Bottomfeeding: no drain, no waste

[thesloppy]

I'll keep the drip clean in mind, GP. I personally have never really had a problem with salts, regardless of my watering technique.....or should I say, I've never gotten the rest of my shit nailed down to the point where salt build-up has become my primary concern. Either way, I get by with a single flush w/ massive runoff at about 2 weeks, and bottom-feed plain water from then on. As GP noted though, I don't re-use my coco either, which I think takes care of a lot of those build-up/salt issues on it's own. Simplicity is really what motivates me, even beyond value (to a point), and I'd personally rather spend the extra ~10 bucks per bag, rather than spend the time to sift through all my old coco, whose residuals also have the potential to make feeding more confusing.

 

[thesloppy]

Added some photos of my setup to the original post, as requested. They are precisely as (un)exciting as you might expect.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

Thx for the link, ogenko. Those autopots are pretty cool...I'd be interested in checking 'em out, but they don't fit my cab footprint. But they DO sell the valve on it's own:

http://futuregarden.com/hydroponics/smartvalve.html

I love the fact that you can feed it by gravity, so you don't have to buy a pump or pay for the electricity. Seems like an awesome way to automate bottomfeeding. A 5gal bucket(s) stacked on top of the cab for a reservoir, and a valve in each drip tray, could further reduce my watering schedule by another 80%.

My only hesitation is the possibility of failure and resultant flooding. Even a 2-3 gal flood would be near disastrous, if left untended for too long in an apartment.

My work takes me away for a week at a time which made watering a problem. I invested in three Smartvalves to each periodically flood a 2'x3' tub at about 1" deep. I found them to be unpredictable. Once came back to find that one Smartvalve had drained the reservoir leaving the plants swimming for a week while the other two tubs went dry. None of the plants were happy. Wish I'd spent the $75 on Blumats.

I built a 6'x3' table for the tubs and now run it as an Ebb N Flow system. It's working great. Each tub has its own reservoir which lasts well over a week. And with three tubs I can run it perpetual and have one tub flushing those plants near harvest while the other two tubs are running nutes. And without any drip lines, each plant can be picked up and turned or moved with no hassle.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

double post

 

[thesloppy]

Thanx for the info CR. I was kinda hyped about the autovalves...except for the expense, and I'd have to remove a plant or two to make room for 'em, and I'm terrified of flooding.....so, I guess I wasn't all that hyped, but it was something I was considering putting on the possible upgrade. Blumats look equally neat...but would be ridiculously expensive for a bunch of SoG pots.

I'll probably just stick with hand-watering, until something makes it absolutely necessary for me to leave the plants alone for more than a week. Currently they can probably get by on a gallon of water/nutes for 4-5 days if I really wanna push it, and I make sure they're absolutely saturated AND their puddle is full.

 

[Greyskull]

bottom feeding in coco is fun
i kinda like ebb n flowing with potted plants on tables....
might be switching back to that method in fact (and ditching the top fed soiless mix action Im doing now)....

 

[zen_trikester]

Here is another auto watering option for anyone interested in an easy DIY. I use this on my clones but will work with any botomfeeding.

Think automatic dog waterer.

Hydrostatic pressure. Take a pan of water and put a sealed bottle of water in it. Poke a hole in the bottle (hot nail or drill... rips are bad) at the water level you want maintained and that is it. When the outside water level gets to a point that it is below the hole in the bottle, it allows air to get sucked up through the hole and water comes out of the bottle until the hole is covered again, so it maintains a consistent level. As long as the bottle doesn't tip over or your cap doesn't leak you are completely good to go. Any plastic soda/water bottle will work fine and you just cover the hole with your finger when you are filling it.

 

[zen_trikester]

Well, I'm going to take a crack at this for a bit and switch my cabinet over I think. I have a tray of 8 set up and will be able to clear the space by next week. I am doing some as 50/50 perlite and coco and some as 3/1 perlite and vermiculite per a standard hempy. I'm feeding maxi bloom only, and it is my intention to top feed to pull some air into the root area.

