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If the water is continuous that is not a good thing. You want the root system to go from wet to dry wet to dry wet to dry, that is what will give good growth and healthy yields. So you could put it on a timer or something to just water X times a day.
Correct!
PH drifting up is normal. That is why you should make your mix a day or two in advance. Adjust the PH, and then adjust it again when you are ready to use it. Hempys give a higher growth when you water daily to run off. The reason is simple: fresh solution brings fresh oxygen. This stimulate growth tremendously, and the rez will never get "stagnant", which is hard in Hempys anyway, since the rez is so small, and most of the volume is filled with perlite. Large plants will suck that rez dry daily anyway. I drench daily to run off with great results, much better than watering/feeding every other day, simply because of the fresh oxygen.
DoDad
Member
My top feed system is installed and ready to start. I have my timer set to water for 30 minutes 4 times a day.
For nutes, I'm using the K.I.S.S. method. 1 teaspoon per gal. Maxibloom only.
DoomsDay
Member
So you're going to top feed a hempy numerous times a day even after we've all flat out said that numerous watering a day will lead to adverse results. Best of luck you you with your buckets of root rot.
It sounds like you've intentionally gone out of the way to make hempy buckets as hard as possible for you.
It sounds like you've intentionally gone out of the way to make hempy buckets as hard as possible for you.
your feeding a hempy bucket 4 times a day for 30 MINUTES each time ..... WHY ???
you do realize that the hempy bucket was designed so that you could feed every 2 or 3 days without the plants drying out ??? (hense the rez )
if your feeding like that , use a regular pot with holes in the bottom & run drip to waste system . & even DTW doesn't need to be fed that often .
your feeding like its a flood & drain system ..... why ???
Actually, I get much better results watering to run off daily, as opposed to every second or third day, as explained many times. It's all about replenishing the oxygen in the tiny rez.
As far as 4 times a day, I don't see the reason for it, but if in coco, it won't cause root rot in a mature plant, but it's certainly wasting a lot of solution, IMO. Coco is a hydro medium, hempy is a hydro system. Impossible to over water a mature plant. Seedlings or clones, different story.
As far as 4 times a day, I don't see the reason for it, but if in coco, it won't cause root rot in a mature plant, but it's certainly wasting a lot of solution, IMO. Coco is a hydro medium, hempy is a hydro system. Impossible to over water a mature plant. Seedlings or clones, different story.
DoDad
Member
Right. Let me explain.
At first I was just hand watering DTW, but my setup was cumbersome. It wasn't long before my plants needed watering everyday or they looked wilted. Temps in my tent are in the low 90's and I have a stiff breeze. I'm running 75%/perl/25% verm. These do not hold much water as we know.
I remember somewhere in this thread someone said that "the more often you watered, the faster the growth". I tried that by hand watering, and saw faster growth. You are right as usual Retro, they grow faster when you water more.
At that point I was still committed to hempy with 8 plants going but watering 2 x a day wasn't possible long term if doing it by hand and DTW. That's when I came up with the top feed system idea but on an ebb and flow type schedule.
I've been watering 4 times a day now for over a week. Growth has been outstanding. 1" maybe per day. I can't compare this to other methods other than pro-mix-hp, but I know I keep defoliating every few days to keep the bud sites free of shade. The growth sometimes is a little shocking when I open the tent.
As it looked like I was going to have to water everyday anyway, and I found watering 2 times a day worked better than once a day, I started to look at how to automate the watering.
Ebb and flow wouldn't work, and Drain to waste was too wasteful. My best option given my small tent and my heat, was a system that stored nutes out of the tent.
The way it's setup now, is water is pump over the top of the plants, it drains to the hempy rez. The hempy rez overflows and runs off into an external rez to be recycled later. I make up 4-5 gallons of nutes at a time place it in the external rez and when the timer goes off, the pump pumps, the plants get watered. I do nothing but watch the external rez level and change that rez water once a week. I'm feeding Maxibloom K.I.S.S.
I've seen no ill effects from 4 times a day on my 3-4 week old plants. I'm also test feeding 4 times a day rooted clones with no ill effects.
I understand why to choose hempy, (so that you don't need to water for a few days) but that didn't work for me. At 75/25 in a 90* tent and my HPS as close at it will get and not burn my tops, there isn't enough Vermiculite to hold much moisture past 24 hours for me.
Maybe a 50/50 mix would work better as someone else suggested in this thread. I suspect they saw a similar problem with the traditional 75/25 mix.
Why 4 times? I don't know, 2 times worked well hand watering, why not try 4? If I could top feed 24 hours a day why wouldn't I? All I am doing is sending freshly oxygenated nutes to ALL my roots rather than just once every few days.
