Organic yields

[eyes]

in my growing experience, I always had mediocore yields in promix with salts. I later tried some organics(seagull guano and such) but didnt like the outright smell of it. So i never did give it a fair chance as you would have it.either way, Many crops later, i decided on coco and like the yields and the growth without the plants going rootbound. But I will be damned if there isnt some sort of lockup with the pottasium that causes some nute deficiency. I decided f it, I will just run straight Hydro and thats what I did. There is def benefits to coco as the roots are in a media and the room can be run hotter and you can take advantage of co2 and such. where as hydro i have to keep my room cool to keep the rez cool.

anyway, getting back to yields in organics, I run my mom plants in organics and they seem to do pretty good. I dont have any fancy list like supersoil but what I do use seems to do the trick. Hard to compare yields at this present time because the soil plants are older and taller. my hydro plants of the same strain seem to grow quicker in the hydro tables and the last yield was 2105 grams from 1400 watts of leds. It would have been 3001 grams if not for the low yielding kush strain. I would really have to run soil organics with same number of plants to compare properly.

[moses wellfleet]

There's me. I experimented with sip a bit. I'm not a fan at all. Water doesn't flow up. There is no way to control how wet the medium is. The bottom just stays soggy. I don't think stagnant water is cool. I personally like to control how much water a plant gets every day and how wet my medium is. I thought It's that top layer of soil that is the most biologically active. And the feeder roots are at the top. To me it's a cool science experiment to try. Its not ideal but it's cool that it works. I don't see why it would be someone's grow method of choice. I'm sure there is some theory that explains it, But i haven't heard it yet. Why would it be preferred over drip?

This thread is all about Sips, If you can take the time would be interesting to know how your design differed and what went wrong?

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=378414

[CrushnYuba]

It didn't go wrong. It just doesn't do as well as drip from the top and there were things i really didn't like about it. Its just kind of backwards. This festering mushy layer at the bottom. It seemed like a rot time bomb. I top dress. It has to be watered down. I need water flowing down in the amounts i need at the time i need. Having to put down so much mulch to keep the top layer from evaporating. I don't like smothering my soil with thick mulches like that. Its just very flawed. It just doesn't do as well as any type of drip from the top.
There are allot of different methods of growing i have tried. There is always some theory on what makes that method work better that made me try it. I tried sip just because it was an experiment.
I haven't heard the theory on sip.
Like what is the reason that I'm trying to fight physics? What am i going to get out of it?

[moses wellfleet]

It's all in the link I posted above. Thailer did a lot of work to explain everything in great detail.

[thailer]

There's me. I experimented with sip a bit. I'm not a fan at all. Water doesn't flow up. There is no way to control how wet the medium is. The bottom just stays soggy. I don't think stagnant water is cool. I personally like to control how much water a plant gets every day and how wet my medium is. I thought It's that top layer of soil that is the most biologically active. And the feeder roots are at the top. To me it's a cool science experiment to try. Its not ideal but it's cool that it works. I don't see why it would be someone's grow method of choice. I'm sure there is some theory that explains it, But i haven't heard it yet. Why would it be preferred over drip?

water actually does flow upwards and it fights gravity up till a certain point. water flows upwards using capillary action. in a shallow container the soil gets pretty soggy like you mentioned and i saw several SIP users show their root balls of brown gross roots. i made some changes to the design to address a lot of the problems that made people shy away from SIPs like wet feet, soil being too saturated and how to keep your roots healthy. why i prefer it over drip is that plants dictate how much water they uptake with a SIP while in drip you control and have to adjust as plants grow. the peat moss keeps the soil saturation at a certain point when it is allowed to uptake the water as it needs it and isn't top watered. i was sold two years ago after getting an increase in weight that nearly doubled.

heres some bud that is the width of the palm of my hand and forearm.


here's some nice knockers too.

[troutman]

Personally, to me organic growing gives you the best quality.

