Oregon Organic Guerrilla 2009, with your host BACKCOUNTRY

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Again I've looked for a US supplier of the full sized Tropf Blumat, there are several US suppliers of the smaller junior version, but those are for smaller indoor applications.

I'd love to try these things, they would be easier to install than a Earth hole, but they do have the downfall of being cloggable, where the Earth hole can't get clogged. Making sure the water supply is clean would be necessary.

 

[lunatick]

gluing onsite and then leave it overnight and install it on another trip

that is a must,but there r some benefits as well.

on reducing the wicking surface,its more like limiting it,4gal pot for instance with half that serves as a res will be ok in my situation,of course much bigger pot can b used insted.

as for trusting an aquarium silicone(or a different sealer) - they r trustworthy to a degree - ive seen an aquarium silicone hold some huge water tanks,but its an issue.

Do you know of a good company to order the Blumats from

i got mine from a good israeli company but as for shipping them i think it will b too expensive. - 2 maxi units are about 27$ and the smaller ones are 18$ for 2 - using 2 units per plant would be great but again the price,and over here ill have to pay extra in order to protect the water lines.

"why not just use the Blumat by itself" - why no indid ;-)

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I still see no point in limiting water flow from the pots to the soil, the more surface area the better.

I do want to make a effort to use these Blumats this year, I may have to bite the bullet and pay a high price for a couple to try on one plant.

 

[microgram]

I don't know if this is pure crap, but I bought some years back, only bought a couple small ones. I went in last year to pick some more up, but the guy had told me that the Blumat company had gone out of business. I tried to track them down, but I couldn't anything on google. It may be worth a shot, but this may be why you can't find any big ones. Love them, so work their weight in gold. These we're the founding principles i used to understand the good ole 'water vacuum'.


ug.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

microgram- Copy and paste Tropf-Blumats at yahoo, and you will find the manufacturers website, and its still up! I made a attempt to order from their website directly before this last season, but it didn't seem to be working, a e-mail went unanswered, maybe I'll try again soon.

I'm so amazed that these are not more well known and available in the USA, it looks and sounds like a great product for many applications.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I went in to test the order form at the Blumat website, it seems to be working now, I set up a mock order to see what shipping would cost for 4 blumats and a handfull of fittings, $30USD to ship about $20 worth of stuff from Germany, YIKES!

I shot off a E-mail to them to see if their is a domestic distributor.

 

[blynx]

I've found the tropf blumat jr all over the place in the US, it's the patio kit that's hard to find stateside.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Yeah, my trail has gone cold concerning the Blumats, I don't see any point testing a device that none of my peers(north American growers) can easily obtain.

I've been doing some thinking about things I'd like to experiment with for the 2010 season. I was thinking about trying all the irrigation systems I meant to try for the 2009 season- Tropf Blumats, Wet pot clone, Terracotta pots, a cloth-wick based Earth hole, maybe even a timer based system.
But after some thought, my critical nature has eliminated all of the above, here are the reasons why-

Hand watering
Pros: The nature of hand watering requires the grower to be in contact with the plant at least once a week(if not more often) in my climate, allowing a lot of observation.

Cons: The nature of hand watering requires the grower to be in contact with the plant at least once a week(if not more often) in my climate, allowing investigators more opportunity to identify who I am, and requiring me to burn up lots of time traveling to my plots all summer long.

Tropf Blumats
Pros: A very adjustable irrigation emitter that senses when the plant needs water according to the moisture content of the soil, leading to very efficient use of water. Unlike the Earth hole it doesn't require burying your rez below the plant, making it easier to install. Also requires less weight in equipment per plant than the Earth hole.

Cons: As I stated before, these are hard to come by with out spending a lot of money ordering them straight from Germany. The emitters have small tubes incorporated into the design, which could be very prone to clogging when using with less than crystal clean water, which is not often easy to find in the backcountry.

Wet pots and clones
Pros: A very efficient and reliable passive irrigation technique, could be built to use larger water supply tubes that can't be plugged as easily as the Tropf Blumats or a traditional "drip" system.

Cons: Commercial built Wet pots have to be ordered from Australia, the cost of the pots and shipping to N.America is steep. Building these using true terracotta bottles(a vessel that has only one opening) shouldn't be too hard, but these bottles are hard to find and often too expensive. Attempts to build bottles using other terracotta vessels(like flower pots) and water-proof glue/sealant has led to so-so results in creating a truly sealed bottle. Without a good bottle to start with, building wet pots at home will be difficult.

