passive plant killer

[*mistress*]

@delta9nxs...

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--
hope this helps

 

[zeke99]

For anyone that was listening to my long sad cloning tale, I will say that Turface is still preferred over perlite in the wick system with two containers.

The roots in Turface really encircle the container and fill it out and didn't attempt to grow down into the res. The roots in perlite appear to be searching for more water and ended up growing down into the wick hole. To remove them, I had to gently pull the roots through the hole and cut the wick.

 

[zeke99]

Boy Delta9 and IF sure were not kidding. The life of a PPK grower is Boring. And that's a capital B.

No more rushing around to water plants that weren't automated dtw.
No more emptying collection pans from plants that were automated dtw.
No more of the guesswork and imperfection that is dtw or watering by hand in general...

What a relief!

 

[delta9nxs]

After I drilled the sidewall holes, I had to change the fabric to vynil screen in the wick, to increase the speed of drain. I also used the screen in the bottom of the buckets to cover the holes. I will raise the sideholes on the next bucket to allow for a little more liquid in the bucket without coming out the sides. She reaches equilibrium very quickly.

your post reminded me that i have not shown a pic of the new lid treatment intended to capture pulse overflow and return it to the res.

you can all thank IF for this. this is his idea.

i have been reticent about doing anything that might contribute to increased evaporation but i have been monitoring for changes in ec or ph and as yet (two weeks) have not noticed anything significantly different.

while i had the lid off i checked the solution and got 556 ppm at .5 and 5.8 ph which is about what i always get with an input of 750 ppm.

the holes are 3/16", i tried them at 1/8" and they wouldn't drain completely but the 3/16" does it.

roots are outrageously thick and fuzzy. like roots on roids. schwarzenegger roots. i haven't whacked a plant treated like this yet but it looks very promising as a yield enhancer. in veg they are all large for their age.

editing again to say that this heavy over pulsing works well with the turface/rice hulls mix. this is a very "fast" medium and drains well between pulses.

 

[Stranger]

Whew how rough it is.... I had to fill two 5 gallon water jugs and put a little powder in it and dump into my bulk res.

I used to spend a good hour every day and at least 2-3 hours on the weekend. I now spend time looking at the plants. My seedlings are getting good attention.

This is "the" lazyman system to grow with

 

[catman]

@catman...

the `ch0wmix` was coc0/hydrot0n. or, when some kbs`ers went to media instead of full kbs... /or to show/pr0ve trees could be done w/ handwater soiless, w/out bell+whistle of an active system...

hope this helps

Thank you Mistress. I gave up looking for small enough pieces of pumice, but I was thinking about adding a small out of hydrotron or something with similar properties. And your advice gave me the push to buy a product that I've heard little to nothing about. This things called "Hail" are which 1''x1'' fiber blocks (I honestly don't even know what it is actually made of) and all I care about is its physical properties are. Bad news is I don't believe they are reusable, but I can only grow a few plants and I have been reading good things about chowmix. So, from what I understand, a little under $40 of the stuff will fill 6 5 gallon buckets with the blocks being the entire medium. I'm going to try to grow 3 trees without the bells and whistles in a 4x4 space with a 600w vertical bulb. I'm not yet sure how I am going to mix and/or layer what I have to choose from for mediums, but I'll have to wait until I get the cubes so I have some time to plan.

I have a 50 lb bag of Turface that has been separated into bigger and smaller pieces which took a lot of hard wok. I'm busy doing the same screening thing to 3.5 cu ft of perlite. So, have those and the screen pieces, plus the "hail cubes" on the way.

Took a random hand full of what I've done so far and took some pictures. The last one has the removed small pieces in it.

I'm thinking about using 5 gallon buckets with 6'' tail pieces which will sit on top of a 2 gallon bucket which is in another 5 gallon bucket. So, one 5 gallon bucket with 2 gallon it, and 5 gallon bucket with tailpiece above it. What I am thinking is that I can raise the water level higher than it could possible be wicked about by more 3-4 inches for newly vegging plants and then I can eliminate the water table any time I chose afterwards. My mix with removed smaller particles won't hold to as much water vertically in the bucket and I might put smaller particles above the bigger ones. I know smaller particles usually settle to the bottom, but I may have a trick up my sleeve. I imagine this to be like a passive half-ass flood and drain, hempy, and ppk bucket. I am going to drill no air holes, but I have another way to prune the side roots. So, when the system is flooded, though the roots are given the cue to grow laterally, hopefully I can prevent them from binding up. I hope I have enough time to play around before I can resist transplanting my girls.

Anyway, thanks for the help. I like trying new things in pursuit of perfection (though it may be far away...maybe in a galaxy far, far away) and I've learned a lot of things from reading your posts about how mediums and plants work.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

So boring.

