[cravin morehead]

i haven't been around here much in last couple years. haven't posted much of anything. but rest assured, my bio bucket tent has been going. first thing is first- Thank You BigToke for all the info you laid out for me to play out. I Love Bio-Bucket hydro growing. simple, efficient, and productive. damn near maintenance free. i haven't changed my reservoir out in over a year. but i do drain each bucket after each run. i have never checked ph, well actually i did like 3 x's just to satisfy some people on here. i use ONLY Dyna-gro bloom. thats it, nothing else, nothing. i run nutes low usually, like 500ppm/1.0 ec or some where near that concentration. i use tap water on a float valve in my res, comes out around 200ppm give or take.
so, i figured since i'm here lately giving advice to people, i should put up something current for our newer members to see from me. put my money where my mouth is, sort of. im currently running a cross i made. i had a nice Reservoir seeds SSSDH girl out in the yard a few seasons ago. at the same time i popped a Joey Weed (glad to hear he's coming back!) Blueberry x AK47 which turned out to be a sweet stinky, robust male. so i dusted some of the lower buds with it and got what i'm running now. i gave a few seeds to a buddy and i am running a cut of what he ran outdoor. to tell you the truth, he doesn't live near me, so i've never tried it. i'm just going by his pics and his description to me. enough background and bullshit heres a couple pics

heres my cuts going into the tent. i use as short as clones as i can, i do have some height issues. i decided to run a scrog this round.

here they are a week later, give or take a day or two. bio buckets grow pretty quick once a root hits the water. i vegged for about a month

all trimmed up and flipped to flower

2 weeks into the stretch and filling up the screen nicely

thats about it for now. i have more pics to show, we are at about 35 days into flower now. ill update this after i see if there is even interest in it. if not, no big deal to me...

cm

[DARKSIDER]

Taking a seat for the show.

[cravin morehead]

^^^thanks bud- hope you enjoy the ride

cm

[ISM2]

Looking like you're off to a great start!
JW's AK47 x Blueberry is my fav. I have some F2's I made in 2014 from a pack I got back in early 2000.
https://www.icmag.com/ic/album.php?albumid=59953

[areocrafter]

Looks great. I will follow for sure I'm interested in how this will turn out.
so the bio bucket uses lots of microbes to keep the system maintenance free?

[cravin morehead]

hey Darksider- welcome, come on in, grab a beer and fire one up. glad to have you here.

ISM2- thanks. i really liked the bbak47 when i ran it in 2008 i think. ran it in a small cabinet dwc under 400w mh/hps. back then, i had bad enviornment and it still did good.
those old pics make me laugh now...

areocrafter- yes pretty much. the beneficial bacteria protect the root zone by out competing the bad guys. they also make nutrients highly mobile and easy for the plants to uptake. they also keep ph in check.
straight from BigToke's info:
Put back into your plant-production system a set of organisms that will work for you, instead of against you.

• Most people have the attitude that microbes are all harmful, but in fact, most organisms in soil or in solution are beneficial for plant growth. Modern agriculture developed the view that all disease-causing and pest organisms need to be killed, and so the kill-everything-but-the-plant attitude came about. Unaware that healthy soil or solution in fact should contain more beneficial bacterium, and so a program to wipe out life in soil and solution was initiated. But more and more toxic chemicals have had to be used as the diseases and pests develop resistance with the ever-increasing use of killing agents.
• Why don’t the beneficial organisms develop resistance to the toxic chemicals being used? Because almost by definition, disease organisms and pests have a boom-and-bust life cycle, so when one pest organism survives the chemical onslaught, hundreds, or thousands, or billions of offspring are produced. Beneficial organisms rarely employ that kind of growth strategy, but instead reproduce only a few times a year, with perhaps only a few offspring produced each time. Thus, when you use toxic chemicals to control diseases, but in fact kill most of the beneficial organisms in the soil or solution, it takes a long time for the beneficials to return. Thus the likelihood that they will develop resistance is significantly less than that for any disease or pest organism.
• Modern agriculture has set the stage for non-stop, never-ending reliance on chemicals. That’s great if you want to sell chemicals, not so great if you need to have drinkable water.
• Do we have to go this route? What we need in production agriculture is to help the beneficials more than the diseases and pests. We need to tip the balance in favor of the good guys. What conditions favor the good guys? Do we really need to know all the names of all the organisms in soil or solution, or do we just need to know which conditions favor the beneficials and which favor the diseases?

if you are interested read these 2 threads from beginning to end:
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=8182
and
https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=23357
in my opinion, those 2 threads contain more pertinent info than any other growing hydro threads on this site. every single hydro grower should read those threads, bio-bucket or not.

let me take you through a day of maintenance of my grow while running a scrog just beginning flower.
1- check nute levels in res, usually add 9 tsp of dynagro bloom every couple days
2- open up tent and smile. then spend a couple minutes tucking growing shoots back under the screen.
3- spray for preventative pest management, in veg and first 2 weeks of flower only
4- in mid to late flower, open up bucket lids and pull any roots away from drain lines
5- close tent and go on with your day smiling
thats it. usually takes me like 5-8 minutes every couple days. at the end of each grow, i drain each bucket using the drain valves under each bucket. remove lava rocks and rinse roots off. replace lava rocks to net pots and refill all buckets. takes about an hour total. run system for a week or two to cycle and let the beneficials take hold again, put in new clones and start vegging again. i usually take cuts from moms when i harvest and they are showing roots about the same time the system cycles and both are ready to go at the same time.
thats basically all i do.
a couple more pics of this run
a couple days ago

random bud close up

even closer

thanks for stopping by guys. any more questions, keep them coming. I will answer all questions to the best of my ability.

cm

[cravin morehead]

i meant to add lighting info. im running a 1000w digital. for veg i run 600w MH. i kept the MH going for 2 weeks after flipping to flower to help with stretch. after 2 weeks i put in the HPS at 600w. ran 600watts for 2 weeks. from then on, i have switched up to 750 watts. i may go all the way up to 1000w in a week or two, we'll see

cm

[marinemansf]

Looking good bromigo! Im in!

[areocrafter]

cravin morehead, I use a similar strategy to keep my system clean and the enjoy the many benefit the microbe army provides.
Those pictures above are at day 35?
I have some nice ladies coming up on 35 in a couple days. I like how low maintenance your system is i will be interested to see the results.

[SMALLTUBES]

you said something about joeyweed comin back....i have not heard about him in along time used to have some of his nl and a few others do you know where to grab his stuff?