Terracotta "pitcher" irrigation
Pros: Transfers water passively as the plant needs(same idea as the wet pots), has no pipes/tubes, can not fail, very easy to set up.

Cons: The amount of large pots needed to hold enough water to extend visits to 2-3 weeks can become very heavy to haul, also the pots would take up lots of space around the plant, leading to a large disturbed area around the plant.

Timer based "drip" system
Pros: Relatively easy to set up, and very easy to set up for multiple plants, this is the preferred system for commercial outdoor growers due to the low cost and ease of set up for large plots.

Cons: System requires the use to a water timer to operate automatically, although many timer have proven reliable, they are still a potential weak link in the system, a failure could lead to a dead or dying crop.
Drip systems require the use of drippers or valves to control and meter out water to the plants, these require small orifices to control water flow and commonly become clogged, especially with the use of wild water that is less than clear and clean.

Earth hole
Pros: The system uses a soil wick to bring water from the rez to the planting soil, this system requires no tubes/pipes, timers, or small orifice emitters to bring water to the plant, it can't fail to give water to the plant unless the rez runs out.

Cons: Requires more digging and set up than other systems, it also requires the heaviest equipment per plant of all listed systems(other than the pitcher irrigation).

The good thing is that once it is set up, and if the rez is kept in water, the system runs like a top. So long as you feel confident with how long the water supply will last, you can turn your back on the system for that period of time with the confidence it will take care of and grow your plant quite well.

I've been thinking about making a Earth hole that uses rope or cloth wicks rather than a soil wick like I used in the 2009 season. In theory, the cloths/rope wicks would be easier to install, this maybe be partially true, but it would be the only advantage I can see.
From studying the use of cloth/rope wicks, I have noticed a couple things, one is that cloth/rope wicks are somewhat weak movers of water, even in the mild indoor environments(which is where most cloth/rope wick selfwatering planters are used), growers using them advise the use of many wicks made from specific materials, the emphasis being to use lots of wicks to ensure adequate transfer of water.
Another thing I have seen is that the reservoirs and planters used with cloth wicks are often very shallow, the distance from the planting soil above and the bottom of the reservoirs is usually very short, one grower advised keeping the total distance to less than 8". This is due to the fact that most materials available for cloth/rope wicks can't transfer water fast enough to supply a plant past a certain(fairly shallow) height. I imagine to even start designing a cloth/rope wick driven Earth hole, I'd have to buy some pretty fancy materials, and then install dozens of wicks per EH, Then I'd have to widen my rez to stay shallow enough for the cloth wicks to work reliably, meaning I'll have to dig wider holes to contain several weeks of water.

The soil wick has proven it can carry water 10' up, even enough to supply a large plant with plenty of water even in constant 100F weather. I believe I can extend that to 12", allowing me to dig narrower holes than I'd feel confident with using cloth/rope wicks.

In short, I am abandoning all projects other than the soil wick Earth hole, experiments for 2010 will be more about differences in yield between various soil capacities. Some of my 2010 EH will have 10 gallons of soil, and others 7.5 or 5 gallons of soil.

*****************************************************

The Earth hole is not for everybody, if you live in a summer climate where rain does fall, even as little as .75' per week, you may actually be better off planting straight in the ground and using techniques to help your plant forage for natural ground moisture, with occasional hand watering to supplement.

If you aspire to grow larger commercial quantities of bud, you'd be better off going with a drip system, the Earth hole would become to expensive and labor intensive to build on large scales.

The Earth hole is more aimed at growers in climates that have virtually no summer rainfall, and therefor virtually no ground moisture to exploit. I envision this system being useful for growers in the Great basin desert/Columbia plateau, the dry slopes of the Rocky mountains, and the dry interior valleys of California and Western Oregon.

A grower using 3-5 Earth holes should easily be able to grow more than enough bud to sustain his household of 1-3 heavy/moderate smokers, without spending the whole summer hiking to one plot or another to water, and without having plants growing all summer at home.

 

[socbutter]

Can't wait to see your 2010 grow.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Just a bumpity-bump so those with recent interest can find it..................

