The Official Hempy Bucket Thread

[MrBelvedere]

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.

Completely wrong. People who say you will get a root rot know what they're talking about. And we don't want to try to get root rot

Whether you get root rot depends on a number of factors, mainly of course the medium- aeration, drainage, and moisture retention. Factors like... is it more vermiculite than perlite? Is it 100% coco? How often are you watering? How high did you drill the drain hole?

DoDad why are you creating problems by having such a tiny tent when you could just use your closet or your room? A lot of people buy tents that do not need them and this causes more problems. Just trying to help.

Again... correct hempy buckets are the easiest, most bulletproof way to grow in the world, you only need a tiny reservoir in the bottom of a normal container, the tiny rez is cheap insurance and a source of water once the roots grow down and reach it. A big tall hempy reservoir is simply a problem waiting to happen.

Don't believe me, go look at the 10,000 problem postings related to reservoirs, dwc, ebb and flow, flooding, etc

 

[RetroGrow]

Root rot in Hempys?
Not gonna happen.
My rez is completely used up daily by mature plants.
Absolutely no chance for root rot.
Just lots of freshly oxygenated solution.
Oxygen=growth.

 

[RetroGrow]

Duplicate post. System malfunction...

 

[Jellyfish]

Again... correct hempy buckets are the easiest, most bulletproof way to grow in the world, you only need a tiny reservoir in the bottom of a normal container, the tiny rez is cheap insurance and a source of water once the roots grow down and reach it. A big tall hempy reservoir is simply a problem waiting to happen.

Don't believe me, go look at the 10,000 problem postings related to reservoirs, dwc, ebb and flow, flooding, etc

Yep.

 

[noyd666]

HEMPY BUCKETS ARE SO EASY THERE USED IN RETIRED PEOPLES HOME WORLD OVER=TRUTH.

 

[MrBelvedere]

Root rot in Hempys?
Not gonna happen.
My rez is completely used up daily by mature plants.
Absolutely no chance for root rot.
Just lots of freshly oxygenated solution.
Oxygen=growth.

Try this experiment, get a Home Depot bucket and drill the drain hole ten inches up the side of it- so you have a 10 inch reservoir. Fill it with whatever media you like. Water four times daily for 30 minutes. Let us know the results.

Anybody in any grow style can get root rot if they're doing it wrong.

 

[RetroGrow]

Try this experiment, get a Home Depot bucket and drill the drain hole ten inches up the side of it- so you have a 10 inch reservoir.

And why would I want to do that?
If you can follow simple instructions, ie., drain hole 2 inches from bottom of bucket, as a Hempy should be, you will NEVER get root rot.

 

[MaynardG_Krebs]

And why would I want to do that?
If you can follow simple instructions, ie., drain hole 2 inches from bottom of bucket, as a Hempy should be, you will NEVER get root rot.

EVER!

 

[DoomsDay]

There is a difference between watering a mature lady daily that is up taking that much h2o and nutrients, vice just watering 4 times a day to do it. Sure, I've had plants that needed to be watered damn near daily, however there is no way that before the roots hit the res that watering daily is going to do anything.more than have adverse effects on the plants rooting. No need for it to spread it's roots if it's constantly being provided with liquid right up top. Mediums have that thing called capillary action.... scientists have proven it to work for centuries... trust them.

Or... continue to add more and more difficulty to one of he easiest growing method in the world. You want to make shit hard with pumps and timers and blah blah blah, there's a section on this forum for hydroponics....

You're making something far more difficult than it needs to be for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than you like giving yourself a few headaches while simultaneously wasting as much energy as you can. All this added on shit contributes to your grow creating an even larger carbon footprint, and getting nothing more from it.... for everyone on here being all gung-ho about preserving mother earth and all of that, a majority of you fail to even consider what your doing in your rooms as you consume more and more energy.

 

[DoDad]

There is a difference between watering a mature lady daily that is up taking that much h2o and nutrients, vice just watering 4 times a day to do it. Sure, I've had plants that needed to be watered damn near daily, however there is no way that before the roots hit the res that watering daily is going to do anything.more than have adverse effects on the plants rooting.

