System with least maintenance?

[phattybudz]

Right now I'm splitting a 6k room with my roommate, so I've got a 3x6 table and a 4x4 full of coco/perlite, and I'm hand-watering. Eventually I'm probably going to take care of the whole room, and try and maintain a full-time job and a girlfriend too. Just wondering what you guys would recommend in terms of least time spent maintaining... oh and pulling 6+lbs of dank of course

 

[geopolitical]

DWC with a pH controller and a top off valve in my experience was the easiest setup to maintain. All I had to do was change nutes once a week and inspect airlines/stones. Very low maint.

Any very low maint system however is going to require a substantial initial investment in either time or money or both.

 

[phattybudz]

DWC.. I ran 6 buckets before but I didn't have a chiller and they got too hot. It was pretty easy though. What about a perpetual veg, I guess I could just use big rockwool cubes? How many buckets for 6k about a 10x13 room...? 36 maybe? I will have some money to put into it if everything works out..

 

[geopolitical]

I'd do 25-30 in that space, but I like being able to walk around and inspect plants.

 

[thc43]

coco run too waste res size only thing holding you back in this setup. I like to spend 5 min atleast in my flower room weekly cleaning up, refilling the resivour and general checks timer failure, fuses blown, water on the floor noisy pumps so on.

Id spend more time hand watering mums and veg plants for future grows. i try to see these guys every second day to keep them wet and trimmed but would be easy enough to auto water via drip in coco or rock wool. I clone every 3 weeks/ flower 10 day old clones every 3 weeks i get stuck when i run out of clones or space.

 

[limey]

Depends so much on what you are growing, how the room is set up etc. As usual, there is no one perfect answer... so my suggestions, for what it's worth

Option 1

the 'old school' dutch method of running a room of any size was to line the floor of the room in pond liner / damp course, establishing a water-tight garden which you would fill with your preferred growing medium (let's say, for argument's sake, a perlite/coco mix).

Once week you flood the garden with water and nutes

er.. that's about it.

It requires having:
a strong floor! - all that plant/medium/water weighs a tonne (well, a few tonnes probably)
good extraction / dehumidifying as that much water creates alot of humidity

there are alot of variations on this theme, for example: lining the floor with one layer of pond liner (as above) then putting on top of that a load of builders' pallets (the wooden jobs you get bricks delivered on), then covering the pallets again with pond liner with a load of strategically placed holes in it, then covering the top layer of pond liner with growing medium (if you're feeling fancy, layering the medium with, say, hydroton granules at the bottom, then perlite, then a soil/coco/perlite mix) - This set up enables some drainage in the system ( water drains through the holes and can escape through the gap between the bottom and top layers of the pallets) and helps reduce some of its risks (see below) but is, of course, a bit more expensive and troublesome to set up.

This/these system(s) has/have risks for the plants/grower around getting the frequency of watering right, as too much water too often can cause fatal root problems - they can get drowned, literally.
It's also impossible (or simply difficult if you follow the variation on the method) to drain and flush this set up so you have to be very careful not to over do the ferts

But though it has these disadvantages, with a bit of practise it is almost no maintanance (just watering once or twice a week) ; there are no pumps of fliters or anything mechanical to worry about so it is a very resiliant system ; it's really cheap as it's very low technology ; it is low energy (again, as there's no pumps etc) ; you can grow organic in this way.

Option 2

I really liked growing on NFT tables (I dont now as they dont suit my grow space [tall and thin]).

NFT can be tricky because if it goes wrong, it can go really wrong, there's no buffering etc but I found it very very easy to manage once i had figured out my nutrient/fert requirements

(I wont go into what NFT is, I am sure you know)

Basically, for a room of any size, it's possible (witha bit of money) to really easily build alot of resiliance into the system:
fitting multiple pumps - so if one pump fails, your plants will still be receiving irrigation
**multiple pumps seems to me to be an absolute must***
fitting a reserve tank with a top up valve in the NFP sump - so you never need to worry about the plants running out of water
essentially you can double up on any added extra you employ i.e. water heaters and coolers, air pumps and stones etc etc (I seldom bothered with these, to be honest, I tried them and they didn't add much to the basic system)

