passive plant killer

[catman]

I never submerged my tailpiece, correct. I always check pH with a drip test as well in addition to checking EC. I monitored the run off and adjusted my feedings accordingly. I removed the roots from one plant and treated it exactly the same as the others. Towards the end of flowering I watered and then drained buckets to flush. Running 2 gallons of pH'd tap water dropped me .2 EC a day/watering. And this with half or less of the medium being turface. If your pH is drops that low, your feeding too much. I'm planning on reusing the medium myself. It broke down super easy and roots burned out the chimney : )

 

[Treebeard]

catman, If you never submerged the tailpiece, what's the point of having a tailpiece?

delta9, Have you grown a plant as big as the 22oz coco plant in the turface/ricehull mix? Do you think the plant being grown in coco had anything to do with it's success? Roots seem to especially love coco. I recently ordered some of the 3 gallon roughneck totes, anyone looking to save headroom should try these....overall height is much shorter than 3.5 gallon buckets. The more recent developments seem to suggest that I would only need to drill a series of holes around the bottom of the plant container, correct? Rather than half the sidewall? Thanks.

 

[delta9nxs]

Quotes by disciple

“my comment re: Chimera was just a gentle nod towards a very high quality breeding program without being too disrespectful to cck”


I intend to try chimeras beans probably as soon as I wade through all these i'm testing now.


“black sterilite foot lockers that I have, I'm not a huge fan of the way the top doesn't match up tightly to the bottom.”


yeah, they are cheap pieces of shit but they work. I'm not real thrilled with them and I am looking for an alternative.

I was in a big hurry when I bought the first one.

 

[delta9nxs]

[URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=860843&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=860842&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=860851&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=860849&thumb=1]View Image[/URL] [URL=https://www.icmag.com/ic/picture.php?albumid=32743&pictureid=831792&thumb=1]View Image[/URL]

I never submerged my tailpiece, correct. I always check pH with a drip test as well in addition to checking EC. I monitored the run off and adjusted my feedings accordingly. I removed the roots from one plant and treated it exactly the same as the others. Towards the end of flowering I watered and then drained buckets to flush. Running 2 gallons of pH'd tap water dropped me .2 EC a day/watering. And this with half or less of the medium being turface. If your pH is drops that low, your feeding too much. I'm planning on reusing the medium myself. It broke down super easy and roots burned out the chimney : )

hey, catman, congrats on your harvest, there is no bad way to grow weed, whatever gets you there is good.

but you can do better. in your last photo with the whole plant i can see that you have tip burn all over it.

if you have a condition that causes that much tip burn it is also costing you yield.

the reason you have the tip burn is that the medium is drying out too much and you are concentrating nutrients as a result. your root development reflects this also. and, i bet you are feeding a much stronger solution than i do.

when you stratify the medium you are creating uneven moisture profiles. this is exacerbated by the fact that, for some reason, you don't submerge the tailpiece. this is a tunable device when used as i have described it here. stratifying limits the range of tuning. a dry tailpiece totally prevents you from tuning. the predominately perlite section in the middle will dry much faster than the bottom part. drying concentrates nutrients.

perlite alone is especially bad about tip burn. if i were to run pure perlite i would do a continuous drip or a very frequent pulse as it would require watering several times a day to keep it right. i got quite a bit of experience with perlite when i ran 10 gal containers hempy style for 8 months, one per week. 10 gals of medium, watered heavily with 15-20% run off daily and still got tip burn, even at low concentrations. also, i could not get more than about 10 zips with a plant that i got over 22 from later. your root development reflects this drying that you are allowing. i realize that it is a 3 week old root ball but the overall development reflects this.

why don't you take the bottom container, drill a single hole in the sidewall 3" down from the rim, and water to a slight runoff once per day?

this, in conjunction with a change to a better medium with a uniform mix, will get you a much heavier plant.

and, jack's will blow away fox farm's stuff at a much lower price.

the way you are operating you are essentially running a drain to waste set up with a less than desirable moisture profile. you don't need a tailpiece at all, you could just hang a piece of fabric or rope out of the medium and achieve the same thing.

perlite is great as a cutter for a heavier medium like turface or de.

good luck with your next plant.

d9

 

[delta9nxs]

catman, If you never submerged the tailpiece, what's the point of having a tailpiece?

delta9, Have you grown a plant as big as the 22oz coco plant in the turface/ricehull mix? Do you think the plant being grown in coco had anything to do with it's success? Roots seem to especially love coco. I recently ordered some of the 3 gallon roughneck totes, anyone looking to save headroom should try these....overall height is much shorter than 3.5 gallon buckets. The more recent developments seem to suggest that I would only need to drill a series of holes around the bottom of the plant container, correct? Rather than half the sidewall? Thanks.