When my current run overgrew the space and forced me to abandon my current experiments, I just walked away.

Less than five minutes of maintenance a week.

Boring.

 

[*mistress*]

I'm going to try to grow 3 trees without the bells and whistles in a 4x4 space with a 600w vertical bulb.

...maybe try 1 planty in 4x4x4...veggied to 3+x3+x3+, then start flower... a `tree`, maybe, should fill entire 4x4x4 area...medium... maybe just mix 80/20 perlyte/turfase...

2cents...cheers

 

[zeke99]

So boring.

When my current run overgrew the space and forced me to abandon my current experiments, I just walked away.

Less than five minutes of maintenance a week.

Boring.

some of the links in your sig do not work

i should check out your thread(s)

 

[gregor_mendel]

Be careful drill out those tire valves!

Be careful drill out those tire valves!

I thought I would be a hero and drill my tire valves to 1/4" inside diameter (.250)

First a 3/16" ream (.187)

Then I worked my way up a little at a time with drills.
.219 - good, .221, the valve came apart.

The brass you can see on the outside is much thicker than what is inside the rubber. Where the thicknesses meet is where it broke.

If anyone else tries this, I would suggest stopping at .210 or .215, just to be on the safe side.

Also if someone could source valves with a little more material, that would be great.

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

i should check out your thread(s)

Naw... Nothing to see there boys, nothing to see.

I have one rambling, year plus thread that documents bits and pieces of my experience with PPKs... some of it might not be shit, but since you're on page 175 over here, you've probably already have a better understanding than I did when I wrote most of it.

If you really dig deep, you'll find a couple of catastrophic RDWC failures... I blame the shit toxic pipe!

Nothing new over there, I'd say.

Oh... maybe the fact that I was running PPKs successfully in 100+ degree temps... that might be fun. Or when I freaked out about chem induced hermaphrodites, and then everything turned out mostly okay... Or when I came to understand gas displacement as a function of the pulse feed... I don't think I even bothered to document most of the stuff I was experimenting with.

I can say that my horizontal scrog could have used a second layer of screen, and some upper canopy air movement.

 

[catman]

maybe 1 tree in a 4x4... under 1 6oow.. maybe use regular 5 gallon bucket, w/ holes drilled around sides & bottom, placed inside pan that is wider... maybe water 1x - 2x per day, every other day... end...

as for medium.... not really that important... maybe just mix 80persent perlyte w/ 20persent turfase .. by hand.... no need for pump, pulse, or other automated delivery mechanism...

never tried ppk... but, maybe, in imagination tried similar passive methods... though ppk is very active in current state... either/or...

have fun... cheers

Thanks again mistress. I will have lots of fun and I'll do my best to share it with others.

It is amazing what growers have been doing lately with TREES and they have gotten so big that I really shouldn't all mine TREES at all. Maybe in the future I will try training a single plant to make a circle around a 600w, but for now, I think I will try to get as many tops as I can from three plants to reduce my odds of failure. I've dealt with out of control jungles before and I figure I'm going to have to do lots of training with so few plants around a vertical bulb anyway.

I am not going to drill any side holes in these buckets because I'm skeptical of air pruning. I have another way to prune roots so they don't wrap around each other.

Going to be all hand watered and I'll probably water once a day or I can easily make it so I can go at least every other day. 5 gallon buckets are pretty big for ~ 1/2# plants. I'm thinking 2 parts screened perlite to 1 part screened Turface with "hail cubes" scattered around. These cubes are like a substitute for hydrotron as they do not wick water, but they do allow roots to grow through them.

What I'm focusing on now (becuase I will start very soon) is WHERE I will put all of the mediums in the bucket. Also, I might try mixing back in the fine particles in 1 bucket to experiment. I want to keep things simple to water and passive like the imaginary stories you talk about Simple operation takes complicated designing though. Trying to achieve perfection sometimes gives less results, but I'm just having fun.

 

[catman]

Screening Turface and Perlite has been a real pain in the ass the way I have been doing it which is taking 1/16''x1/16'' insect fiberglass screen, punching small slightly larger holes with a screw driver into it, bringing the outside of the screen to wrap the medium inside of it, and shaking like hell.. for many hours. I did about half of my Turface like this, but I ended up taking a fine kitchen strainer, poking large holes with the screen driver, filling it with Turface, inserting a wooden spoon into my electric drill, and using the wide end of the spoon to smack the top of the strainer each time it went around to mix the Turface around while smaller pieces fell out.

