so i really hate to ask this since i bet it's been asked before, but i'm looking to switch growing methods. I started with DWC and had a series of miserable failures, and am now doing straight soil and have a happy garden. here's my question... i want to switch back to hydro in the next few months and need to start buying the stuff i'll need now, but am undecided on the method i'll use to water them. I want something mostly idiot-proof. I was thinking 5 gallon smart pots full of coco coir with a drip ring, and having the table drain to waste. from my guesstimations, it will need to be maintained about once every few days to dump waste water, but i'm concerned about feeding the runoff back in to the res (risk of contaminants, altered ph and nutes). do y'all think I should be okay with recirc or should I drain to waste the way i'm planning? also, do yall have any suggestions for other equally maintenance free methods? (i've looked at DWC but just don't have the funds right now to design and build a setup that will be self maintaining... they're very pricy what with strong pumps and chillers and whatnot.) thanks GKers!
Go hempy. All you need is buckets for your nutes/pots, air stones to keep the solution fresh, bags of perlite and vermiculite.
i'd forgotten the reason i hated my hempy run was that I fed them like 4x the nutes they needed... thanks for that! I'll throw in a single hempy plant next run and see how it goes side by side with the soils... I'm going to need some very rapid growth in order to fill out my flowering space, and right now the soils wouldn't fill my needs. I'd still want to set them up on a drip though for ease of maintenance... and i'm back to the runoff problem. do you know of anyone who has done something like that before? I'm getting ideas as i write...
I second that..... I use straight perlite.... but you can do both:thumbs-up: here is a link on how to do a hempy bucket...http://www.growkind.com/forum/showthread.php?t=29638 If you need the Useless formula for the GH 3 part series here is the link... http://www.growkind.com/forum/showthread.php?t=35174
nah I use the GH Floranova series with the Floralicious Plus additive. I used useless's 3 part when I had those nutes though... that run died from heat not overfeeding. I actually still have my 5 gallon buckets with holes in the sides still sitting around EDIT: you say you put airstones in the bottom of the hempy pots? I'd never heard that before... do they have a significant impact on your crop?
I think he meant 'if you're running a drip-ring'(resevoir). Hempy couldn't be much simplier. Go that route.
I put air stones in my res's so when I water, its always fresh. I mix up 3 solutions at a time, and use them over about 7-10 days. I found that bubbling them while they sat between uses seemed to keep the water fresher for longer and I would get better root development I began to notice when I started harvesting. Putting the airstone in the hempy bucket was something I experimented with. I called it DHWC. The idea was to get the constant feed of DWC w/ the aeration of an airstone + perlite to counter the lower O2 saturation for higher temp environments. So instead of a 1-2" gap at the bottom, I would drill the hole at an inch or so under the float height. Basically, fill the bucket with perlite, add water until the perlite starts to float up in the bucket, find the water line, drill an 1" or 2 under that. I had amazing growth, but they always died about 30 days in and I couldn't figure out why at the time, but it turned out to be nute issues. When the hot summer kicks in I'm going to give my DHWC a shot again and see if I can make it work using the Useless sched this time.
Hempy Rules! I second the HEMPY!! I also use GH Flora Nova and have had some pretty damn good results using it with hempy. Check out my hempy Blueberry and Super Silver Haze . Blueberry- 5 gal hempy LST for 4 weeks prior to flowering. Flora Nova Nutes She yielded 1/4 pound. Super Silver Haze- 5 gal hempy 1 week veg Flora Nova Nutes. yielded 2 1/2 oz. Hempy is the easiest "idiot proof" style of hydro growing around. :thumbs-up:
what you need to find out was why didn't the DWC work out for you. I find it to be one if the easiest methods out there. Changing systems is not the answer. If you had water, ph, temp, airflow, etc... issues you will have them again.