Here's an update:

I had such great luck with 4 times a day, I went to 8 times and they grew even faster. I'm not one to leave well enough alone, I now run them 24 hours a day. My hempy's now are top fed with a continuous feed recycling system.

There are some downsides. The leaves are growing so fast I have to lollipop and clip fans leaves once a week or they block all the bud sites and my roots are trying their best to grow out of the 14" tree pots.

I don't know how much experience you have had with 75% perlite/25% vermiculite combo, but even when freshly watered, that combo is impossible to saturate according to my moisture gauge.

50% perlite/50% vermiculite? Coco/perlite hempy? Straight coco hempy? I don't claim to know how this much water would work with those type hempy buckets, but there is NO question on mine, the more I water the faster the growth.

I'm running 24/7 water on rooted clones with great success too and this has me thinking I "could" run it on seedlings. As long as there are enough roots to take up the nutrients. I could top feed as early as 3 weeks from seed just like I would in a DWC.

All this is just a test to see what I can do and can't do so I took two rooted clones from the same mother and see if I could drown them. I put two in rapid rooters and let them root.

After they were rooted, I put one in a DWC, and one of the same size in one of my hempy buckets and fed the hempy one 8 times a day and now 24 hours a day. My hempy clone is growing just as fast, if not faster than the one in my DWC. YMMV.

It's only been a week since going from 8 times a day to continuous feed so I can't say for sure if this will cause any issues. I told you I would report back with my findings, either way and this serves as that update.

4 times a day = Fine
8 times a day = Fine
24 hours a day = Fine (so far)

If something changes, you'll be the second one to know.

.

 

[RetroGrow]

however there is no way that before the roots hit the res that watering daily is going to do anything.more than have adverse effects on the plants rooting.

Actually, that's not true. By watering daily, you are creating "hydro roots", just as you would have in an active hydro system. This is hydro, albeit "passive". One has water flowing through the system constantly, the other relies on the grower manually supplying the water.
Watering daily does NOT harm the plants. On the contrary. You are supplying freshly oxygenated solution. I don't know why that concept eludes you. More oxygen =more growth. In hydro, you want hydro roots. Hydro roots are thicker, with not a lot of fine roots/hairs.
Here is a video showing hydro roots. Notice these are completely submerged in water at all times, yet no root rot or other "problems", like the fear mongers are implying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxgWWuZ1FlQ

 

[Grassachusetts7]

I have 3 established ladies and just switched to flower. I have established hydro roots by this point in the grow. My question is how necessary is it to dress the whole surface of the growing medium once this is the case? I'm growing in coco with a perlite base. The reason for my concern is I'm doing a scrog and it is quite difficult to water the whole base. Can I just pick one location and water there every time? I would be filling the Rez daily with new solution. I'm just curious as to how important it is to water/feed those upper roots in the coco far north of the Rez?? This would save time and my back!!

Also the daily feeding gives you the benefit of a moving system in stand alone bucket. It just takes more involvement which may or may not defeat the purpose of the simple aspect. I myself am more than willing to sacrifice some more time to bump the crop.

Anyway any insight on my situation would be helpful.

Thanks
Grass

 

[Grassachusetts7]

Oh and that's my 25th post so can I now post pics?? That would help with future endeavors!
lol

Peace

 

[RetroGrow]

I have 3 established ladies and just switched to flower. I have established hydro roots by this point in the grow. My question is how necessary is it to dress the whole surface of the growing medium once this is the case? I'm growing in coco with a perlite base. The reason for my concern is I'm doing a scrog and it is quite difficult to water the whole base. Can I just pick one location and water there every time? I would be filling the Rez daily with new solution. I'm just curious as to how important it is to water/feed those upper roots in the coco far north of the Rez?? This would save time and my back!!



Also the daily feeding gives you the benefit of a moving system in stand alone bucket. It just takes more involvement which may or may not defeat the purpose of the simple aspect. I myself am more than willing to sacrifice some more time to bump the crop.

Anyway any insight on my situation would be helpful.

Thanks
Grass

Water to runoff...