So, I did some tests to see exactly what I had accomplished. My method for testing is basically filling an entire 5 gallon bucket (with the 6'' tailpiece with a 1/16''x1/16'' fiberglass screen at the bottom of it) with water while it sits on top of a 2 gallon bucket. This is like having no air gap, but there at least a 1/4'' because of the curvature of the buckets. The 2 gallon bucket will overflow when there is a lot of water in the bucket and I wait until this is done before I quickly place the 5 gallon bucket in an empty container so I can measure how much water drains out. I also let the mediums drip everything out.

5 gallons of screened Turface left me with about 1 to 1.5 gallons of fine particles like I showed pictures of a few posts above. Screened Turface drained only about .15 gallons of water while unscreened Turface drained about .625 gallons. The .15 gallons tells me the PWT is entirely contained in the tailpiece even with virtually no air gap. This means water will not be wicked up into the bucket unless the water table is actually above the bottom of the bucket.

Screened Perlite drained 1.25 gallons while unscreened drained .95 gallons. 0.8 gallons of fine Perlite particles was removed for the screened 5 gallon bucket tested.

I misplaced most of my detailed notes, so these numbers are only approximately accurate. Comparing unscreened Turface to unscreened Perlite, Turface drained less because it will hold more water because the pore size on the surface of it is smaller even though I removed more fines (and there are indeed less fines) than with Perlite. Capillary potential isn't only about the size of the particles and how close they are together which is why this is the case. Perlite has larger pores which taken alone means it will wick less than Turface, but it tends break down into more smaller particles that manage to wick water high up into the medium although the moisture is not uniformly spread out like Turface.

All of this was done to help me decide where in the buckets do I want to place each medium instead of just using a uniform mixture throughout the bucket. I'm considering something like below.

 

[zeke99]

Ironically for this thread, ^ Seems like a lot of extra work

 

[catman]

Ironically for this thread, ^ Seems like a lot of extra work

This entire thread is ironic in the same sense that a simple hempy bucket gives great results with far, far less extra work of anything PPK related.

Some people here are really stretching the truth about active-PPK being the most boring and simple way to grow ever. Pumps, timers, float valves... equipment failure, possibility of flooding and leaks. Not to mention the noise created by running such a system. Now, I'm not dogging on anything here, but after everything is said and done with what I'm attempting to accomplish; watering daily is hardly extra work when I'll be wanting to check on my plants anyway.

Now, what was your point?

 

[Snook]

This entire thread is ironic in the same sense that a simple hempy bucket gives great results with far, far less extra work of anything PPK related.

Some people here are really stretching the truth about active-PPK being the most boring and simple way to grow ever. Pumps, timers, float valves... equipment failure, possibility of flooding and leaks. Not to mention the noise created by running such a system. Now, I'm not dogging on anything here, but after everything is said and done with what I'm attempting to accomplish; watering daily is hardly extra work when I'll be wanting to check on my plants anyway.

Now, what was your point?

Point is, there is a 'hempy' thread already started. You're in the wrong thread.

 

[zeke99]

double posts

 

[zeke99]

This entire thread is ironic in the same sense that a simple hempy bucket gives great results with far, far less extra work of anything PPK related.

Some people here are really stretching the truth about active-PPK being the most boring and simple way to grow ever. Pumps, timers, float valves... equipment failure, possibility of flooding and leaks. Not to mention the noise created by running such a system. Now, I'm not dogging on anything here, but after everything is said and done with what I'm attempting to accomplish; watering daily is hardly extra work when I'll be wanting to check on my plants anyway.

Now, what was your point?

My point remains that if you're growing in some kind of hempy bucket or an improvised hempy or the passive plant killer (two buckets, a cover, and a tailpipe), than why are you using a stacked medium with four different levels and creating all of this extra work for yourself?

The standalone PPK is, contrary to your opinion, very easy to both build and use and by design eliminates the PWT without modifications. It's proven.

No one on this thread has compared the automated PK in terms of simplicity to a Hempy bucket. That's just asinine. I'm coming from an automated drain to waste type system. It's similar, but this is completely contained. It requires less work and maintenance, plain and simple.

And the noise? I have no idea what you're talking about. The two small pumps that I use in total for veg and bloom are near silent. Do you not use fans in your hempy grow rooms?

 

[ImaginaryFriend]

Some people here are really stretching the truth about active-PPK being the most boring and simple way to grow ever. Pumps, timers, float valves... equipment failure, possibility of flooding and leaks. Not to mention the noise created by running such a system. Now, I'm not dogging on anything here, but after everything is said and done with what I'm attempting to accomplish; watering daily is hardly extra work when I'll be wanting to check on my plants anyway.

catman,

What is your problem?

I read this post, and then walked away for a few hours so that I didn't reply out of frustration, but you're really crossing the line of decency here.

You have never built or operated a PPK.

Accordingly, you have no first hand experience on it's function, or the experience of its operation.

I do. I say it's boring.

