Noobin up a PPK

[DaveTheNewbie]

ok so i have finally set up the flower room ready to grow
im going for a simple setup, and have minimised the complexity as much as possible

 

[Mister_D]

no doubt if comparing perlite vs coco in a PPK
i was comparing PPK perlite to my old way of growing (blumat coco pot)

Ah gottcha . Hydro will always win for growth rates though.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

building guide

building guide

As requested im reposting my building guide on how i made mine.
This is not the be all and end all of PPKs, just what i did.

I get my pot and a hole saw and cut a hole in the bottom. I then stick a plumbing sink tail piece in it.

I stick a tail piece extension on it so it slong enough to almost touch the bottom of the res (measure later when you have your res)

I use flywire and a rachet system to secure a base to the tailpiece to stop the medium flowing out of the bottom. Note i only have 1 tailpiece not 3 as shown here.

I take a strong res bucket with a heater, a small pump, and a float valve (ballcock) in it. The float valve is fed from a raised gravity res with all the nutes in it. The float valve maintains a level of nutes/water in the res no matter whats going on. I set the level to be 3 inches from the top of the res. There is a tank fitting for the pump to pump water out of the res.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

The lid of the res has 2 holes cut in it for the pots tailpieces to fit thru. The res hose on the right is where the pump comes out of the res. This is where you can measure the length of the tailpiece and cut to size,

The 2 pots sit on top of the res with the tailpiece going thru the hole in the lid, sitting securely.

The red pump hose connects to 2 outlets for the water to get into the pots.

Fill your pots with medium (Perlite) and away you go

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

I later changed the water outlets to feed rings.

You can change the distance between pots, the size of the pot, the number of pots, whatever. Aliendawg has an awesome similar setup with a heap of pots on 1 res

These are stolen without permission from the dawg : https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=253987&page=38

 

[Grow4Flow]

Right on! Thanks for this Dave!

 

[delta9nxs]

nice and clean! looks good!

i'm praying for your plants, dave, to several gods in several languages as well as the appropriate heathen idols. and i'm an atheist!

break a branch!

 

[FlowerFarmer]

Doing work Dave.

I look forward to the next explosion of growth.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

2 weeks veg

EDIT : i was bored and made this side by side montage thingy of coco VS perlite in the first 4 weeks of veg.
Note that the coco clone was way bigger when put in, and it was 1 coco plant under the light vs 2 perlite clones.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

Its funny but its not
I used to veg for 4 weeks. It was my system and after 4 weeks the plants would be touching the light with no room to take it higher. Cab maxed out.
Now i have that same problem, but after 2.5 weeks. I need to keep them somewhere for another 1.5 weeks until there is room to put them in the flower cab.
I defoliated the leaves harshly just to stunt growth, but it didnt slow down at all.
Bugger of a problem to have eh
Pics on the weekend.

ps my house reeks with only 2 veg plants 2.5 weeks old, ive turned off the carbon filter+fan to keen some heat in over winter until im running the big lights, but im going to have to turn it all back on just for these 2 veg plants.

 

[FlowerFarmer]

Looking high speed Dave.


Why drooping though? Overwatering or is it just related to the time you took your picture around your 20/4 veg schedule?


I like it when they stay praying to the HID gods.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

just lights out. they reach to god when the lights on

 

[frankenstein2]

I really like the timeline photo's a lot. That right there should be all the convincing someone needs to switch over to ppk's. As soon as my homemade cab has room again, I'm gonna do a single ppk in it, and now your making me want to do it now,lol

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

I really like the timeline photo's a lot. That right there should be all the convincing someone needs to switch over to ppk's. As soon as my homemade cab has room again, I'm gonna do a single ppk in it, and now your making me want to do it now,lol

thx mate

I topped them tonight because the leaves were wrapped around the globe and burning. They are going to be out of control by the weekend.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

Ok so i have defoliated the bottom half of the plants, then i topped the top 5 inches off them. I keep violating them to slow down growth, and yet they are still much better plants than the coco PPK at 3 weeks.

To give context, all the leaves are this size (and yes thats a 12 inch ruler)

And heres the progress chart

 

[farmari]

Dave have you seen any wicking evidence yet? I tried a 3" gap with perlite and the plants experienced underwatered wilt when I tested a day without a top feed. Better luck now at < 2", and IIRC its been mentioned by either HL45 or D9 that the shorter wider containers ask for less of an air gap than standard shaped 2/3.5/5gal buckets that I'm using. Good to test them without top feed to see what happens in case a pump fails.

Also have you ever had one of those feed halos clog? They look great, probably drastically reduces the 'channeling' effect D9 mentioned that can occur when not doing a full flood/saturation feed.

That flowering tent looks to be begging for some plants. This is going to be good!

edit: bobblehead if you read this thank you for the cloning advice. First time trying perlite solo cups for cloning and its working great.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

IS THE PPK A GIANT PRACTICAL JOKE THAT I KEEP FALLING FOR ?

IS THE PPK A GIANT PRACTICAL JOKE THAT I KEEP FALLING FOR ?

IS THE PPK A GIANT PRACTICAL JOKE THAT I KEEP FALLING FOR ?

I was in there again fucking about (taking more fan leaves off) and i noticed alot of dirty nute water on the floor of the tent (glad its waterproof, blumats tested that)
I pull off the panda covers and i can see 1 pot with dirty perlite where it should be, and the other pot is flooded with perlite floating and leaking over the side onto the floor

When i pull both pots out its hard and i can see its because roots have grown out of the tailpipe and into the res. They are wrapped around the pump etc. Nice clean white roots.

The 2 plants look great, but i can tell there is little lateral root growth because both plants want to fall over. Digging deep into the perlite i cant find a single root. They havent grown laterally at all, just straight down into the tail pipe. Ive never seen anything like this before, all coco roots fill the pot quick smart. Im worried the plant is going to tip over and fall out of the pot.

10 minutes later and the flooded pot still hasnt drained. Im amazed the plant hasnt drowned yet with all its roots submerged in stagnant water. I guess the feed halos oxygenate the water enough for survival. There isnt any bubblers or anything else like that in the system, roots arent supposed to be in the res.

So what the fuck do i do?

If i pull the flywire off the tailpiece then all the perlite will come out and make a prick of a mess. There is no way i can refill it afterwards. If i dont then its blocked with roots and will continue to leak and eventually (surely) drown

The only thing i can think of is to replace the perlite with marbles or something non wicking that the roots will avoid, compeltely un-PPK-ing it

So what the fuck do i do?

And why me?

And fuck.

 

[DaveTheNewbie]

this is how deep i can dig before i hit a root (sitting on the bottom of the pot)

here are some roots i pulled out of the res, very happy looking

I moved the feeding timer to 1 minute every 2 hours.
And i havent checked wicking yet sorry Farmari

Im REALLY hoping someone will come up with a genious idea for me

 

[delta9nxs]

you are keeping the medium too wet. the roots have no impetus to spread. now that you have torn off the roots in the res the roots in the container will spread more.

with a wave pulse you want frequent, small amounts. you have yet to do this in either grow and it is the reason you are having problems.

i grew in both coco and perlite with a wave pulse and had no problems at all. if you deliver a quart or liter every 30 minutes you will be about right.

you really need a repeat cycle timer.

 

[delta9nxs]

nevermind! but here is that lucas quote again.

"roots grow best in a warm, nutrient rich, fog."