 

[vitamingreeninc]

Well, here's an Organic 1 gallon Hempy. I like the combined growth rate of veg with the ease of a water only system. Plus I don't have to Veg like a normal soil grow to get big yield-this girl got over an oz

 

[Cannabis]

Once you're powered up and it's not passive you're no longer running a Hempy Bucket.

You're running what they call a Dutch bucket or Bato Bucket.

A Hempy Bucket is passive and represents a landmark breakthrough in pot cultivation because for many decades pot dealers and the DEA swore you can't grow pot hydroponically, passively.

Hempy proved you can.

If you keep those roots submerged without a decent amount of air, they're going to get pythium.

The way you'll know it's pythium is the roots get a gray dead color; and when you pull on the root gently the outer part comes off - leaving a little tiny central whisker that stays when the outside comes off.

You should start a thread about your Dutch Bucket because what you're doing isn't a Hempy Bucket any longer. The original guy who first discovered you can grow hydroponic pot passively and not get pythium by cycling the aeration with a drink-down cycle,

used to be furious at people hijacking his threads, turning them into their powered bucket exploration threads, for the obvious reason: it's off topic. A lot of people USE buckets like you're talking about but that's a different type of growing.

You are no longer discussing or working within the parameters that Hempy Bucket's aeration cycling controls: pythium free growing without need of oxygen or cooling the solution with a chiller. So you're going to have to aerate the reserve unless it's got a pretty high surface to volume ratio. If you feed that tray like I saw your drawing - I think it was yours - you'll get it to whatever degree. The stuff will get on roots - well again - that's misspoken it's all over, everywhere, all the time, it's just that in powered hydro you beat it back down with a chiller; or with oxygenation.

It'll start colonies on roots, in a SINGLE point where say, you're running your dwc or whatever sluggish, and there are some roots, the water never circulates through, because maybe they're curled up in some corner, or knotted up in some kinda pre filter cloth, or whatever - pythium will break out just where there's a small place of lowered oxygen and high enough temps that it can metabolize, and it'll try to spread, but won't get anywhere - so it'll just rot away whatever tissue it can as it feeds along it's boundary zone(s).

Pot, especially at one's house, doesn't have all that large a root set but a big plant of some kind could conceivably have some roots in water moving and shallow where temperatures are high, providing energy for metabolism, but pythium's suppressed, because the oxygen level's so high; but - and it's a stretch - there could also be an area a distance away, where the water was still, and had lowered oxygen, but the temperature of it be so cool, the colonies couldn't metabolize fast enough to stay alive to reproduction. So there are two limiting factors on colonies springing up: heat and oxygen levels.

And anywhere along the root body it can survive and multiply a few colonies, it will.

If you've ever had it or had somebody explain it to ya then you know kind of, about that, but then there are people who never had it, and never read a lot about it from different sources, never really saw colonies of it break out in spots along a volume of roots amid some plants.

When the Hempies cycle the water every day or so, the constant cyclings of atmospheric air through the whole thing, really suppress the pythium well;

but as soon as you start keeping any volume of roots wet without some oxygenation, it's gonna shortly be eating away at some of them and if you let it, it'll damage the plants pretty bad. Plants die from it, pretty frequently. Well - obviously what that REALLY means is that if it's allowed to it will but in a cultivation environment you're gonna catch it and rip off the sick roots and start honoring the aeration cycle till it goes away.

You NEED to cycle the wet/dry times. The reason is when you pump constantly from a reservoir you can have a tendency to simply dump it from the hose right on the surface where it falls through the medium but it never really sees a lot of atmospheric air, because it follows a sorta etched-out path of least resistance, down through the center parts of your column of medium; in this case coco but it can be bark/peat, perlite/vermiculite, whatever.

And you'll have a large wetted portion
but there really will just be the main body of your res, circulating in this kinda closed loop, where the main body of all that water, never really sees, the kind of atmospheric oxygen levels you'd need to suppress the mold.

When you start getting to 'can I just run water over it constantly,' you hit the problem that pythium is a really exploitive colony builder - so if you're not washing the entire root system, with sufficient oxygen, that pythium's actively suppressed all through there DUE to that high percentage-oxygen, atmospheric air, the pythium will simply pop up in points where it can exploit the localized environmentals; and the rest of the roots won't get it very bad, if at all. But the plant will be limping and seem somehow kinda feeble to downright sick.

