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Smart pot hempy w/ external res?? Anyone try..

NeWcS

NeWcS

Active member
I am sure someone has tried this before but Ill be damned if I can find anything. Being zooted doesn't help either,.

Anyways. So take a smart pot, fill with your hempy medium of choice, plant your plant. Now take that and place it into a container/saucer/Rubbermaid that is about 4-5inches high. Find the 2in line and fill with food/nutes to that mark. You now have a full, 2in reservoir just like you would with a bucket. Now you know when you need to water or you can just it topped off. no?

Anyone want to comment? thx! \m/
 
G

grassott's dad

Member
NeWcS said:
I am sure someone has tried this before but Ill be damned if I can find anything. Being zooted doesn't help either,.

Anyways. So take a smart pot, fill with your hempy medium of choice, plant your plant. Now take that and place it into a container/saucer/Rubbermaid that is about 4-5inches high. Find the 2in line and fill with food/nutes to that mark. You now have a full, 2in reservoir just like you would with a bucket. Now you know when you need to water or you can just it topped off. no?

Anyone want to comment? thx! \m/
Click to expand...
Hempy and smart pot shouldn't even be linked together at all IMO and it causes so much confusion with 1st timers looking into growing his method. It's not what medium you use which makes the hempy bucket, it's the bucket with the hole 2 inches above the base:-
picture.php

There are no holes at the base of this bucket. The only drainage you see is coming from the hole 2" above the base, causing the internal rez.

Some people think that you can put 2 inch perlite in a plant pot or smart pot, fill the rest with perl/verm and call it a hempy what ever? This is false info.
 
NeWcS

NeWcS

Active member
@grassott's dad@ I understand how a hempy bucket works. Have been using them for a couple years. What I am proposing is having that 2in of water not only 2 inches from the bottom inside but 2in from the bottom both inside and outside the pot. Maybe I am not making sense. Craven_au seems to catch what I was saying...
 
G

grassott's dad

Member
Hi man, I see what you're proposing, but there's no such thing as "hempy medium" coz you can use many mediums in a hb.

What you're proposing is a passive hydro method which will work well, but it's just nothing to do with a hb. Also, I don't call it an external rez as such, it's a smart pot with "wet feet". I've seen passive hydro grows with "wet feet" which yields large so you should be good to go if changing to this method. Good luck.
 
NeWcS

NeWcS

Active member
Wet feet? I like that.

Yeah as soon as I harvest a plant or two I am going to give it a try. I like the idea of being able to see the water level. I normally use straight perlite and just feel the weight to know when to water.
 
N

noyd666

its the sort of thing my parents and everybody else did back in the day , when going away put pots in bath or what ever with water to see them through while away.
 
N

noyd666

its the sort of thing my parents and everybody else did back in the day , when going away put pots in bath or what ever with water to see them through while away.
 
Craven_au

Craven_au

Active member
How about placing a 2inch tall well fitting container/saucer inside the smart pot.
And making a Level Indicator like this
hydroculture_level_indicator.gif


 
C

Cannabis

Active member
Veteran
noyd666 said:
my net was playing up = bastard.
Click to expand...

I think you think
:peacock:
your words: 2X important.

:bump:

Just kidding ya;

NewcS,

noyd and me play "the four-words game" here, you should come over and check it out sometimes:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=269970&page=11


Putting the plants all in the tub like that is a great thing and others have done it. There are threads on doing it around the net, everybody who does it pretty much likes it, there aren't many real drawbacks. I've not done it yet. But actually in my grow room right now I have a low tub like goes under a bed, painted black so I can use it for a shallow base to stick rooted clones into. Various concepts have run through my and the wife's minds how to do it, we're kind of thinking about having it circulate at least some, so we're pouring water over the roots. An actual aeroponic mister type setup spraying into the space above the perlite is how we're thinking of doing it, leaving some air space being a way to help the things breathe deeperr through the roots, but that's just because we have the stuff lying around and it enhances growth to wash more roots with more fluid, in the presence of a LOT of oxygen.

The advantage of this form of powered hydro is that if it ever dies, whatever the situation is, I'm good to go for awhile and there won't be root rot because it'll be like a hempy bucket being drained free of fertigant by plants. Sorry for de-railing your thread like this.
Peace.
 
