Yeah , I wish it would be a couple weeks, we get a 3 day if we are lucky, lol. We make the best of it. We found a big ass canyon for sledding it was awesome. Nothing like filling the bong with fresh powder.
A few things that I've learned about growing in coco with a drip systm DTW
- Thread starter Hundred Gram Oz
- Start date
Yeah , I wish it would be a couple weeks, we get a 3 day if we are lucky, lol. We make the best of it. We found a big ass canyon for sledding it was awesome. Nothing like filling the bong with fresh powder.
oti$
Active member
Octobubblers are cheap and take a lot of work out of the equation. You also can find them with 2-8 ports. Jackmayoffer claimed you don't need to have equal length drip lines when using them, but I've always cut mine the same length anyway. Ball valves can be plumbed directly beneath the octobubblers as well for dialing in flow rates.
That's gold right there!
I was using a 8 port manifold and could adjust each port individually but I had hell getting the rate I wanted for my plants. I made an change, removed the manifold, went direct for rez to a ring with 5 hoses on it and each hose has a ball valve to for adjustment. I did not use drippers, added a tee to each line for distribution. Adjust is easier but I believe that I will look for a screw valve to replace the ball valves as the ball valve it hard to get set to proper distribution.
I run each cycle 1 to 3 minutes, 1st cycke lights on 2 minutes, 2nd cycle 1 minute and last cycle around 2.5 hours prior to lights off 2.5 to 3 minutes. I do this one manual when I am at home so I make sure I get good 30% runoff prior to lights off.
This has worked very well for me, giving me good wet/dry periods.
GR
Anyone have experience with drippers over a layer of play sand? maybe half inch to an inch or so. been battling a bad fugnus gnat infestation last few grows and the sand has stopped that but I'm in veg and hand watering for now, was wondering how the drippers would play with the layer of sand. They are black hole drippers btw.
I have and there is nothing you have to do differently. I don't use play sand though. It is too fine and stays wet longer. I like using quik cret sand. It's ał lot more course and drains better
Piston Pete
New member
@HGO and other's
After a long hiatus it's Piston Pete again here
I've switched things up a while ago and I now have a new setup (120cm X 240cm) with 2 x Gavita Pro 1000DE Lights. I have 8 x 65l containers. Each container has 5 plants. I veg them for about 3 weeks before flipping. I used to use smaller containers or pots (6,5l) and multi-fed them which has worked wonders, but I hated having to deal with so many pots.
After a long hiatus I now have a new setup and I would like start multi-feed again, but then in these larger containers. I read that you and many others say that it doesn't make sense to use larger containers and do multi-feedings per day.
Does this still stand when you have more plants in one larger container? If the container is 65l (60/40 coco/perlite) and has 5 plants in it, that would give each plant about 11l of coco.
Is this already considered to be too much medium? Would love to hear your thoughts...
PP
After a long hiatus it's Piston Pete again here
I've switched things up a while ago and I now have a new setup (120cm X 240cm) with 2 x Gavita Pro 1000DE Lights. I have 8 x 65l containers. Each container has 5 plants. I veg them for about 3 weeks before flipping. I used to use smaller containers or pots (6,5l) and multi-fed them which has worked wonders, but I hated having to deal with so many pots.
After a long hiatus I now have a new setup and I would like start multi-feed again, but then in these larger containers. I read that you and many others say that it doesn't make sense to use larger containers and do multi-feedings per day.
Does this still stand when you have more plants in one larger container? If the container is 65l (60/40 coco/perlite) and has 5 plants in it, that would give each plant about 11l of coco.
Is this already considered to be too much medium? Would love to hear your thoughts...
PP
Just my two cents,
I tried multi plants in a large container, 6 plants in a short molasses tub, about 15 gal, did not work for me. As the plants got bigger they crowded each other too much. To get even watering throughout the pots was a pain in the butt. Used both drip and hand watering.
Again just a thought,
That would be a great grow area for a 16 to 20 plant vertical grow with screens, light movers or 3 sets of stacked 315's, in coco DTW. You would kill it my friend. Guess I am just putting forth my dream room. Wish I had that space.
I know you are into your grow already, and good luck to you.
GR
I tried multi plants in a large container, 6 plants in a short molasses tub, about 15 gal, did not work for me. As the plants got bigger they crowded each other too much. To get even watering throughout the pots was a pain in the butt. Used both drip and hand watering.
Again just a thought,
That would be a great grow area for a 16 to 20 plant vertical grow with screens, light movers or 3 sets of stacked 315's, in coco DTW. You would kill it my friend. Guess I am just putting forth my dream room. Wish I had that space.
I know you are into your grow already, and good luck to you.
GR
If you use pea gravel and window mesh - like this and you can reuse everything.
Piston Pete
New member
Hi GR866, thanks for your thoughts.
Up until my current grow I always used to put my pots on Danish tray's and scrog and LST them. Which is still my preferred method of growing, however... At some point it got a bit too hard to proper train them as I couldn't reach them anymore because of the screens. Same goes for checking the drippers...
