Medium for drip-system?

[Svartsinn]

I'm just starting out my garden on a tight budget, and was wondering how mediums like peagravel, vermaculit or leca would do under a drip-system?
I found the parts (pump, tubes, res) on the local home depot for around 50$.

I would really like to recycle the medium after harvest to keep the cost down.. so a soilless thing is what im looking for.

My flower-den is about 2x1 m (6ft x 3ft?), and I already have:

2 x 400w hid
10 x 7l pots
a fan
10 x Magus Motavation seedlings, in jiffypots.
..and the drip-system mentioned above

I really would like to go with leca (like a clay-popcorn), and was wondering if any of you guys could give me some advise on the go? I really should have found this forum a month ago, but i didn't

 

[Berry_Coughin']

No experience in peagravel on my end...

I have used vermiculite a lot, and can say that it holds a TON of water... don't think it would be ideal for a drip....

Ever look into coco, or hydroton... both are reusable.....

Not familiar with leca either.....

sorry....

 

[Svartsinn]

Wow, thats fast )
Leca is alot like vermiculite.. I was hoping I could do it as easy as putting the jiffys straight into the vermi/leca medium and drip it for 15 mins, like 4 times per day?

I'm in a bit of a rush, so maybe i should just mix up some soil/leca for the first test-run, and drip it with my water/nute mix? Sounds alot easier for now..

Thx alot!

 

[Wait...What?]

You want hydroton or perlite, and perlite is cheaper by volume and cheaper to ship. The hydroton/grow rocks are more durable so you'll get more grow cycles out of your initial investment. 5 gallon bucket of water, with 1/4 tsp of bleach and 1/4 tsp of hydrogen peroxide will clean and sterilize everything for your next grow. rinse well.

Drip schedule has to do with your growing environment. You have three components to this equation - Duration, Frequency, and nutrient solution strength. You can water less often with stronger nutes, and more often with weaker nutrients. Babies never need very much of anything, so a good start is 30 seconds pump duration every 3 hours. I work my way up, as the plants grow, to 3 minutes every 90 minutes. But I'll also vary the nutrient strenght from ~350ppm for the babies, to ~900ppm for mature plants.

Giving the growing medium time to dry out a little bit between waterings helps to send the plant a dry signal. That causes the plant to make more roots, and as we all know, more roots makes for a more productive plant.

You can grow any way you want. People did just fine on perlite+vermiculite mix for years.

 

[Macster2]

hydroton all the way>I do a continous drip system and Ive got about ten harvests on the same hydroton

 

[eLiguL]

Vermiculite and perlite breaks down over time. If your in for the long haul you should bite the bullet and buy some hydroton, you will save in the long run.

 

[Svartsinn]

Went for some soil..

Went for some soil..

I suddenly understood that going hydro needed some more looking into, so I decided for soil/leca



But I'll be back for moe later

Thanks!