Fed up with soil

[Eazytoke]

So, like the title says. I'm fed up with soil for numerous reasons. I decided to run a small test as I've never run anything in hydro before and I settled on the single station waterfarm.

I didn't take pictures to document my progress but here are a few photos of my beautiful hash plant lady. I took this girl out of the cloner and put it into a hempy solo cup for 12 days to let it get established. At that point it was only 4" tall and I plopped it into the waterfarm and straight into 12/12.

Today, when these pictures were taken, she is 46 days of 12/12 and 29" tall and almost as wide. I must say the growth and overall plant health has simply amazed me.

If anybody is curious I've been feeding a light lucas formula using Flora Nova Bloom at 1tsp(5ml)per gallon, slightly more during the 2nd and 3rd weeks of flower. The EC never raised above 1.9 but was normally settled in around 1.4. It just seemed the sweet spot as the next day my readings were almost the same like clockwork.

The biggest headache I've experienced with the single waterfarm is that she drinks at least half the reservoir everyday so it's a slight pain to have to top it off each day.

As a result of this success I've purchased and set up a flood table for my veg area and an ebb and grow bucket system for my flower for the next round.

 

[Rowdy420]

Nice first run! You'll never look back, try an aero set-up; you'll shit your pants! Beautiful full figured girlie ya got thar!

Good luck, Peace

 

[budshoteyes]

Wow! Very nice!
Now I'm really curious as to how your plant will do with a longer veg!
Perhaps you have got this plant dialed right as to best veg time....either way well done!

Looks like 5 gallon buckets you have stacked...white is the way,I'll never buy black buckets again!

Can you elaborate and compare to us the difference with the same plant with soil and hydro?

 

[FreezerBoy]

The biggest headache I've experienced with the single waterfarm is that she drinks at least half the reservoir everyday so it's a slight pain to have to top it off each day.

You can always replace the lower bucket with a larger one. If my girls needed me to water daily, they'd never live to harvest.

Looks great by the way.

 

[Eazytoke]

Nice first run! You'll never look back, try an aero set-up; you'll shit your pants! Beautiful full figured girlie ya got thar!

Good luck, Peace

Thanks. And I'm sure I'll eventually hit each type of hydro along the way.

Wow! Very nice!
Now I'm really curious as to how your plant will do with a longer veg!
Perhaps you have got this plant dialed right as to best veg time....either way well done!

Looks like 5 gallon buckets you have stacked...white is the way,I'll never buy black buckets again!

Can you elaborate and compare to us the difference with the same plant with soil and hydro?

I'm also wondering what it will do with a longer veg. When I tossed the 4" 12 day old girl in the system and under 12/12 I wasn't expecting much but she just exploded. Just looking at it right now with just under 2 weeks left on the flowering time I'm guessing this plant is going to yield me around 4-5oz.

In soil I usually veg for 35-45 days and they are about 16" or so at that point. I would flower 9 in 3 gallon pots at that height under 1k but they didn't stretch too much, usually to around 30-36". My best harvest with this stain was 22oz so 2.4oz per plant on 60 days of 12/12. They always have small branches and stock which is very annoying and end up tall and lanky with no bushing. Almost every branch needs to be tied up in some form or they break under the buds weight. I know, I know, there are worse problems to have...

As this is my only attempt with hydro so far it's tough to make any true comparisons with veg times and such because, well, it's my first and only attempt. What I know so far though is it's like a totally different plant from my soil grown. In the hydro, as you can see, they are very bushy. I never got that in soil. Also the branches and stock on this plant are huge! At least twice the diameter of my thumb on the stock. Each of the lower branches stretched right to the top giving me 11 or 12 solid colas.

I'm leaving half my room soil and half hydro so starting next round I'm hoping to do a true side by side. My clones should be ready early this week so I can get them onto the flood table and get rolling. When planning the next round I was assuming I was going to leave them on the veg table for 30 days or so before flowing. But during that time I've watched this plant progress and I'm not sure I want to go that long now. Basically I've still got to figure out what will work good because switching from soil to hydro changed all the rules it seems. I was planning to put 9 in but if they all bush out like this it's going to be very crowded so I may be better off with 6. I'll start 9 though and see how they are looking when I make the flip.

I can't help but think maybe the flip to 12/12 when it was so small had on impact on it bushing out so much? I don't know but the next 3-6 months should be interesting as I figure some of this out!

You can always replace the lower bucket with a larger one. If my girls needed me to water daily, they'd never live to harvest.

Looks great by the way.

I didn't realize it was going to be so labor intensive when I started out but now with so little time left on it I figure I'll just trudge through! I'm figuring the flood table and ebb and grow system will be less labor intensive.

 

[Mr Eckted]

Looks great man. Those are going to be some amazing colas. I hear you with the topping up everyday. That's why I like RDWC.