This is how people can predict to you that you'll get it if you don't adequately work to put a lot of oxygen through that medium/water/volume of root.

The stuff will just pop up in little points here and there, and weaken your plants, and it'll be the end of your grow before you dump it out and see a few rotted strands here, and a few there.

That's what happens when you try to simply bathe the roots constantly and it's why you are no longer in the realm of the Hempy bucket, but are in the dutch bucket's realm.

They HAVE that problem that if you want to wash constantly,
You have to oxygenate more.

A Hempy bucket is typically considered a Hempy when it's passive primarily - and most certainly with that aeration cycle you MUST allow to beat back the cooties.

If you water one with a pump you still have to honor the AERATION CYCLING that goes on, or you'll get root rot.

And at that point it's also most certainly no longer a Hempy Bucket because of ALL the things a Hempy Bucket uses,

that aeration cycle that definitively beats back the pythium is signature.

If you make the reserve too deep then when you refill it you start having dead water table sitting with roots in it for extended periods of more than about four or five days I guess, I think three days is what the time is considered to be, before pythium can attack a plant in high temps, if there's been some damage to roots from handling or whatever. People fill up Hempy setups and make them last a week and even longer in one-off shots with healthy mature plants; but if you keep rolling the dice something will happen and the water mold will go to town on several of your plants at once.

There's a certain genetic resistance by strain you gotta figure is in there, then there's any kind of physical damage to the roots; there's general health of your plants, there's the temps you're keeping the roots and water at - all of this affects how fast the pythium can multiply. There is also the fact that in some places in the world there's just a LOT of it in the wild.

So people can't predict exactly how long any particular set of plants will skate along too wet before the crud sets up; but it's coming and will not be long, if you violate the parameters of keeping it suppressed

Here's an update:

I had such great luck with 4 times a day, I went to 8 times and they grew even faster. I'm not one to leave well enough alone, I now run them 24 hours a day. My hempy's now are top fed with a continuous feed recycling system.

There are some downsides. The leaves are growing so fast I have to lollipop and clip fans leaves once a week or they block all the bud sites and my roots are trying their best to grow out of the 14" tree pots.

I don't know how much experience you have had with 75% perlite/25% vermiculite combo, but even when freshly watered, that combo is impossible to saturate according to my moisture gauge.

50% perlite/50% vermiculite? Coco/perlite hempy? Straight coco hempy? I don't claim to know how this much water would work with those type hempy buckets, but there is NO question on mine, the more I water the faster the growth.

I'm running 24/7 water on rooted clones with great success too and this has me thinking I "could" run it on seedlings. As long as there are enough roots to take up the nutrients. I could top feed as early as 3 weeks from seed just like I would in a DWC.

All this is just a test to see what I can do and can't do so I took two rooted clones from the same mother and see if I could drown them. I put two in rapid rooters and let them root.

After they were rooted, I put one in a DWC, and one of the same size in one of my hempy buckets and fed the hempy one 8 times a day and now 24 hours a day. My hempy clone is growing just as fast, if not faster than the one in my DWC. YMMV.

It's only been a week since going from 8 times a day to continuous feed so I can't say for sure if this will cause any issues. I told you I would report back with my findings, either way and this serves as that update.

4 times a day = Fine
8 times a day = Fine
24 hours a day = Fine (so far)

If something changes, you'll be the second one to know.

.

 

[Mr Commercial]

great read i spent most my evening reading and ive seen a lot of good info in this thread i went out and got myself a bag of coco and some house and garden cocos a and b nutes gonna try hempy bucket ps elmer go suck another big phat one lol it should be you in boob instead of ole mate

 

[Bobbo4200]

Hey Grass!,
If water in that one spot, the roots are going to pop through the surface-seeking water in that spot. It happens to me once in a lil bit. I was told when you water, you should try and cover the whole base though. Hope that helps

 

[Grassachusetts7]

Thanks for the straight answer Bobbo the friggin people argue too much to get a decent answer when u need it! Every thread turns into a pissing contest on here. Enough already

 

[Bobbo4200]

Heyyyah Grass!!,
Yeahr, no probs guy! Anytime!