Originally, I wanted to run Bubbleponics, then I looked at DWC, but because my temps were so high in my tent, neither was an option because of root rot potential. Now, the water in my hempy rez doesn't stay in there long enough to heat up because it gets changed 4 times a day. I still have roots in nutes like BP and DWC with less root rot potential.
As far as making more work for myself, hell this much easier compared to hand watering 8 plants even every other day, much less 2 times a day. Granted building the top feeder and the external rez took a few days but I have my life back now.
My test of rooted clones shows promise with this method so my next attempt might be 12/12 from rooted clone and watering 4+ times a day.
I just flipped this current batch yesterday so we ALL will see what happens next. What I can say so far is it's working for now and very well actually.
I'll report back either way, but yes I'm with RetroGrow. Water your hempy buckets more often than you think they need it, and you'll see faster growth has also been my experience.
DoDad
Member
More often= faster growth and 30 min because my timer only does 30 minutes intervals at a time.
I'm in 1 gallon tree pots. They are sealed at the bottom with a hole drilled 2" up. No way my plants could last 3 days without water.
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DoDad
Member
Why in the Hell am I in 1 gallon tree pots? LOL
So I can run 8 plants as large as I need in a 3'x2'x5' tent. It's depth of the pot that matters as we know. These tree pots are 4"x4"x14". Each is a 1 gallon but it's vertical where it matters and takes up less floor space.
Actually, using these tree pots I could run 9 plants in a milk crate, or 1 sq foot. I could in theory, run 27 single cola plants in a 3'x1' foot wide area.
I have 8 pots in my tent and that will be plenty but I do have room for expansion
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the plant produces two types of roots, an air type root that is a specialist at taking up oxygen but is capable of taking up water and nutrients too, and a water type root that is a specialist at taking up water but is capable of taking up oxygen and nutrients also.
the plant is capable of allocating which type of root it grows where in order to adjust for root zone conditions.
the air type roots will not invade an area kept constantly wet. they will grow to the wet/dry interface and stop there while the water type roots will continue past this interface.
the air type roots will stop there if the interface is kept at the same level. but if the interface is allowed to fall over periods of time greater than a few hours the air type roots will invade the space.
then when watered again they can drown if the water is not used up quickly.
so you have hit upon the secret of passive hydro. and that is that the water level should only be allowed to fall or be kept constant. never raised above the existing level. unless the water is used up rapidly every time.
see the "kratky method".
dodad is watering enough to keep the water level relatively constant and then is capturing the runoff for reuse.
the only thing left to build a ppk is to make a permanent connection between the growing container and the reservoir that is capable of backfeeding the plant and removing the perched water table from the main body of roots.
another inherent problem with an internal reservoir device is that the perched water table will exist on top of the trapped solid water created by the height of the hole.
so with a hole at the recommended 2" level plus the perched water table you can have a supersaturated area of the medium 3.5-4" high.
in a 5 gal bucket this can represent 25-40% of the entire container volume.
this, in turn, causes a down regulation of the plants metabolism.
if this water is not used up rapidly the oxygen is depleted and the plants roots become anoxic leading to root rot.
warm water does not cause rot, lack of oxygen causes rot.
the plant is capable of allocating which type of root it grows where in order to adjust for root zone conditions.
the air type roots will not invade an area kept constantly wet. they will grow to the wet/dry interface and stop there while the water type roots will continue past this interface.
the air type roots will stop there if the interface is kept at the same level. but if the interface is allowed to fall over periods of time greater than a few hours the air type roots will invade the space.
then when watered again they can drown if the water is not used up quickly.
so you have hit upon the secret of passive hydro. and that is that the water level should only be allowed to fall or be kept constant. never raised above the existing level. unless the water is used up rapidly every time.
see the "kratky method".
dodad is watering enough to keep the water level relatively constant and then is capturing the runoff for reuse.
the only thing left to build a ppk is to make a permanent connection between the growing container and the reservoir that is capable of backfeeding the plant and removing the perched water table from the main body of roots.
another inherent problem with an internal reservoir device is that the perched water table will exist on top of the trapped solid water created by the height of the hole.
so with a hole at the recommended 2" level plus the perched water table you can have a supersaturated area of the medium 3.5-4" high.
in a 5 gal bucket this can represent 25-40% of the entire container volume.
this, in turn, causes a down regulation of the plants metabolism.
if this water is not used up rapidly the oxygen is depleted and the plants roots become anoxic leading to root rot.
warm water does not cause rot, lack of oxygen causes rot.
DoDad
Member
Hi Delta and thanks for weighing in. I've read enough of your posts to know you know best.