 

[thefalsediviner]

You know I like Water Farms, and ebb and flow is pretty easy when set up right. I'd say welcome to the light.

tfd

 

[FRIENDinDEED]

im right there with you!!!

when i first started i went organic soil. i preached that shit to the rafters organic organic organic!!!

i did hydro once just to see what it was like, nothing serious, it was all bag seed. did a pretty good job actually! my cab is DIY and i want to make as many conversions i can for it. i built a hydro system that uses my 3gl grow bags filled with hydroton as my containers with dripper rings i made myself. the floor of the cab essentially gets lined with a 3mil black plastic flooring and its basically turned into a hydro table of sorts.

i knew i would go hydro one day and i always said that if the day came that, that system is what i would use. even built a bubble cloner that worked pretty well too. just put the rooted clones in the/a space and let em fly!

i have another friend who grew hydro so i had a chance to see a tuned/dialed in system in action. i never did hydro because of the water in my area; its pretty much shit, and at the time i wasn't ready to have to go and buy water . . . but i am now.

have some soil stuff going on, and its not working out so well. just bought some seeds (first time buying seeds actually) and so far ive lost 3xBLUEBERRY(out of 5 started), 2xSWEETSKUNK (out of 5 started). i popped 3xNORTHERN LIGHTS that i got as a freebie since the post office in canada was on strike at the time i made my delivery and they are doing well.

the seeds i bought (are now 2 inch plants) are still small enough that i could put them in a hydro setting, without RRplugs, straight into the cloner and get away with them benefiting from it. i resolved to buying water so i hope my results are the same as yours!!!

gonna keep a diary on here of it, nothing too interactive, just me posting up what im doing so i can have a ready reference/log of whats going on. the space is pretty open to the elements do im gonna have to deal with the cold at some point but i have that covered, but all in all hydro seems to be pretty easy to deal with and then again its your approach to it i think.

nice grow btw!!!

 

[nappybutbald]

soil is so much easier.

 

[stihgnobevoli]

soil is so much easier.

i will have to disagree. i thought soil was the easiest shit ever and everyone kept saying hydro wasn't for noobs and to start on soil first cuz i need meters and shit.

so i finally get around to doing a "proper" hydro DWC, bought a ppm meter and all these things.

at the end of the day you know what i use the most? goddamn pH test kit, the liquid. thats about it. i checked my ppm's once in a while the same as i checked my pH after i got "dialed in" in my soil grows before. after a couple weeks i realized that.

a.) DWC is the easiest shit ever... EVER!
b.) i didn't need to keep track of the pH and ppm's and e.c (whatever the fuck that is) and all that other shit.

measure out 1 gallon of water, or multiple gallons whatever, measure out 8ml of GH micro per gallon of water, then mix , measure out 16ml of GH bloom per gallon. mix. pour into res.

THE END!!


my recipe is a lil different, 4ml Micro and between 9-12ml bloom depending on the stage of growth. pretty much just maintaining a 1:2 1:3 ratio on the micro to bloom. or you can just get that maxibloom shit i think you mix a table spoon per gallon. the end. done.

my plants were the healthiest after i stopped trying to keep on top of the pH and the ppm's and the temperature. fucking res temps are always close to or slightly above 80 even got to 84 a few times. nothing happened. plants didn't die, roots didn't rot, nothing. shit it got to a point where all i was doing was adding back plain tap water once a week. fuckin snoozefestier than growing in dirt.

only times i ever had issues was following all the "hard mode" advice i got here about ding hydro. people telling me to keep the res chilled, and add a few drops of bleach and maintain a pH at 5.899 exactly and all this other shit.

bleh.
res temps in 80's, pH around 6.5-7, ppm's above 600 and below 1200 any time i check. plants looked happy, roots weren't sparkling white but they kept growing, never got rot never anything.

...follow some hydro advice about adding drops of bleach to the res to keep it "healthy"... almost killed all my fucking plants up in a couple hours.

 

[budshoteyes]

I'm new to growing not to reading and I'm beginning to suspect a lot of "hardcore advice" is crap!
I've never grown in soil but was given five soil clones to start with in quart sized pots. They came with spider mites....took six clones and dipped them in rubbing alcohol...it worked!
I killed the mothers as spraying over and over again was stressing both I and them.

I then planted ten seeds and three didn't take...I got them rooted very well in soaked rw as I did with the soil clones too!

I then transfered them all to two gallon tote bubblers....all my RO water ph'd at 6 with nutes and i downed them to 5.5. The next day my pen was bouncing from 7 to 14....I was freaking..tried everything...ph up,ph down,cleaned pen to many times,calibrated,etc...nothing worked,I gave up!

What caused my plants miracle recovery?

For five days my veg was sick,chlorosus!
Then wham! I woke up to see them perfectly green....I haven't attempted to use the ph pen since it's first trial two 1/2 weeks ago! All is still well into week 3 .

Is my pen just fubar.....I'll know soon after I transffer into the five gallon buckets tonight .

 

[Eazytoke]

My waterfarm test plant got harvested at day 60. It could have used a few more days but the beast was taking up space I needed to keep the rotation moving along! These photos were taken the day of harvest.

It's dried at this point and just needs some curing. Dry weight is 7.5 oz! That is way more that I was expecting especially being that for the most part this plant just got moved around from corner to corner trying to keep it out of the way. Then it got so damn big it was taking up a lot of real estate. I'm more than happy with the final results for sure.

