop the bleach and add a barley enzyme to start breaking down the old roots, (like cannazyme). It keeps the rez fresh for about a week so I run more like 10 gal at a time.

 

[Spectre]

Ladies are looking nice jake.

What scale are you using for ppm? Maybe use EC when posting so there's no confusion.

How much longer are you gonna veg?

 

[jakedasnake]

- this is the PPM meter that I'm using, it looks like it follows the Truncheon scale. I'll post in EC now.

Currently feeding just under .9 EC 4x daily for 4 minutes a feed. Using two 1 gph drippers per plant that gives me a total daily feed of ~1/2 gal per plant. I will need to lengthen my drip times or increase frequency in flower.

Gonna veg until I use up my horizontal space. I have lots of headroom so I want to fill my room with a canopy.

Here are two more update vlogs.

Does the video format bother anyone? Just using cell camera so cant filter out the magnetic ballast lines.

 

[Savage Henry]

I will need to lengthen my drip times or increase frequency in flower.

Ime increasing the frequency causes the plants to receive more npk each time. This can lead to salt buildup unless the frequency is increased after the runoff ec is less than the input ec. I would lengthen the irrigation time until the ec needs to be increased.

This was explained to me a while back but I needed to see it for myself and cooked some plants in the process by what amounted to force feeding.

I'll second @Spectre on the wet/dry cycles, they're the key for sure.

 

[jakedasnake]

Yeah I let my girls dry out twice in this run, It does seem to encourage explosive growth once you water again.

I'll stick with 4 short feeds until it looks like the girls are thirsty then I'll re-evaluate.

Looking for any input on the bleach in the rez, honestly its working like a charm and I haven't noticed any ill effects on the plants. What is the chlorine clearance on cannabis lol? It seems to be fine.

 

[ShroomKing]

Bleach for the win!
Ive seen some top level growers tout bleach as a wonderful additive. Ive even seen it used 10:1 to disinfect clones before rooting.
You might be on to something.
Peace

 

[Lil pEte]

Your plants look real nice!

 

[jakedasnake]

What up folks, well got lazy and didnt bother to record vids for the first 4 weeks of flower.

Girls are looking right on track.

Changed feeds to 3x 12 min during lights on only, so I'm not watering them while in the dark

 

[Savage Henry]

How many hours before lights off is your last irrigation cycle? You may like this thing I found:

Call it food for thought, I suppose.

 

[jakedasnake]

Awesome, I have been doing my watering in even 1/3rds, maybe ill try this and go heavier watering in the middle of the "day" and still leave a little overnight.

 

[Spectre]

How are the ladies looking jake?

 

[jakedasnake]

How are the ladies looking jake?

lol digging up ancient posts here, but the room yielded 4lbs of larfy, airy, foxtailed bud. Heat stress.

My buddy came over and shit a brick when he saw my 1000w lights 12" from canopy lol. I got so used to their height and the girls got tall.

I've since retired the room and am hobby growing only now. I made my $$ back from the investment and had a TON of fun. After life stabilizes a bit (new kid on the way!) I will likely set up a little 2x4 tent with some quantum boards and focus on quality over quantity.

In my legal state, there is no shortage of mid tier buds, but truly god tier stuff is still rare.