I was told that high temps in a DWC would cause root rot. If you look at many of my posts on IC, you'll see lots of questions about water quality. Some suggested chillers, water bottles, pondzyme, h202, bleach and some just out right said NO to my temps being that high. They seemed so sure of themselves, I gave up the notion of an internal rez. That's why I went with hempy.
As it turned out though I ended up fighting another battle, watering all the plants everyday. I had to move all my plants back and forth from one room to the other. It was huge mess, time consuming and smelled up the house. I needed to do something, even if it was wrong.
With regards to holding moisture. I have an accurate enough moisture meter and it shows moist but not wet down towards the bottom of the pot. After reading your post I went and tested and took a pic. It shows moist but not wet as far down on the probe as I can get. Pic attached.
I'm certainly interested in improving this system. I'll go look at PPK. (I don't know what that is) One new addition I want to add next time is air pruning. I would keep the tree pots, drill out 3" holes down all 4 sides and cover them with landscape fabric. It would be a smart hempy pot.
I also had another idea. Bring that water level up by about an inch where my tree pot sits and open up the bottom of the pot but place a piece of landscape fabric in the bottom of the pot to hold in the perlite/verm.
I could then place long air stones in the bottom of the rez and let the tree pots rest on the air stones but under the water. That would give direct access to major bubbles to that lower 2"-3" ahem...hempy rez.
Fact is, I like to build and try new things and I already have more weed than I can smoke in a year so if I loose all of these plants I have time to do something different.
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DoDad, your other thread that I replied to I was saying you might as well make it more like a ppk, which is what my image was showing. You seemed like it was too involved for you but in this thread you're taking steps to do the very same thing lol.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=6913345#post6913345
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?p=6913345#post6913345
DoDad
Member
Really? I don't know what I am doing. Anything I do right is by accident. PPK is Punt Pass and Kick to me.
I went and read a couple of PPK threads after D9 suggested it and it still seems too involved.
I like the idea of pushing gasses from the bottom to the top, and creating balance, I just haven't figured out a way to incorporate that into my current system.
I have one tub that holds my "system". Unless I flooded the tub I don't know how I could drive water from the bottom to the top.
Wait, you mean by having the pots sit on the air stones?
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You're not pushing gases from bottom to top or flooding from bottom to top. You flood from top to bottom, this will pull new air from the top into the growing medium and allows those air roots to get new air. To do this you'd have a pump to top feed the plants and the water would just drain back down into your tub.
With your system, the first problem for me is how to resupply the tub. A simple float valve will let you set the water level so once it lowers it'll open a valve that you connect to a big tank/tub/whatever with more water and nutes. So you'll always have water and nutes beneath the plants and you can top off the bulk reservoir whenever you want.
The second problem is the pwt that d9 was talking about earlier. Right above the water line the medium will be too saturated for efficient plant growth. So if you were to make a wick of some kind to bring water up to the pot that would mean more of the pot will be available and there's more efficient root space. Look back at what d9 said about a 5 gallon bucket with the hole 2" up. The reservoir will be permanently at 2" with that many feedings and then the pwt will be up another 3-4" high. So you're losing the 5-6" of bottom space in the bucket. Everyone doing a hempy bucket saying you're feeding too much is because that 2" reservoir doesn't stay at 2" the entire time. They feed until there's flow out of the hole and then there's a 2" res at that point. After a while though the roots all around the pot drink up some of the nutes and the res is wicked up into the rest of the pot when needed. Right after the feeding a lot of the pot is saturated but over time afterwards it dries out and more space can be efficiently utilized.
After those two things I'd look at top feeding, which to me is the most complicated because of figuring out how much flow is coming out for each plant, balancing all the plants out, and then controlling the reservoir height during top feed since we're in smaller spaces. If you have a float valve set up and then just pump the reservoir to the top of the plants, then the bottom reservoir will go low enough that the float valve will open and keep your water level the same, but you have that water in the feed lines and flowing down through the pots. Once the pump turns off you'll have a flooded or near flooded bottom reservoir which would raise the pwt in your pot and further reduce how much space you have available in the pot. The way around that is to have another bucket/tub/etc connected to the reservoir that has the pump in it, but you make a small hole and use a small tube, and then you put the float in there. That way when the pump goes on and the water level goes low the float valve doesn't just go wide open. After the feed the water level will be barely higher than before it started.
You keep bringing up airstones but I haven't seen more than a couple times where people used them and results just didn't show any noticeable gains. I could see in your situation if roots were growing into the tub an airstone would help, but then you're basically doing half dwc and half ppk/hempy/whatever you'd call it.