Back then I used to run 18 x 6,5l pots. Funny you mention the lightrail as I had thought about it for this current setup. But after calculations and talking with people we found the 2 x Gavita PRO 1000DE, boosted to 1200w would be equally as good, if not better for this space, as opposed to a lightrail. (In terms of coverage).
Also not sure about the noise they make.(If they make any actually.) Lightrails deffo have my attention. Maybe if I can ever size up to a 3.00m X 1.50m grow-tent
The grow before my current grow I had put 5 plants in 17 gal containers and only used half of my tent as it was summer, so the other half I used for the AC and what not. 4 x 17 gal containers on effectively 1.20m x 1.20m, hand-watered with 1 of the Gavita's above it.
Those plants suffered badly from thrips and didn't perform as well as they were supposed to perform and I yielded about 500gr from 20 plants. Which were clones I took from my mother plants and only had 10-14 days of veg after rooting. Mainly because afraid of what you mentioned... that they would grow into each other. They didn't as I could bend/bind some more to the sides to open up the canopy a bit more.... I grew Critical+ 2.0 by Dinafem. A strain that supposedly only needs 49-56 days to finish to produce around 600gr per sq/m. Mine actually finished after 7,5-8 weeks.
I'm growing the same strain now, again from my own clones, this time without thrips or any other critters, again hand-watered. I'm about 1,5-2 weeks from harvest now and thinking if I would get more vigorous growth in veg (planning on vegging longer now) and bigger buds if I start multi-feeding again as opposed to hand-watering.
Just not sure what my watering schedule would look like. With hand-watering now, I give them 1L per plant (5L per 17gal container). I need at least 2x that amount to have a little bit of run-off I've noticed. But I then don't have to water them for days, if not a week, if I would like to run dry/wet cycles. Should I then for example multi-feed the plants that one time per week till run-off, or on a more regular base? I deffo don't want to "drown" them, but I think if multi-feeding is a viable option I would have best of both worlds, for me at least.
You say it was a pain in the butt to get even watering throughout the containers... was that due to the fact that the drippers were far apart from each other? Because I was actually thinking (hoping) to get more even watering throughout the containers by using drippers...
Thanks again for your thoughts. Hope you get to build that dream-room of yours in the future ;-)
Piston Pete
New member
What kind of strains do you grow? Because I always like to keep my plants on the low/small side. And how were your yields with 2-4 plants per 3gal? For me the size/diameter (⌀60cm) of the 17gal containers were the main reason for me to go for them, as exactly 8 will fit my tent perfectly and I only need 8 "pots" for 40 plants. I just can't veg any longer than 3 weeks I'm afraid before it will eventually become to crowded in the containers.
Pete ... How many flower cycles do you get a year?
With a 3 week veg smaller pots will be perfect, nothing bigger than 3.5l or 1USgal
One plant per pot, you can get 8 plants comfortably around a vertical 600W which should put out 2 oz per pot from seed or at least 3 per pot from clones
If you grow vertically then you can control the plants size
With a 3 week veg smaller pots will be perfect, nothing bigger than 3.5l or 1USgal
One plant per pot, you can get 8 plants comfortably around a vertical 600W which should put out 2 oz per pot from seed or at least 3 per pot from clones
If you grow vertically then you can control the plants size
Piston Pete
New member
Hi Bush Dr... thanks for your input. I'm getting about 5-6 flower cycles a year. However, I'm not looking at changing my setup, the real question here for me is whether it would make sense to use multi-feeding in these large containers.
My current setup/grow looks like this (top-view).
The 5 little squares on each side are 10 x 6,5l pots with the same plants. I could fit 8 of those large containers in there, but figured that this way, it would be easy to reach the plants in the back, by taking out a few of those 6,5l pots whenever I needed to be in the back. This run has been completely hand-watered. (this run should be done by the end of next week.) Looking at both the plants in the smaller pots, compared to the ones in the larger container, I don't see much difference in terms of plant-size, bud-size or anything for that matter.
Was just thinking that this run is already not going too bad. Guessing around the 1000gr/1KG this time around. But always looking to improve on the previous run... Hence me wondering if it would benefit me, or the plants actually by switching back to drippers and multi-feeding as opposed to the hand-watering I've been doing this run...
Would love to try vertical growing some day, but gotta do what I do using the setup as is for now.
Piston Pete
New member
For some reason my picture did not load in my post and I could not edit my post. So here goes another try ...
Bwanabud
Active member
I'd put a 750/900 gph on, and install a valve down line...over size is an advantage. As long as the valve reduction is on the output side, it won't won't overheat the pump or cause performance issues.
Head pressure, distance, piping size and configuration all go into the correct pump sizing for application.
Cheers for the response. lol, that’s a way higher gph than what I was hoping for given the very small pots in my 2x4. Maybe I should stick with soil.
900 gph is still a pretty small pump in the scheme of things. The size of your pots doesn't matter for pump size, but the number of them does.
