The coco container

[Desert Hydro]

I’m back after a long hiatus. I found out I had iron bacteria in my well and it was killing my plants. Took two years to figure it out and I almost gave up entirely. Two years of failures and I was through. Ready to give it all up. Donjuanmatus aka the lone tree from the coco trees thread helped me figure it all out. Now I haul water which is a major pain in the ass but I don’t have to worry about the bacteria anymore.

I’m in the same 40’ reefer, with a 4 x 30 flowering space. It’s divided into two watering zones and I stagger the zones about a month or so apart. I was running big plants and blumats but after a failure killed 25% of my harvest in one giant plant I’ve decided against them for flower. I will continue to keep my mothers on them.

I now run the full Athena pro line on a top drip system, netafim .5gph drippers x2 in a one gallon pot. Right now I’m flooding for two minutes every two hours during lights on.

I’m using multiple smaller lights from HLG because I used to run long narrow soil beds. I’m going to upgrade to some grand master eventually

 

[Creeperpark]

Thanks for sharing, friend. It sounds like that was a hard lesson to learn with a lot of loss. When growing in a soil-less mix, I have found that one needs to start with pure water. Are you hauling in RO water? Your garden looks killer and amazing and I appreciate this thread. I'm riding with you, bro.

 

[Desert Hydro]

Thanks for sharing, friend. It sounds like that was a hard lesson to learn with a lot of loss. When growing in a soil-less mix, I have found that one needs to start with pure water. Are you hauling in RO water? Your garden looks killer and amazing and I appreciate this thread. I'm riding with you, bro.

I thought I was starting with pure water. I lease a really expensive whole house RO system that I thought would give me clean water. I guess what was happening was that the bacteria was being reintroduced by the house plumbing after the RO system because of years of buildup in the main lines. It was a very hard-learned lesson. I prefer the universe to only give me small lessons at a time now lol.

I haul in RO water from local stations and I still treat with hypochlorous acid because who knows how often they clean their tanks. I appreciate the kind words. I miss the days when the forums were alive and booming with info. Now everyone just wants to scroll IG and hit the like button without engaging in conversation.

 

[Desert Hydro]

This morning’s pictures. I think I am going to do a good flush to reset the ec back to baseline in order to get me ready for the final fade and true flush.

 

[Farmer John]

Holy shit, wow! Will be watching this, good to hear and see a major problem solved.

 

[Desert Hydro]

Holy shit, wow! Will be watching this, good to hear and see a major problem solved.

Thanks, I will eventually play around with sanitizing my own RO water and seeing if I can make it usable, but for now, I'm not going to risk it. Next on my agenda is get a decent-sized storage tank so I can haul and store larger amounts of water at a time and not have to go every couple of days.

If you ever think water cleanliness could be an issue invest in some hypochlorous acid. its cheap and works great if you are in soiless mix and arent depending on beneficial bacteria populations. Right now I am using athena cleanse, but there is a version on amazon that's twice as potent for $10 less so I can cut my usage in half and still save money.

Another thing that I am doing differently on this run is being much better with my foliar IPM regimen. I am using athena IPM at the prevention rate along with some kelp at about 1 oz per gallon. I used to be lazy with my IPM but I am in a super rural area and I have to walk through tall grass to get to my room and pest pressure is high. I need to start breeding beneficial insects for my garden and entire property.