Sloppy, or anyone trying this, if you have any issues, please report!!

Added some photos of my setup to the original post, as requested. They are precisely as (un)exciting as you might expect.

Here is my tray. It is a plastic shoebox-sized storage box cut down with a section of a tray specific to my pots inside of it. The pots are mini treepot mt38's and the tray is an MT38T cut into an 8 container section.

This is my little cloner in "vacation mode" with the auto draining bottle like the dog waterer above. I've been doing this for a year or two and go out of town every couple months.

 

[Decisive]

My last grow had no runoff, 27 plants in 8KW, got like .7GPW but I ran drip clean throughout the cycle. I had some major problems in flowering where the runoff EC was somewhere around 4 (2000ppm) on some plants and on others around 6 EC which is scary insane. That was like 6 weeks into an 8 week strain and I did some serious flushing in an attempt to lower it. Everything finished out nicely!!

 

[Snoopster]

Here is another auto watering option for anyone interested in an easy DIY. I use this on my clones but will work with any botomfeeding.

Think automatic dog waterer.

Hydrostatic pressure. Take a pan of water and put a sealed bottle of water in it. Poke a hole in the bottle (hot nail or drill... rips are bad) at the water level you want maintained and that is it. When the outside water level gets to a point that it is below the hole in the bottle, it allows air to get sucked up through the hole and water comes out of the bottle until the hole is covered again, so it maintains a consistent level. As long as the bottle doesn't tip over or your cap doesn't leak you are completely good to go. Any plastic soda/water bottle will work fine and you just cover the hole with your finger when you are filling it.

That is a great idea.
I bet it is more reliable than my friend Presuming Ed.

Thanks!

 

[STUPPA]

Yep i bottom feed it's the best way IMO . I am currently pouring 5litres a day into each of my plants trays and they are loving it , i rekon they grow better with bottom feeding and you never get that lull like after you have top fed because you keep the top of the rootzone nice and airy instead of swamping it .

 

[Bob-Hope]

All these plants have been bottom fed since they had roots popping out the bottom.

You can just make out the tray at the bottom.

G H S Lemon skunk day 14 veg soon to be re-potted into a 6ltr Air pot.

S.O.L. Blue Sat 2.2 18 days veg.

All ive done for the last 2 weeks is pour 1 ltr of nutes a day with an E.C value 0.7 into the tray and leave them to it.

BoB

 

[Solidopc]

I'm on the autopot with coco/perlite mix. Also got the airdomes that fit in the bottom and attach to an airpump, which sorts out any oxygenation problem. This is my first run with them, but so far, i really really like them. I've got 4 and will definately be buying another 2 or 3.

 

[Snoopster]

Nice Bob, I just bought some airpots.

 

[thesloppy]

Well, I'm going to take a crack at this for a bit and switch my cabinet over I think. I have a tray of 8 set up and will be able to clear the space by next week. I am doing some as 50/50 perlite and coco and some as 3/1 perlite and vermiculite per a standard hempy. I'm feeding maxi bloom only, and it is my intention to top feed to pull some air into the root area.

Sloppy, or anyone trying this, if you have any issues, please report!!

That is nearly identical to what I'm running. All my pots are probably 60/40 coco/perilite, and I'm feeding maxibloom as well (though I use some other additives too). I've only been running maxi for probably the last 4-6 months, so I don't think I can speak with any authority yet. That said, I've been seeing what looks like mag deficiencies at about week 5 in flower, but I've been using 5ml/gallon, and those using variations of the 'Lucas' formulas now seem to recommend 7ml/gallon and I've just recently switched. Likewise, I use RO water, and coco is notoriously finicky when it comes to cal and mag....so the problem/solution is still kinda murky for me. I'd just recommend you keep your eye on the ladies you're putting in coco, regarding cal and mag.