i haven't grown a 22 oz one yet but i have broken the elbow barrier with the og nukush, the purple nukush, the g13, and now with the sour 13. i just whacked one that went 2187 gr trimmed and wet so it will certainly dry over 18. what everyone saw with the sweet tooth is years of running the same cutting and being really familiar with the plant. it was easy for me to gauge the effects of the changes i made. as i learn my way into these new strains my weight is creeping upwards.

what i'm trying to do is come up with about 6 strains that i will grow on a rotating schedule. so, in time, i will get better with those also.

i don't believe coco intrinsically grows a bigger plant. plants love turface. and rice hulls. no salt and no cec binding problems.

but, overall, i liked coco. if you can get it locally and cheap it is a viable alternative. test it for porosity and retention. wash the hell out of it and treat it with a 2000 ppm solution before using.


about the holes, you may not need them in the 3 gal totes as you will have a more shallow medium with a greater surface area. i would be inclined to try it without the holes first.

 

[delta9nxs]

here is the new hole pattern. my joy at finding that it contained the pulse turned out to be premature. after i put in a plant it began overflowing the holes at 1/2 gal of volume. so it is still necessary to drill out the lids of the bottom containers. seems to work about the same as the other pattern.

i want to make it "perfectly clear", like tricky dick nixon, that it is not superior to the old hole pattern. it is just a lot faster to build. eight 3/4" holes instead of 60 7/16" holes. you still need screen with turface.

you people hand watering should build a regular "module" like you see here, drill a single hole 3" down from the rim of the bottom container, and water to a slight run off daily. 600 ppm jacks. no tire valve. put the bottom container in a cheap oil change pan from wallys. you could use straight turface here if you sieve it with regular aluminum window screen.

you will grow beautiful plants with no problems.

oh yeah, the line that you can see is 2.5" from the bottom. the holes are centered on that. i drill the first 2 below the moldings for the handle. this gets them opposite. it is easy to drill 2 more halfway between those and then 4 more halfway between the second set. no 12 point template, no 60 holes.

 

[delta9nxs]

.

well, i screwed up but as you can see it was not pointless.

 

[delta9nxs]

i finally got it. just one last shot of the purple nukush before defoliation. about 4 weeks into flower.

see the leaf shine. leaf was not sprayed with anything.

2.5 gals of medium

600 ppm jack's

no ph adjusters

it's just a heartbreaker!

 

[Snook]

here is the new hole pattern. my joy at finding that it contained the pulse turned out to be premature. after i put in a plant it began overflowing the holes at 1/2 gal of volume. so it is still necessary to drill out the lids of the bottom containers. seems to work about the same as the other pattern.

i want to make it "perfectly clear", like tricky dick nixon, that it is not superior to the old hole pattern. it is just a lot faster to build. eight 3/4" holes instead of 60 7/16" holes. you still need screen with turface.

you people hand watering should build a regular "module" like you see here, drill a single hole 3" down from the rim of the bottom container, and water to a slight run off daily. 600 ppm jacks. no tire valve. put the bottom container in a cheap oil change pan from wallys. you could use straight turface here if you sieve it with regular aluminum window screen.

you will grow beautiful plants with no problems.

oh yeah, the line that you can see is 2.5" from the bottom. the holes are centered on that. i drill the first 2 below the moldings for the handle. this gets them opposite. it is easy to drill 2 more halfway between those and then 4 more halfway between the second set. no 12 point template, no 60 holes.

I read your next couple posts, OK, but, if I take a quart of water and pour it into an empty bucket, without medium, it comes to level nowhere near the 2.5 inch line of the rez, why does it come out the holes, 2 inches above the bottom of the bucket during a pulse? I realize that there is already fluid being held within the medium but I would think that in an hour and a half it would drip down to just damp.

And thaks for the reply about the dry ice hash.. blender.. I go look.

 

[delta9nxs]

I read your next couple posts, OK, but, if I take a quart of water and pour it into an empty bucket, without medium, it comes to level nowhere near the 2.5 inch line of the rez, why does it come out the holes, 2 inches above the bottom of the bucket during a pulse? I realize that there is already fluid being held within the medium but I would think that in an hour and a half it would drip down to just damp.

