The Official Hempy Bucket Thread

[bobman]

P.S. It is so nice not having to use ph up or down now. Does anyone know if residue from ph up or down with affect a hempy bucket or any medium? In other words does the plant not consume all of the ph up or down and leave a residue that will affect the ph of the rez? I would imagine it bonds with the water molecule and none is left over but sometimes I see people talking about big ph swings and I wonder if that could be a culprit.

 

[dubwise]

I would guess that there is not much if any residue leftover due to the fast nature of hempy buckets...but I could be dead wrong. IME we had more swings when using a large rez...even while it had air stones and waterfall, we still seemed to get ph swings. I can't say that I've seen it much of or at all in the hempy bucket.

 

[Bonavendura]

OK i have some notes to share with you Hempiers.
Measurments made by tilting the bucket to get some runoff.

Solution status inside the Hempy's res

Watering day 0 1,4 EC 5,8 ph
next day day 1 1,3 EC 6,2 ph
day 3 1,1 EC 6,4 ph

The movement of the solution inside the buckets
looks OK for me EC moves slowly down & ph updrifting
in a logical scale.

Maybe cause the roots sit in there i will try watering with
5,5 ph for a target of 6,2 ph until next watering.


@ Bobman

You are right my friend and i will follow your advice for
those Hempy's cause in Deep Water Cultures of any kind i wouldn't
leave my roots inside a solution with so high ph values.


the test give the following results

40 liters of tap water ph after nutes 6,6.
Let it buble for 24 hours and ph updrifts to 7,1.
I bring it down to 5,6 and make a watering i will
monitor for ph movements.

 

[stonedar]

if you watered every day your pH wouldn't drift. I love to beat a dead horse.

 

[dubwise]

true dat
-edit-I do think the plants can be watered everyday if you water with small amounts...Our newly rooted clones get fed a small amount every day and they do well. Now once those babies have hit the bottom of the bucket, the schedule gets along with the others...every two to three days.

 

[osecretgardeno]

if you watered every day your pH wouldn't drift. I love to beat a dead horse.

2 things wrong with this.

1) Cannabis does well on the wet/dry cycle. If you are watering everyday you aren't giving them any time to "dry" and you are encouraging the onset of root rot. Additionally, the "dry" part encourages root growth as the roots are reaching out and looking for water and nutrients. I am not saying root rot will 100% happen, you are just increasing your chances.

2) You want a little pH drift, especially in hydro applications, which is basically what hempy is. Check the chart (hydro on the left). If you were to keep that same pH, you are going to lock out some nutrients.

Just saying ...

 

[RoachClip]

My 5gallon buckets I was using were tall to give the plants roots the space to grow down and I would water every other day and sometimes every 3 days depending on the mix etc but you want to encourage your plants roots to grow and seek their food/nuts and grow down towards the bottom and produce growth but if you continue to feed/water daily you will def, end up up root rot & dead plants...

 

[stonedar]

yes I realize all this, it's good info

it's just that hempy is hydro and like dwc doesn't require a wet/dry cycle like growing in soil does.

2/3 of the people on this thread disagree with me and thats fine. I sure wish though that instead of using hempy like soil they would at least try it as it was originally intended as a high performance hydro grow system.

it's just like growing in coco. you can treat it like soil, but results are better if you never let the coco dry.

whether you grow in a perlite hempy, a perlilte/vermiculte hempy, or a coco/perlite hempy
you can increase yields if you treat it like hydro.

can you use the hempy's res as a way to water less frequently? yes
will you grow faster with watering everyday? yes

once the roots reach the res water every day, at least try it once. try it try it try it. see if Hempy/Dailahempy are right and watering everyday is a good thing or not. just try it once.

 

[stonedar]

yeah ok it's gonna be root rot, Hempy is wrong you are all right.

 

[dubwise]

SG, I hear ya man...good chart. I don't really think it can have a real swing (on it's own) if you're not using a traditional resevoir. I mix the nutes, top feed and I'm done. Nothing left over to swing...In the flood & drain table I was using there did seem to be a swing over the course of a few days....I would think as the cycle moves along more nutrients would get brought up and thus the swing begins. With a hempy bucket I didn't think that there was enough time for a real swing to occur. I may be out to lunch but I don't really see where it matters so much in this application.
We don't feed until there is ~20% runoff either though...we feed until we hit our target weight and everything seems to be well.

Kinda off topic....I've got an issue with some nasty little thrip bastards and was going to flush the medium with my thrip killer solution....what do you guys think would happen if I did this on an off feeding day??....well, way off topic.
Thanks!

 

[Bonavendura]

Come on guys anyone here is willing to water everyday 25 flowering
hempy's , we are talking about some serious work and nutes
for at least 40 liters of water everyday , a feeding schedule like
this can easily blow out your budget.
Plus on this make the picture , watering 25 flowering + 25 veg
and you must spent 3 hours at least every day + alot of nutes
I have plans to finaly start visiting my growroom every 3rd day
for watering , cleaning around and checking thinks out.