[CrushnYuba]

water actually does flow upwards and it fights gravity up till a certain point. water flows upwards using capillary action. in a shallow container the soil gets pretty soggy like you mentioned and i saw several SIP users show their root balls of brown gross roots. i made some changes to the design to address a lot of the problems that made people shy away from SIPs like wet feet, soil being too saturated and how to keep your roots healthy. why i prefer it over drip is that plants dictate how much water they uptake with a SIP while in drip you control and have to adjust as plants grow. the peat moss keeps the soil saturation at a certain point when it is allowed to uptake the water as it needs it and isn't top watered. i was sold two years ago after getting an increase in weight that nearly doubled.

heres some bud that is the width of the palm of my hand and forearm.
View Image

here's some nice knockers too.

View Image

The plants only take up what they are going to take up no matter what direction it's coming from. Giving a plant more water won't force it to drink it. Giving a plant more water then It needs just makes the medium soggy.

I don't like to over saturate my plants and let them dry out like hand watering. I like to water every day. Only as much as they will use. I choose how wet the medium is. Not the capillary action on a medium that breaks down and changes over time. You can run a drip system like you would hand watering and you will get the same results as hand watering. You can dial it in and run it how it should be and it will out perform everything else.

It isn't hard at all to dial in drip. Yes you have choices. You can water your plants inefficiently. I feel like sip is apple, drip is android. But it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to stickyour finger in the dirt and see if it is getting wetter or dryer every day. Or staying the same

[moses wellfleet]

The plants only take up what they are going to take up no matter what direction it's coming from. Giving a plant more water won't force it to drink it. Giving a plant more water then It needs just makes the medium soggy.

I don't like to over saturate my plants and let them dry out like hand watering. I like to water every day. Only as much as they will use. I choose how wet the medium is. Not the capillary action on a medium that breaks down and changes over time. You can run a drip system like you would hand watering and you will get the same results as hand watering. You can dial it in and run it how it should be and it will out perform everything else.

It isn't hard at all to dial in drip. Yes you have choices. You can water your plants inefficiently. I feel like sip is apple, drip is android. But it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to stickyour finger in the dirt and see if it is getting wetter or dryer every day. Or staying the same

Cool story bro... got any photographic evidence of your superior techniques?

Those are some awesome plants Thailer posted

[CrushnYuba]

Cool story bro? Man that's a little hostile. I don't have any superior technique. I basically irrigate my plants the way old ladies water their bushes around here on drip. I'm not trying to put anyone down or say the way someone grows is inferior.
He said "can say for sure that everyone who switched over has had nothing but positive things to say about it even if some things aren't equal. i think it would be rare to meet someone who didn't think it was a good choice to make".
Im just saying i experimented with it and i didn't get it.
This is another experiment i did recently. 2lb ish plants in only 20gal of soil. Soil was probably about 3 years old. Sprayed from the top 2 times a day. I don't usually grow like this. Just another experiment. Doesn't really prove anything is better. It's a light dep run so completely different.

[moses wellfleet]

It didn't go wrong. It just doesn't do as well as drip from the top and there were things i really didn't like about it. Its just kind of backwards. This festering mushy layer at the bottom. It seemed like a rot time bomb. If your Sip fits this description it most certainly has gone wrong. This is possibly due to old designs where the reservoir was different or no reservoir at all. As has been mentioned earlier there was something that put people off sip in the past and gave it a bad name. My advice to anyone interested in the concept, make sure you are working with up to date designs when you try it. I top dress. It has to be watered down. I need water flowing down in the amounts i need at the time i need. Having to put down so much mulch to keep the top layer from evaporating. I don't like smothering my soil with thick mulches like that. I also top dress dry amendments on recycled soil. I have tried both watering it in and without, it doesn't seem to make a difference. Possibly the fungal mycelium is transporting the nutrients to different locations, not really sure. Its just very flawed. It just doesn't do as well as any type of drip from the top.
There are allot of different methods of growing i have tried. There is always some theory on what makes that method work better that made me try it. I tried sip just because it was an experiment.
I haven't heard the theory on sip.This part of the post really doesn't make sense to me, how do you build a Sip if you don't know the theory behind it?
Like what is the reason that I'm trying to fight physics? It's not fighting physics. It is capillary action. All plants with roots rely on capillary action. Are they 'fighting physics' too? What am i going to get out of it?