And thaks for the reply about the dry ice hash.. blender.. I go look.

i'm not sure i get what you are asking here. i took the bucket as you see it with 2.5 gal of wet medium but no plant and put a 64oz pulse on it in 35 sec and it did not overflow the holes. but as soon as i put a plant in it and started pulsing every 90 min it began overflowing. so i came to the conclusion that i will still have to drill the 3/16" holes in the edge of the lid to drain the overflow.

alternately i could dial the pulse down in volume or slow the pulse to eliminate runoff but i like the volume. i just whacked a huge sour 13 that spent most of flower on the "turbo pulse" and i'm pretty sure it is creating a bigger plant.

i hope i have answered your question, if not let me know and i'll try again.

later

 

[catman]

catman, If you never submerged the tailpiece, what's the point of having a tailpiece?

To create a 1.5''x6'' space where the lowest roots would grow in the highest concentration of moisture. Makes every watering more consistent (in how it effects the entire moisture profile throughout the medium) the same way it makes overwatering impossible. Better that 6'' not be in the bucket. What actually happened to me is roots grew into the lower bucket and they wicked water up. A tiny amount of roots made the buckets weight just about as much as I could get them after a heavy watering. The timing of things was interesting on one of my crosses as the roots dropped as upward growth had stopped.

Another reason for the hole in the bottom of container is restrict watering exiting the medium so that a greater amount can be added and even perch above the top of the medium. As the perched layer then sinks into the soil, one can hear hundreds of bubbles creating a soothing crackling sound. Think about when you fill a bottle up and then tip it over and dump everything out. Water leaves the bottle, therefore gas will displace it, thus the "glug-glug" effect.

in your last photo with the whole plant i can see that you have tip burn all over it.

the reason you have the tip burn is that the medium is drying out too much and you are concentrating nutrients as a result. your root development reflects this also. and, i bet you are feeding a much stronger solution than i do.

when you stratify the medium you are creating uneven moisture profiles. this is exacerbated by the fact that, for some reason, you don't submerge the tailpiece. this is a tunable device when used as i have described it here. stratifying limits the range of tuning. a dry tailpiece totally prevents you from tuning. the predominately perlite section in the middle will dry much faster than the bottom part. drying concentrates nutrients.

perlite alone is especially bad about tip burn. if i were to run pure perlite i would do a continuous drip or a very frequent pulse as it would require watering several times a day to keep it right.

There was little to no "tip burn" from excessive nutrient concentration, perlite, or anything else on any of my plants. I wouldn't be terribly bothered if there had been. Something different happened mid-late flowering that wrecked the majority of fan leafs that remained after I defoliated. The entire leaf and stem of the leaf went brown and if it was in the light, it could be crushed to dust. If it wasn't in the light, the leaf's stem wouldn't just snap off the leaf. It was like the inside of the leaf hadn't died. I'm thinking I just had one night were temps got too high, especially since night temps were higher than day. The medium couldn't have been any moister when the changed happened and I doubt it was manifestation of a slow change. Coulda been something else, but I'm confident it wasn't because of what you had said, but thanks for the detailed explanation regardless. EC was monitored before and after every watering at an average value of 1 depending on what was being fed. Underfed if anything.

And you should see tip burn on the outside of my bottom roots as they were chemically pruned/burned.

why don't you take the bottom container, drill a single hole in the sidewall 3" down from the rim, and water to a slight runoff once per day?

and, jack's will blow away fox farm's stuff at a much lower price.

the way you are operating you are essentially running a drain to waste set up with a less than desirable moisture profile. you don't need a tailpiece at all, you could just hang a piece of fabric or rope out of the medium and achieve the same thing.

Creating a fixed hole removes any further ability to tune. What I had actually done while just playing with the medium and no plants was submerge the tailpiece into say a 32oz plastic bottle. I used different containers and cut holes to accomplish what you are suggesting without any fixed change. When playing with turface, I notice it would stay moist enough for weeks with out any submersion. I also had weighted the buckets on a scale after being in various heights of those plastic containers and medium to find out it wasn't making much of a difference.

I don't have any complaints about Fox Farm or the pricing, but I'll probably try something new when I run out of their powdered nutes which could be awhile.

Yeah, I could use a rope or fabric in order to do that, but I built these with the intention of some day not watering by hand. The way things were was convenient in veg because I could water 3 or 4 times.. which could be an entire week..while allowing run off to build up just before reaching the tailpiece.

Not sure what I'll do next, if I can commit to a residence, but it'll be something different again. My strains were a F2 of a tester bean and a surprise Princess Diesel male. F1s of the tester and other strains have been grown by several others on the board and nobody would say they yield well. Never had my paws on any clones yet, but hopefully I can lay down my own roots and be more consistent with things soon enough.

