Greetings one and all!
Horticultural Science student and general indoor gardening enthusiast here, and I come bearing the fruits of my experimental research into oxygen-assisted medium-based grows. It is a unique compromise between basic dutch pot style hydroponics and organic soil based mediums. My serious professional interest in horticulture did incidentally begin with cannabis way back in early high school, when so many of us discovered the sacred herb. I was a pretty huge computer nerd at the time and so easily discovered the then-thriving community of Overgrow.com. I quickly became an amateur gardener, doing mostly outdoor guerrilla-grows at first. Guided by the massive knowledge-base that was overgrow I quickly became proficient enough to begin experimenting.
A couple of years pass, I get out of my parents' house and begin toying with hydroponics. After a few iterations and one horrible salt-lock incident I had gotten pretty good, favoring an Irish & Webby style aeroponic tube setup. The results where fantastic but the whole process was woefully labor-intensive and expensive to boot. Also, I had discovered Christian Kung Fu's salt element table and had come to simply add ratios of the pure elements needed (nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, so on and so fourth) in a stabalized salt form in the correct ratio by mass per litre of liquid added fresh to my resivoir. This got me a highly controlled environment with high-performance repeatable results, but it was difficult to experiment with different breeds of cannabis or whole different plants. On top of that, I felt that I was missing out on the benefits of organics and all associated micro-life. So, I began to work backwards.
The last bit of time I got with the Overgrow community before it was wiped away forever was spent figuring out what exactly caused the benefits of hydroponics over medium-based growing. Aside from a more precision control of the nutrients that the plant recieves (not so much a benefit in itself really, but to do this successfully you have to know what the fuck you are doing, which is directly related to growing awesome bud) all hydroponic rigs provide oxygen to the root zone in one way or another. High oxygen levels at the roots allows for more rapid nutrient uptake, etc, which leads to higher growth rates. I would eventually single this trait out as the only significant advantage that hydroponics has over medium growing at all. Then, midway through 2006 the Canadian Mounted Police Force, spurred on by the American CIA, siezed overgrow.com's physical assets and arrested most of its propriators for growing cannabis. As the cannabis knowlege giant died I was just discovering advanced micro-life. I experimented with organic mediums, finding out just how important Mycorrhizae fungus was to plant health and vigor. After a few iterations I would come across my most recent success:
Sadly, my personal and proffesional situation has made it a requirement for me to continue my research on plants which are legal to cultivate to maturity in the United States. I have worked primarily with tomato plants as they grow quite similarly to cannabis, reacting the same way to supercropping and ScrOG techniques which I had grown fond of over the years. Happily, the now-legal nature of my work means that I can publish information more freely. I have documented my newest organic hydro/medium hybrid technique in painstaking detail here:
http://my.gardenguides.com/members/.../27/Our_Innovative_Indoor_Tomato_Garden_Diary
This is a link to my first entry, click on the blog tab to see the whole thing, most recently updated about two weeks ago. I have had tremendous success growing tomatoes with this technique, although later on we faced problems with blossom-end-rot (BER) which is strictly a tomato issue related to insufficient calcium levels in the fruit. This is usually caused by low calcium or low magnisium (facilitates calcium uptake) in the soil. I had neither such problem and have heard from the tomato gurus on the GardenWeb forums that extreemly high growth rates can cause BER as calcium cannot be moved through the plant tissues quickly enough. My own expirience points towards this as in the past week they have been getting over this problem. I believe that my bubble-tub technique has yeilded growth rates similar to those possible with hydroponics at a fraction of the cost and complexity. By using forced-oxygen injection I have achived very rapid nutrient uptake, but all with the safetey net of a very active Mychorrizae fungus and pro-biotic cingle celled organisms. My primarily organic nutrient regime makes my micro-life thrive, and the huge oxygen levels ensures that only aerobacteria thrive, with pesky anaerobactirial pathogens being killed off by the default conditions. PH buffering and drout protection is build right into the soil. However, due to the valve system in the tubs and the arragement of the water bath the system is still fully capable of a starve-feed-and-flush hydroponic nutrient regime that has such dramatic positive effects on cannabis potency during flower. Even better, because each plant has its own container, there is no common nutrient bath. You may grow many different breeds of plants, with much longer or shorter flowering periods than eachother even, without having to compriamise on starve timing or nutrient content. In short, I believe my technique is the ultimate grow method.
I have only had the chance to prove it out on a pair of tomato plants, and my current situation does not afford me the opportunity to safely try it on cannabis. In short; I am making a plea to the Cannagraphic community. I will share my expirience and full instruction, answering any and all questions about the technique, if someone would care to try it out on cannabis and be so kind as to post the results. I promise low matinence yet high-performance yields. Don't take my word for it, have a browse through that blog, my records are meticulous. See the results for yourself, I even had a control tomato plant that was sprouted at the same time as the others but planted in conventional dirt. The rate at which the control plant is outgrown by the bubble-tub plants beggars belief. I have outlined the process in detail on the blog but not given a super-complete construction guide. ANYONE interested in giving this technique a try can count on me for full tech support and advice on how to knock the system together. It is VERY EASY. All matirials can be aquired from Lowe's, ACE hardware and any local garden center. No special or exotic ingredients required, just a basic medium, some lava rocks and organic nutes. The specifics are outlined in the above posted link. Have a look, please respond if you are interested.
-DM
thanks for that how long have you been studying this????