 

[Burney]

Nice job BC.
I notice your earthbox design did not have an aeration screen. Any reason why? A key component of the earthbox is the aeration grid platform. If you want, you could use a beverage tray (the kind they use to ship/stack Pepsi, etc…. I found some behind a convenience store that went out of business). They are very sturdy. It could go inside your grow bag, sitting on top of your tote reservoir. Cover the tray with window screen or landscape fabric to avoid soil mix falling thru. Cut an access hole for roots to grow into the wick (which sits just below the screen. The screen also helps distribute the weight of the potting mix. I don't know how to attach a photo so I can't show you. It would work tho.

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

Apparently a aeration screen is not needed!

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

I just wanted to get this posted here too

I just wanted to get this posted here too

Can I ask how you plan on preventing root rot? You don't want moist soil all the time, as your design seems to do.

Based on your design capillary action would always be taking place thus always keeping soil moist. The only way you would prevent is it to have some sort of timer which would activate a stop of the capillary action for certain periods of time etc.

Correct me if i'm wrong, or if I missed something

After some thought, I think I'll go ahead and try to answer your question, even though the experiment was a obvious success!

First, are you familiar with DWC? Its a type of hydroponics where the root system of the plants stay entirely submerged in their nutrient solution, in deep buckets or tubs. At first you might think "how do the roots stay alive sitting in water 24/7?". The answer is........air! Gobs of air! Air pumps continuously pump fresh air into the water, providing the precious oxygen needed by the roots. Basically, the roots will live, even thrive in very wet environments(even under water), provided they get what it is they actually need from the air(oxygen).

"Root rot" is not caused by roots living in a environment that is too wet, root rot is what happens after your roots die due to suffocation(lack of oxygen).

Now you may ask, "so how does the Earth hole keep oxygen available to the roots?" The answer is simple, the potting mixture in the Earth hole never gets saturated enough to exclude air, its actually (nearly)impossible for that to happen(see the last paragraph).
The moisture must reach the roots through the capillary action of the potting mix, water passes up from the reservoir from one fiber of the potting mix to the next, until that moisture reaches a thirsty root, who then absorbs the moisture. The water only travels from one fiber to another that touches it, there is never any pooling of water outside of the fibers, if water was to somehow leave the chain of fibers, it would simply trickle back down due to gravity, into the wick, but in reality this won't happen, if no roots are drinking, the lifting of water will simply slow to a stop until thirsty root starts the flow again.

In between the fibers exists many, many empty spaces, through these spaces, oxygen can reach the roots, voila! Happy roots!!!!!

New growers are often warned by the wise to not over water their plants, and to always use planters with drain holes for excess water to flow out. Because the water is being added from above(whether it is needed or not), it can be possible to suffocate your roots by adding too much water to often, each time you water you purge the air from the empty spaces between the fibers of the potting mix, if you do it too much you suffocate the roots, they die, and you have a case of root rot.

Because the Earth hole works off of capillary action, it can only take the water that the fibers themselves can hold, the empty spaces between the fibers remain intact. The exception of course would be a heavy rain that could over saturate the soil from above, but this can be prevented by shielding the soil with plastic mulch, only a small area around the stalk of the plant need be left open to allow air to enter the planter portion.

Does any of this make sense???

 

[HookaHittaH]

Sorry to hear you wont be having an outdoor grow to post next season. I think you will have fun working in that green house though. Have you thought about doing a spring grow there? Seems with the green house you'd be able to keep temps warm enough to bud them out. Maybe you wont have the GH set up by then. Anyways I think your earth holes are truly innovative. Do you think they would work better with 2 - 3 plants in one earth hole? or would they just use the water up faster. If I lived up in the hills i would deff have one of these going. Anything that keeps you from having to go see you plants once a week just to water is a plus. GL in you endeavors BC

 

[BACKCOUNTRY]

My dog died

My dog died

Around noon PST today, my dog of 12 years died, from a heart-attack or stroke. She has been my primary grow partner during most of that time, and is BACKCOUNTRY's mascot(she is the dog that appears in my gif avatar).
She will be missed, not a great guard dog, but very loyal and kind.

Outside of my friends and family, my peers at OG and ICmag are the only people that knew her at all, so after e-mailing my family, I decided to share with you all.

A few pics from the past-

 

[LJB]

sorry to hear that. she looks like a cool dog.

 

[DIRT DIGGLER]

Sorry to hear that,My condolences.

 

[socbutter]

My condolences to you, she looked like a great companion.

I have three dogs (2 goldens and a shelty) I truly feel your loss.

 

[JWP]

Best ride in town: Life
Price of admission: 1 death

12 years, looks like she had a good run.

 

[bentom187]

my condolences BC,ill miss seeing your posts with her