[Finagleabud]

Hempy Buckets are a form of passive hydro. Medium is 100% perlite\vermiculite, there are no drainage holes on the bottom, instead they are on the sides, about 1 inch up from the bottom. This leaves a 1 inch reservoir at the bottom, which gets wicked upward by all the perlite and the roots above the res are able to breath without an airstone or pump or anything.

Basically it's hydro that you water like soil. Nutes are delivered every watering though, unlike soil.

[Capt.Ahab]

based on your photo that plant looks happy enough to me.

[Kinetic]

I imagine it's easy to over water due to the wick action of that method. Looks like you are on the right track though. Do you have a trellis on that bucket? I would love to see a pic of when you just started training.

[Finagleabud]

I tore apart a couple wire clothes hangers and rigged a little scaffolding around the top of the bucket to tie down to. I also put holes all the way around the top lip of the bucket, and used those during early training. I didn't need the wire supports until it outgrew the diameter of the 5gal bucket. Kind of a poor man's scrog, but it allowed me to really spread the canopy.

Sorry I don't have any pics, but it's basically a big Y split about 6 inches above the surface, and all the other branches are coming off those two main horizontal trunks.

[Kinetic]

Awesome. I've been wanting to rig up something like this. Good luck with your harvest!

[GOT_BUD?]

Bumping this older thread because I've got a couple plants that are 4 weeks old that are also wilting in Hempy buckets. But mine are modified with an airstone in the res, and a inch and a half PVC pipe that runs to the bottom for watering. My medium doesn't get wet from anywhere but the res.

I did turn up the air pump to add more air to the res. I'll check on it again in the morning to see if there is any change.

If that doesn't work I think my next move is a flush. And I'll make sure to check the runoff pH before I really start the flush.

[GOT_BUD?]

Follow up - turning up the air pump did nothing. So I flushed the res out with pure RO water. The pH of the runoff was 9.6! Continued flushing until I got pure water out, then dumped what I could and reloaded the res with a batch of fresh nutes (~560ppm), pH corrected to 5.6. I'll take a look at tomorrow and hopefully see an improvement.

[truck]

Use Central Coast Gardens Root Cleaner then re-inoculate with their streptoforce and some of Microbe Life Photosynthesis plus

[truck]

Originally Posted by GOT_BUD?

Follow up - turning up the air pump did nothing. So I flushed the res out with pure RO water. The pH of the runoff was 9.6! Continued flushing until I got pure water out, then dumped what I could and reloaded the res with a batch of fresh nutes (~560ppm), pH corrected to 5.6. I'll take a look at tomorrow and hopefully see an improvement.

That spike in PH is bacterial growth. You've been slimed. Make sure your run Physan 20 through your system and dump it. There is a thread on here about what to do. Brown slime has taken down a lot of grows and caused a lot of grey hairs. Hard to totally eliminate once you have it in your grow environment. You have to start sterile and get ahead on the preventative measures. or else you will always be nursing sick plants. Been there and done it. Good luck bro

[GOT_BUD?]

Wanted to follow up on this.

After the flush, the plant never really changed. Flushed again with a bit of Hydrogen Peroxide added to the water and let it soak for 24 hours. After that 24 hours, the plant started to bounce back. I flushed yet again to get rid of the peroxide solution and what ever gunk was in there, and followed up with a light feeding.

24 hours later, the plant started to actually look healthy again. And it continued to improve all the way to harvest.

The harvest was poor. The whole plant was nothing but leaf, very little bud structure. But it was covered in trichs. EVERYWHERE!!! So I dried it and ran it through my tumbler to make some decent kief and a couple small pucks of hash. I never bothered to weigh the plant, but I did get almost 6 grams of good hash/kief off of a plant less than 16 inches tall and a lot of leaf.

But all was not lost. I did find a keeper which is currently revegging nicely.