Cool setup! I like your pots....I've always been on the lookout for some long square pots like that.

 

[thesloppy]

All these plants have been bottom fed since they had roots popping out the bottom.

All ive done for the last 2 weeks is pour 1 ltr of nutes a day with an E.C value 0.7 into the tray and leave them to it.

BoB

Those are some lovely looking ladies, Bob!

 

[thesloppy]

Those of you on a regular bottom-feeding routine, do you keep your reservoir full at all times, or do you let it dry out in between feedings? I suppose all the auto-filling solutions obviously keep a full reservoir at all times. I'll let my plants suck the reservoir dry and run off that for a day or two, before refilling their puddle, but not for any particular reason other than laziness.

 

[zen_trikester]

That is nearly identical to what I'm running. All my pots are probably 60/40 coco/perilite, and I'm feeding maxibloom as well (though I use some other additives too). I've only been running maxi for probably the last 4-6 months, so I don't think I can speak with any authority yet. That said, I've been seeing what looks like mag deficiencies at about week 5 in flower, but I've been using 5ml/gallon, and those using variations of the 'Lucas' formulas now seem to recommend 7ml/gallon and I've just recently switched. Likewise, I use RO water, and coco is notoriously finicky when it comes to cal and mag....so the problem/solution is still kinda murky for me. I'd just recommend you keep your eye on the ladies you're putting in coco, regarding cal and mag.

Cool setup! I like your pots....I've always been on the lookout for some long square pots like that.

Yeah, coco holds onto a bit of mg so I hydrate my coco (bricks) with a dose of microblast and that seems to eliminate any problems right from the get go. I used .5-1 tsp per gal with my organic soil for a bit while moving away from Epsom salts and it was fine. Seems to be a rather large window between not enough an too much, but that may be more of an organic thing IDK. I use tap, so my intent is to see when the plants start asking for it since the maxi has a fair bit of micro nutes in it already and the coco should be handled when I dydrate it. My Apollo 11 is somewhat of an MG whore, so she'll be the first to bitch about it and she is in the first batch.

So far I like the way the perlite/coco holds onto the cuttings over the perlite/vermiculite mix. It is far more soil-like. I'm hoping I can find a way to recycle either medium. Not because I'm cheap, but because I am in an apartment and don't like to throw things like that out for security reasons. Seems that the cuttings take a little while longer to respond to the hydro nutes than they do in my organic soil. I already burned the crap out of a few cuts using full strength nutes on them right away, but once they drop roots they seem good with it. I assumed they wouldn't be happy but I figured it would be a good idea to get that out of the way right off the bat!!

Cool that we are doing some similar things. That helps a lot if one of us has a problem.

 

[Iraganji]

It's good to see that good old fashioned passive hydro is still alive and kicking.

I was doing this a decade and a half ago with soil/perlite/vermiculite with Peters nutes SOG in perpetual tables.
Really simple and effective. Flood table to the amount that is nearly gone the next day and repeat.
Present day, I'm doing the same thing except with Coco and individual trays. I use huge perlite about 3" depth in the bottoms of the pots or bags and 100% coco on top. I found a ratio of Tap and RO with 3mil per gallon cal/mag that gives me perfect 5.8 ph every every batch using GH 6/9. I also use .2mil Drip Clean per gallon.

Simple, but I want to get it automated for my next run. Perhaps a float switch set to keep a shared tray water between 1/4" and 1" on the daylight timer for flower rooms which would be simple also.

 

[thesloppy]

Present day, I'm doing the same thing except with Coco and individual trays. I use huge perlite about 3" depth in the bottoms of the pots or bags and 100% coco on top.

Thx for the post, Iraganji. I was just wondering what you're reason was for the perlite layer at the bottom of your pots? Do you think perlite is better at wicking or draining than the coco, or do you think it trims/protects the roots, or something? I've thought about doing this many times, and I'm still attracted to the idea, even though I'm not quite sure what the benefit is.