Replies in red.

[thailer]

i think my original point was that it's more about skill level. example: keeping the soil at optimal moisture levels, which is why i compared my hand watered fabric bags that were 20 gallons of soil to a similar sized container that is on an irrigation system called a SIP to explain what i was trying to say. yield is dependant on a lot of factors which are common for both salt and organic growers like pruning and such but the main difference i've noticed from previous salt growers was watering habits. I really can say tho that almost everyone is really happy with the change and rarely people regret it; except for CrushinYuba who prefers salts or hates SIPs. i hope that is better stated.

here's my original post and what i said so we are clear.

i agree with weird and bushed. most people experience a yield loss when switching from coco to soil and i think it is more than what bushed experienced but i think that is due in part to weird's comments in that it all depends on the skill level. watering plants is gonna probably be the biggest difference because wet dry cycles IMO aren't the best for yield compared to a consistent moisture level with organic soil, especially if you're gonna use a bed compared to smaller containers.

generally yield goes up the more soil you give them and the more soil you use also means you need to be good at not over or under watering because it more difficult to dry out or rehydrate the larger the soil amount. when i grew in 20 gallon fabric pots, i had plants 3 feet in height/width producing 150 grams and when i switched to SIPs the same cut i ran for years immediately gained an additional 100 grams in weight. everything else the same and i use the basic coot mix as well but i didn't use chicken manure or leaf mold fed worms. this was all first round soil as well. i didn't defoliate, prune, or anything to the plants themselves back then. just au natural but today, i am starting to do more things to play around with yield.

i can say for sure that everyone who switched over has had nothing but positive things to say about it even if some things aren't equal. i think it would be rare to meet someone who didn't think it was a good choice to make.

[moses wellfleet]

yield is dependant on a lot of factors which are common for both salt and organic growers like pruning and such

So very true. I got some of my best info on improving plant health (And thus yield. It goes hand in hand with quality imho), from the thread Coco's trees by DJM.

The discussion about environment, humidity, temp, VPD etc. helped me a lot and it is a thread about growing in coco with salt based nutes.

[thailer]

i really haven't read much about growing in coco but i've noticed yield is great and they have a lot of discussion about dry downs, dry backs and how that influences growth as well as using that to manipulate plants. so for them i don't think that keeping moisture consistently the same throughout the grow works to their advantage like it does for organic soil growers.

roots uptake water because of osmotic pressure which is influenced by how much water is held in the medium and the amount of salts gets higher the dryer the medium gets. this video explains everything and really ties it all back to plants in the end of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-osEc07vMs
so after i learned about that, i became curious if that is why the hand watered design seems to work better over the auto top off where the water level is always the same. at first, my hypothesis was it had something to do with the water table below creating some sort of pressure or force which pushes water inside the plant which is sorta true and called root pressure but this pressure can only drive water upwards a few feet, so it is not the main way water enters plants which is called water tension cohesion theory. most of the plants grow great in the irrigated design and it is soooo helpful when you have a stuffed room full of SIPs to be able to add water to all of them outside the room via the reservoir. i can also just add so many gallons to the reservoir and then each sip will get an equal part of the water, so i can still control the moisture if i wanted but still have the option to fill up the reservoir to go on vacation. its really just this fussy mac1 plant that grows ok in the irrigated SIP but when she is in the handwatered design, she prays more. it is also cold here 9 months of the year and with the water table below, inside the pots, it can be more difficult in winter than warmer seasons to get plants to pray and such. the other plants don't seem to care but i really like this plant so that is why i started redesigning the SIP system recently. i think i can do things to the design which will influence how high the water will travel up in the soil so there will be more air in the root zone. it will be a while before i can test my theory with the rotation of the plants right now.

[Chunkypigs]

I'm happy with my organic beds.


yields enough that I don't smoke roach joints anymore...

[Fronk]

yields enough that I don't smoke roach joints anymore...