Plus on this is what osecretgardeno mention you need dry wet cycles and
some ph swings and the solution in the Hempy's res updrifts
very nice in 3 days time.
We must not compare Hempy's with dwc it is Hydro both
but they are based on different princibles.

@dubwise

Why are you saying that we cannot have a real swing inside the res.
I count it and i give you the measurments in my previous post it is
a nice EC & PH swing based one the basic princible of Hydro
EC down - ph up
EC up - ph down.

I am watering with some runoff because without any runoff the solution
inside the hempy's res is not " reseting " and usualy ends up with lower
EC and higher ph of this that we are feeding.

With all the respect to you dubwise , i am still learning from all
you guys about those Hempy's that's why i would like to share my measurments
so we can discuss


PS.

Anyone make calculations for the nutes needed to complete
a dwc versus a hempy grow (same , plants ,feeding strenght,conditions ) ??

 

[Ember1]

I used to wait until my reservoir in the buckets were completely dry before watering again. This lead to unhealthy looking plants and PH problems. Started watering every day, once a day, and they did much better.

Second run I watered every day, once a day, from the start. This has proven to be the best way for me. My plants are all extremely healthy this run with no signs of stress. I water until I get a little run off. This also replenishes the oxygen in the root zone by watering once a day.

Only additives I use is Great white, silica blast, and root excelerator. My roots are even shooting out the holes in the buckets this run and look very white/healthy.

 

[Rysam]

I water every other day with the big plants, every 3 with the smaller, rarely get runoff. seems to work good for me.

EDIT: 420th post!!!!

 

[RoachClip]

I'm switching to organic grow just mix the soil put in 3 gallon bags and water as needed and that's it maybe a tea every other feeding but great results & yields..

I enjoyed growing hempy but after seeing some homies it made me realize I'm to old to keep growing hempy and need a change...

 

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[redspaghetti]

Questions for anyone willing to help:

Would molasses be worth using in hempys?
Which brand? Looking for one higher in cal/mag if possible.
At what point in flower?
Would it be excessive to use both molasses and Shooting Powder?

Also, how often should I feed with beneficial bacteria, and will some leftover nutes+bb stay 'alive' for a day or two after mixed? Or should I just throw it out?

I use H&G aqua flakes and 100% perlite. I've been wondering these things for over a week now, please help?

Molasses will benefit with hempys but not as well as dirt

Blackstrap molasses unsulphured


through out until flush

you can use both but becafure on the doses


its best to keep it simple with hempy, trust me on this one, you get a crazy amount of growth once you enter the flowering frame.

pretty much you could get any plants to give you tons of big buds with mid size buckets, keep it simple is the best way to do it

cheers,

 

[GilligansIsle]

Aloha Highlight:

It's been three years of constant Hempy's and I still use the method outlined by Hempy. I never have used molasses or ant other sweetener and I don't think it is necessary based on experience.

It is my understanding that unlike soil where you need to maintain a beneficial micro herd to make the nutrients available to the plants, Hempy Buckets are fed with a complete nutrient solution ready for uptake.

I think about the shelf life of mixed nutrients like this. If I watered today the buckets will over a period of days drink up all the nutes. The nutes are developed to remain "good" for at least this short period of time and in some DWC applications they go weeks before replacement. So my advice is don't throw the mixed nutes out, use them up.

Of course my post is based on my experience and others may have varying opinions.

 

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[dubwise]

Hey folks! Sorry I've been away, had to travel for work.
@Bona-Not gonna say that you couldn't have a swing...I mean, you're posting results of the swing that you are getting so obviously it can happen. I just was under the impression that with such a small amount in the resevoir, that we wouldn't have such an issue with swing due to the amount and the time between feedings. As far as the comment about cost of feeding so many plants...it was getting expensive for us while we ran the GH 3 part along with LK and at first sugar daddy as well. We cut the SD and noticed no difference in taste. We then cut the LK while in flower and still found no difference. A few months ago we cut the GH lineup and started using Maxibloom @ 1 tsp/gal + epsom salt only and have found it to be both much cheaper and easier to handle a decent amount of plants. Currently we run 10 plants in bloom and nearly 20 in veg. This takes about five gallons of nutrient rich water every few days. We've bought one bag so far and have about a quarter of it left. The bag was $12 or $17 and the salt is around $2. From what we can tell, the plants are doing just fine. We still use the LK for cuttings (4tsp/gal) but that's about it. It was getting costly so we made a change and are very glad to have done so.
I suppose I need to see what is coming out of the bucket and see where the ph is then....then I can post with a bit more know-how. Thanks for what you're doing, it is appreciated and we all can learn more each day.

Still no thoughts on whether or not the medium drench of the thrip killer will do anything besides kill those little bastards?
We've used Azamax and it has not killed at the rate we were hoping for. The thrip killer solution we made seemed to do some damage but this morning I counted five of those darn things...and I'm sure there are more then five in the spot.