I also got my flood table started. Here is a photo of them at 14 days in the square pots on the table.


The first 6 days out of the bubble cloner in these pots they looked like hell and I thought they were going to die. But, I then saw a root or two poke out the bottom and they took off. I surely need to work on the initial transplant from the cloner to the pots. Maybe I was a little too rough with them? I don't know.

My water temps are a little on the high side. Normally between 76-80. I initially tried running without an air stone but added a couple with a 6w air pump after my res started smelling fishy! That solved the problem as well as lowered my res temp a couple of degrees. I also add H2O2 every few days or so when I remember and I'm changing the res every 7-10 days. I just changed it out last night at 10 days and it had some floaties in there. EC at 1.0 and PH 5.6-5.7 on res change. My first couple of res's the EC barely budged but the PH drifted upwards to 6.0 over the course of 6-7 days. It's fairly stable it seems. I think I'll see some more EC drift now that the plants are larger. In hindsight I probably was a bit heavy on the EC when they were starting out.

These plants will be going into an Ebb and Grow bucket system and I'm a little worried about the transplant. I underestimated the amount of roots. I have a ton of them already growing out the bottoms of the square pots so I'm thinking it's going to shock them a bit trying to pull the pots off. There isn't much I can do about it at this point though except move forward and be as gentle as possible. I'm thinking next time covering the table with poly and using net cups and plopping them straight into the buckets. I guess I'll wait and see how this goes first though as it might not be a problem.

So far I have found hydro to be much easier but we'll see how I feel about that in a few months after I have a full run under my belt. What I like is it's all numbers I can control. EC, PH, etc. I'm a numbers guy with OCD tendencies.

 

[FreezerBoy]

soil is so much easier.

Outdoors, yes. Indoors, I don't even want to think about it. The mess, the bugs, the maintenance, constant trips to the infirmary...

Is my pen just fubar.....I'll know soon after I transffer into the five gallon buckets tonight .

Possibly. Pens are a crapshoot and little better than toys. I stuck with drops.

 

[T.rips]

NICE!

 

[Microbeman]

Hydro works great for producing large fat flowers in my experience. Over time I found myself having to use fungicides, etc to keep disease in check and I am suspect of the residuals in the plant tissue from using chemical fertilizers. (This is based on a couple of studies I've read and my own intuition so not a strong basis)

I did switch back to natural growing in living soils. I think one problem, with the folks who say they tried organic soil but had failures, found it labor intensive, messy, etc., is that they may have over complicated things by using bottled fertilizers which are reputed to be organic but really are not and possibly using a straight store bought growing media which may have even been sterilized. [I saw sterilized worm castings the other day at the store. Can you believe that?]

I had success with using raw ingredients for my media mix in a hefty volume, allowing the life in the soil to truly live. Natural growing absolutely entails understanding that the soil/media is just as living as the plant. For amendments, same thing; raw ingredients like compost, vermicompost, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, fish hydrolysate, molasses. I had the luxury of having my own composting worms and could make compost tea or EM fermentations. Once the soil is live and rolling, I find maintaining a natural soil garden much easier than worrying about resevoirs, EC, pH, pumps, etc.

Still I hope one day to succeed at running an organic hydro system, combining aquaponics and compost tea.

To each their own but I found greater satisfaction growing naturally, bugs n' all. (I had so many predatory insects living in my garden that I never had to spray for mites, thrips, etc.; knock on wood)

Also; I do apologize for sticking my nose/opinion into this forum but could not resist the title.

 

[Eazytoke]

Here they are in the ebb and grow at 9 days of 12/12. They were 15" when I put them in and are now 22". The stretch isn't what I was expecting so far but they still have some time. As of now they seem to be reacting more like they do in soil vs how this strain reacted in the waterfarm. In the future I'll have to give them another shot at the short veg again. These were vegged for 25 days from the cloner.

So far things are going pretty good all in all. The res is stable and the plants are happy. I did drop the Flora Nova Bloom and went with Maxibloom because it's so much cleaner. I can see the bottom of my res now! I also ditched the air pump I had for the barrel res and put in a water pump because the air pump was noisy and it was cluttering up my space. I attached a hose from the water pump to the lid dropping the water back into the res for a waterfall effect.

Edit: I was going to add that I'm having some minor issues with the CAP controller. The controller is too far from the res so when the drain pump shuts off the water in the line drains back in and triggers the float again. It kicks on and off about 10 times to finally satisfy the switch. My solution was to run a check valve on the drain line but I'll be damned if it's not the hardest item to find on the internet. I finally contacted CAP and after explaining the problem they sent me out a check valve yesterday. They were much more helpful then I was expecting being the state of customer service with most companies in today's world.

 

[Scrappy-doo]

Nice!

Easytoke, you're a natural at hydro. I think you've found your true calling.

 

[Eazytoke]

Nice!

Easytoke, you're a natural at hydro. I think you've found your true calling.

Thanks! I hope you didn't just jinx me.

 

[TaterMcnuggys]

weather just cooled down here gotta get back to the hydro myself lookin good

 

[haze4me]

can you post some pics of the water pump and check valve mods wouldnt mind doing something like that to my ebb and grow.