C

Cannabis

Active member
Veteran
I made something not as good but I'm going to do mine like the ones you show

I made something not as good but I'm going to do mine like the ones you show

Craven_au said:
How about placing a 2inch tall well fitting container/saucer inside the smart pot.
And making a Level Indicator like this
View Image

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=16221&pictureid=1131461&thumb=1]View Image[/url]
Click to expand...


Those are DEFINITELY a LOT BETTER than the ones I put on mine.

The ones I put indicators on, I'm using now; they're five gallon buckets so really I suppose more off topic blather.

I put Elbows, (drilling extra holes = fail, adding extra parts= fail) and clear upright tubing on mine, with little red pieces of plastic to float up to the level of the water. They ride along the outside of the buckets making them prone to being caught on things.

It is a miserable fail. When it's brand new it looks *slick*.

As SOON as the doggone light hits it the algae starts forming, and you can barely see through mine.

MAJOR EDIT:

I just came back and read, what I wrote the first time, and I have N.O. E.A.R.T.H.L.Y. I.D.E.A. W.T.F. I thought I was S.A.Y.I.N.G.

I conflated large water-body pipe type floats that sit vertically, with the little straw ones you can build as a hobby float for smaller quantities like a sump.

What I was TRYING to say was IF you BUILD one using a STRAW, MAKE SURE the COLORS of your PVC, and your STRAW, are BOTH colors that WON'T LET ALGAE grow.
 
Last edited:
C

Cannabis

Active member
Veteran
NeWcs I changed what I wrote up there till it made sense I had two completely different deals morphed together in my head and said a buncha bulls&t.

Peace
 
F

forgetmeplease

Member
Just a thought it would be cool to have the hempy bucket style that was fed from the top with a simple drip set up that recirculates into trays that flow into a reservoir. That way it would always be at the proper level and if the power goes out they have there hempy bucket reservoir. Best of all worlds and safe from power failures.
 
C

Cannabis

Active member
Veteran
People do something similar and it's called "Dutch Buckets"

Not identical but similar.

Hempy buckets per se, having no reserve exchange & aeration system active, utilize the daily drawdown of residual or reservoir contents down at that bottom two inches. Atmospheric air getting in there's what makes pythium unable to unfold and deploy active colonies.

This is one of the principles that demands having bubblers in shallow and deep water culture, but not in ebb and flow. Ebb and flow recedes and atmospheric air creeps in stopping pythium from getting any toehold.

So if ya do some like that you either need to watch how the Dutch Buckets guys do it or maybe, spray part of a day then let the plants drink whatever's in the reservoir.

Come to think of it I dunno but I bet the Dutch Buckets guys put their drains way at the bottom so there's always a lot of atmospheric air present, even way down at the bottom, all things considered. Interesting to me because I like growing different ways.
 
C

Cereals

Member
I have used the exact method described in the OP, and it works very well. You won't see red/purple petioles anymore when using this method, just lush green growth on all parts of your plants. I have definitely also seen what @grassot's dad is calling "wet feet" on Smart Pots used this way.

There are also a few threads about this over in the Coco forum - refer to "bottom feeding".

The only problem is this:

The water in the tubs will get rancid if left stagnant for too long. The first inclination is to simply let the plants drink whatever is in the tubs, and then to refill the tubs.

And this can work OK, but not exceptionally. The problem is that the plants will suffer a bit as the tub dries out, as the coco in the smart pots then starts to dry out, pH swings/lockouts/salt buildup/etc - the plants don't like it.

This may also be because I used pretty coarse coco (croutons). They provide much more aeration to the rootzone than the very finely ground coco that many people use and have in mind when they hear "coco", but the finely ground stuff will hold much more moisture than the croutons.

I will also add that if you don't let the tubs dry out completely, then whatever algae/funky/nasty shit is growing in the tubs won't die or whatever - if you fill your tub back up, it will start growing again. At this point the only solution (I would assume) is to take the plants out of the tub and clean that bitch out. Of course, this can be a huge hassle depending on the stage of the plant's life.

I have come up with what I hope to be a solution to this problem - air lines.

I just started a thread about it here: https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=273792 before I came across this thread. I don't want to derail this conversation so I'll leave it at that - let me know if you have any other questions about bottom feeding.
 
NeWcS

NeWcS

Active member
So I started a plant today using this method finally. I will try to report back on how things go. No drain to waste. Just worried about buildup. Time will tell...
 
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