I liked NFT because:
it's clean
It's very easy to set it all up and clean it out when you harvest
the variable costs are low - just need to buy the spreader mat (costs nothing) and rockwool cubes (cost next to nothing) and ferts (which you have to buy for any set up)
It's easy and cheap to add resiliance (a few small pumps and extra bits of plastic tubing, elbows etc i.e. not much money)
It's very very easy to flush out the sytem - it has so little "growing medium" that it is hard for salts to build up so provided you keep and eye on what you are putting in and change the residual water every month (doesn't take long): no problems
It's a very productive system

The only absolute must-have extra requirements for NFT are:
a pH measuring device (I use a pH pen)
a EC/CF measuring device

.. because plants in NFT are v sensitive to changes in pH and EC.

Well, there's my two pennies worth anyway

good luck!

 

[Lazyman]

I've designed over a dozen rooms for friends, and each one is better and simpler than the last, so my latest room is a culmination of about 6 years of growing/growroom design experience:

Ebb and flow trays, stationary lights (air cooled or not) coco chips (mixed with nothing) organic ferts (Pura Vida OMRI) and automatic reservoir top offs. I spend a couple hours in my room per week, mainly just staring at the beautiful colas swaying in the breeze. See sig for how to do both of these.

 

[*mistress*]

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=127112
coco+wick+gh flora nova=never dump run-off|pdg’s imaginary/enjoyable garden

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=126834
goalre-fertilized coco+water only [myco tabs+molasses only]

enjoy your garden!

 

[madpenguin]

Eventually I'm probably going to take care of the whole room, and try and maintain a full-time job and a girlfriend too.

Yea. Good luck on that. Let me know how it goes...

I could barely get my 16 site 3'x8' 2lb NFT harvest out the door with slow work and a full time girl (who doesn't know I do this).

I vote for NFT. No maintainance required besides the nutrient solution. 16 4x4 rockwool blocks go in the trash at the end. Takes minutes to clean and get ready for the veg plants to come out. Insanely easy and the plants love it. Just pray you don't loose power for more than a few hours because then it becomes a full time baby sitting job dumping water down the end of each tube every couple hours.....

I am a fan of DWC tho. Very nice results but NFT still gets my vote for overall easiest compared to best results. I have a ficus in DWC and the thing is just freaking out.

 

[Philosophelon]

Imo, there are several types of systems that are relatively low-maintenance, so the ideal choice depends on one's needs/preferences.

If you don't mind a high plant count -- E&F tables.
If you want fewer, larger plants -- drain-to-waste drippers with coco or coco/perlite.
If you don't mind a large initial investment of labor -- recirculating DWC.

There are obviously more pros and cons of each system than that, but you get the idea.

My preference is for coco dtw drippers, as I need to grow large plants, and a catastrophic equipment failure is highly unlikely, as the medium provides a buffer in the event of pump failure/clogs/etc. Also gives ya bitchin' root development.

 

[Lazyman]

Imo, there are several types of systems that are relatively low-maintenance, so the ideal choice depends on one's needs/preferences.

If you don't mind a high plant count -- E&F tables.
If you want fewer, larger plants -- drain-to-waste drippers with coco or coco/perlite.
If you don't mind a large initial investment of labor -- recirculating DWC.

There are obviously more pros and cons of each system than that, but you get the idea.

My preference is for coco dtw drippers, as I need to grow large plants, and a catastrophic equipment failure is highly unlikely, as the medium provides a buffer in the event of pump failure/clogs/etc. Also gives ya bitchin' root development.

Very well put, I have been recommending the SOG-style E&F more and more lately, but I keep forgetting some folks don't want/like the high plant counts.

I justify it only because I'm fortunate to live in an area where I can legally have a rather large # of plants per patient.

Some guys like to bend the rules a bit, and have a few extra plants, and for those guys I usually tell them if they're not abiding strictly by the law, you might as well go more or less bonkers with the count. I dunno, it's up to the individual.