Who the fuck are you to challenge me, or anyone else who makes this claim?

You don't know who I am, my experience level, or my history. Even if you took the time to read what I've posted on the Mag, you would only know what I've chosen to say in a public venue.

I've gone out of my way try and maintain a constructive attitude towards you, and I think you have something to offer to the community.

But decency demands that you stop barging into a small community of friendly, constructive IC member and shitting enthusiasm and success.

Start your own fucking thread if you want to call this system bullshit and offer up some hybrid PPK/Hempy alternative.

I've PM'd you on multiple occasions, and been as helpful and cooperative as I care to be. I clearly cannot redirect your posts in this thread in a constructive, positive direction.

It's the internet.

I know that.

And I'm not trying to start shit, and this my second to last statement on the issue.

So, regardless of the quality of your thought, if the tone of your posts in this thread doesn't change, I'm going to my ignore button. You'll be number two on that auspicious list.

I suppose that isn't much of a threat, unless you perceive this site as an opportunity to engage in a passion with interesting people who share it.

And if I'm such a person, I'm telling you that I will no longer engage in conversation with you should you continue this negative and accusatory tone. So be nice, or loose a friend.

 

[catman]

What the hell are your guy's problems/insecurities? Relax for a second (or several hours if need be) and hear me out..

Point is, there is a 'hempy' thread already started. You're in the wrong thread.

Wow..

There will be no side hold in any of my buckets which is a hallmark of a hempy bucket. I'm using a tailpiece and Turface which I discovered in this thread. D9 has said this thread is about talking about PPK systems and theory; if you can't reason how the bucket design I laid out isn't closer to PPK than a hempy, you have no point.

My point remains that if you're growing in some kind of hempy bucket or an improvised hempy or the passive plant killer (two buckets, a cover, and a tailpipe), than why are you using a stacked medium with four different levels and creating all of this extra work for yourself?

It's apparent you don't give two shits about what I have discussed so what concern is it of yours what "extra" work I put forth? Why am I doing the different levels? Uhh, I already posted why..

No one on this thread has compared the automated PK in terms of simplicity to a Hempy bucket. That's just asinine.

Just as asinine as comparing the complexity of localizing mediums in a bucket to an automated PK which you did. I didn't say shit about you're personal preferences for a system so please lose the persecution complex.

And the noise? I have no idea what you're talking about. The two small pumps that I use in total for veg and bloom are near silent. Do you not use fans in your hempy grow rooms?

Some people say 10'' Vortex fans are just as silent as your small pumps..

Again, I don't know why you feel the need to bring up anything about what it is you do. I spoke to what I'm doing and most people are going to have different situations and preferences so why compare apples to oranges?

catman,

What is your problem?

I read this post, and then walked away for a few hours so that I didn't reply out of frustration, but you're really crossing the line of decency here.

...evidently you seem to be the one with a problem.

Who the fuck are you to challenge me, or anyone else who makes this claim?

LOL. Who makes a claim or counter claim doesn't matter. Ideas and realizations of them stand on their own or they don't. How did I challenge you anyway? Who the fuck am I? Someone who doesn't hide behind logical fallacies.

You don't know who I am, my experience level, or my history. Even if you took the time to read what I've posted on the Mag, you would only know what I've chosen to say in a public venue.

...and the same could be said about me. What is your point?

But decency demands that you stop barging into a small community of friendly, constructive IC member and shitting enthusiasm and success.

I didn't barg into anything nor shat on anyone. You're god damn right my tone in this current post isn't decent, but I'm only returning the favor.

Start your own fucking thread if you want to call this system bullshit and offer up some hybrid PPK/Hempy alternative.

I've never called this system bullshit. I'll say it again that I've learned A LOT in this thread which is why I've felt it is the proper place to post what I'm what I'm doing.

So, regardless of the quality of your thought, if the tone of your posts in this thread doesn't change, I'm going to my ignore button. You'll be number two on that auspicious list.

I suppose that isn't much of a threat, unless you perceive this site as an opportunity to engage in a passion with interesting people who share it.

You haven't said a damn thing about the material substance I've posted about and in light of this offering of your words, what would I possibly lose out on by having you ignore me? You and some other members have frankly done nothing more than thrown petty sissy fits ABOUT FALSE INTERPRETATIONS of what I've said and why. For fuck's sake, I said I wasn't dogging anyone or any idea, yet yall have jumped on me. Go ahead and blame me for retaliating. Amongst the immaturity demonstrated here, I can say without hesitation, yall started it..

Some people might feel they've finished it (because of WHO THE FUCK THEY ARE, YA KNOW?,) but I for one believe we've all lost. I did not intend to antagonize anyone and I would apologize if I didn't believe such intent had been demonstrated otherwise.