With your system, the first problem for me is how to resupply the tub. A simple float valve will let you set the water level so once it lowers it'll open a valve that you connect to a big tank/tub/whatever with more water and nutes. So you'll always have water and nutes beneath the plants and you can top off the bulk reservoir whenever you want.
The second problem is the pwt that d9 was talking about earlier. Right above the water line the medium will be too saturated for efficient plant growth. So if you were to make a wick of some kind to bring water up to the pot that would mean more of the pot will be available and there's more efficient root space. Look back at what d9 said about a 5 gallon bucket with the hole 2" up. The reservoir will be permanently at 2" with that many feedings and then the pwt will be up another 3-4" high. So you're losing the 5-6" of bottom space in the bucket. Everyone doing a hempy bucket saying you're feeding too much is because that 2" reservoir doesn't stay at 2" the entire time. They feed until there's flow out of the hole and then there's a 2" res at that point. After a while though the roots all around the pot drink up some of the nutes and the res is wicked up into the rest of the pot when needed. Right after the feeding a lot of the pot is saturated but over time afterwards it dries out and more space can be efficiently utilized.
After those two things I'd look at top feeding, which to me is the most complicated because of figuring out how much flow is coming out for each plant, balancing all the plants out, and then controlling the reservoir height during top feed since we're in smaller spaces. If you have a float valve set up and then just pump the reservoir to the top of the plants, then the bottom reservoir will go low enough that the float valve will open and keep your water level the same, but you have that water in the feed lines and flowing down through the pots. Once the pump turns off you'll have a flooded or near flooded bottom reservoir which would raise the pwt in your pot and further reduce how much space you have available in the pot. The way around that is to have another bucket/tub/etc connected to the reservoir that has the pump in it, but you make a small hole and use a small tube, and then you put the float in there. That way when the pump goes on and the water level goes low the float valve doesn't just go wide open. After the feed the water level will be barely higher than before it started.
You keep bringing up airstones but I haven't seen more than a couple times where people used them and results just didn't show any noticeable gains. I could see in your situation if roots were growing into the tub an airstone would help, but then you're basically doing half dwc and half ppk/hempy/whatever you'd call it.
vitamingreeninc
Member
People that say you will get root rot just have never tried. I bet they would say that you would get root rot if you did Organic Soil Hempy-water, and teas!
Oh, those tree pots are nice, but I have found even better ones before. They are for roses and are 1.75 gallons and are tall and skinny like those.
Oh, those tree pots are nice, but I have found even better ones before. They are for roses and are 1.75 gallons and are tall and skinny like those.
DoDad
Member
I followed most of that this time. Thanks.
It sounds to me like the issue will be too wet of medium just above the rez in the hempy bucket itself? Even though the rez is at 2" the inches above the rez remains wetter than the top? Is that the problem?
If that is the problem, then I have no way of measuring how wet that area is other than my moisture meter. What my meter says is that it's moist but not wet 10" down in each pot. I posted that meter photo of today. here it is again. This is with the probe 10" or so all the way down to near the 2" res.
Maybe it's the fact it's 75% perlite is the reason it dries out so quickly but try as I might I struggle to keep them watered enough.
Another thing to consider is the size of my hempy rez. Yes, it's 2" above the bottom but the pot at the bottom is 3"x3" and only holds a little more than a cup of nutes. It's a tiny rez by comparison to a 5 gallon hempy bucket and probably added to the reason I need to water more.
Clearly for what I am doing hempy isn't the best solution. If I am watering 4 times a day I don't need a reserve water supply anyway.
That 3"x3"x2" rez isn't large enough to do any good.
If my plants tell me what they need, they are telling me to keep doing what I'm doing. They are just down right angry looking and busting out of their seams to grow. I have had zero yellow leaves, nothing on the tips, they are a nice green color and are just spiky, and smelly as hell little plants. If I'm doing something wrong, you couldn't tell it by looking at my plants.
As you may remember, this is my very first grow. I have said before I don't need to know every way to grow, just one way that works for me. What way that ends up being, is still TBD but frankly I'm proud I've made it this far.
I don't need hempy buckets if I have a re-circulation system. I could drill holes in the bottom of these tree pots and forget the hempy rez entirely.
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DoDad
Member
Sure, I heard all about Teas, then was made to feel bad because I didn't want to buy a chiller. They told me if I was that cheap, use frozen water bottles or grow in soil. Nice huh?
1.75 gallons would be overkill in my application. In the 12/12 from seed thread here on IC, some guy did a test and found that about 12" of depth was all you needed to grow HUGE plants. He also found that pots about 3" wide was wide enough. Depth was more important than width he felt.
My 1 gallons are overkill for what I'm doing and especially because they are 14" deep. The downside was that the shipping cost more than 9 pots.