 

[Snook]

i'm not sure i get what you are asking here. i took the bucket as you see it with 2.5 gal of wet medium but no plant and put a 64oz pulse on it in 35 sec and it did not overflow the holes. but as soon as i put a plant in it and started pulsing every 90 min it began overflowing. so i came to the conclusion that i will still have to drill the 3/16" holes in the edge of the lid to drain the overflow. <The holes stay until I no longer see overflow stains, for a whole grow >but why overflow only after you put the plant in?

alternately i could dial the pulse down in volume or slow the pulse to eliminate runoff but i like the volume. i just whacked a huge sour 13 that spent most of flower on the "turbo pulse" and i'm pretty sure it is creating a bigger plant.

i hope i have answered your question, if not let me know and i'll try again. I need to rewrite my question

later

Sorry I wasnt being clear.. I'm not sure how/why the overflow occurs at all (except there is too much water!! DUH!). When I see the 'overflow stains' that form at the bottom of the the holes (I think)along the lowest row of holes in the top bucket, it leds me to believe that the pulse is filling up the bottom of the 'pot' and overflowing the holes: yes?

but now, holes drilled at 2 inches (the bottom of the holes drilled at 2.5 inches) it should, easily, hold the 2 quarts/90 min pulse. Wait. Are you implying that the overflow is coming from the pulse wave while it is moving downward and not the collection of liquid at the bottom of the bucket, filling up and then overflowing?

 

[delta9nxs]

To create a 1.5''x6'' space where the lowest roots would grow in the highest concentration of moisture. Makes every watering more consistent (in how it effects the entire moisture profile throughout the medium) the same way it makes overwatering impossible. Better that 6'' not be in the bucket. What actually happened to me is roots grew into the lower bucket and they wicked water up. A tiny amount of roots made the buckets weight just about as much as I could get them after a heavy watering. The timing of things was interesting on one of my crosses as the roots dropped as upward growth had stopped.

Another reason for the hole in the bottom of container is restrict watering exiting the medium so that a greater amount can be added and even perch above the top of the medium. As the perched layer then sinks into the soil, one can hear hundreds of bubbles creating a soothing crackling sound. Think about when you fill a bottle up and then tip it over and dump everything out. Water leaves the bottle, therefore gas will displace it, thus the "glug-glug" effect.



There was little to no "tip burn" from excessive nutrient concentration, perlite, or anything else on any of my plants. I wouldn't be terribly bothered if there had been. Something different happened mid-late flowering that wrecked the majority of fan leafs that remained after I defoliated. The entire leaf and stem of the leaf went brown and if it was in the light, it could be crushed to dust. If it wasn't in the light, the leaf's stem wouldn't just snap off the leaf. It was like the inside of the leaf hadn't died. I'm thinking I just had one night were temps got too high, especially since night temps were higher than day. The medium couldn't have been any moister when the changed happened and I doubt it was manifestation of a slow change. Coulda been something else, but I'm confident it wasn't because of what you had said, but thanks for the detailed explanation regardless. EC was monitored before and after every watering at an average value of 1 depending on what was being fed. Underfed if anything.

And you should see tip burn on the outside of my bottom roots as they were chemically pruned/burned.



Creating a fixed hole removes any further ability to tune. What I had actually done while just playing with the medium and no plants was submerge the tailpiece into say a 32oz plastic bottle. I used different containers and cut holes to accomplish what you are suggesting without any fixed change. When playing with turface, I notice it would stay moist enough for weeks with out any submersion. I also had weighted the buckets on a scale after being in various heights of those plastic containers and medium to find out it wasn't making much of a difference.

I don't have any complaints about Fox Farm or the pricing, but I'll probably try something new when I run out of their powdered nutes which could be awhile.

Yeah, I could use a rope or fabric in order to do that, but I built these with the intention of some day not watering by hand. The way things were was convenient in veg because I could water 3 or 4 times.. which could be an entire week..while allowing run off to build up just before reaching the tailpiece.

Not sure what I'll do next, if I can commit to a residence, but it'll be something different again. My strains were a F2 of a tester bean and a surprise Princess Diesel male. F1s of the tester and other strains have been grown by several others on the board and nobody would say they yield well. Never had my paws on any clones yet, but hopefully I can lay down my own roots and be more consistent with things soon enough.

okie doke

well. it's obvious that you have a better grasp of the way things work in the physical world than i do.

and, it is obvious that you are not here for help as you have categorically rejected every single recommendation anyone has ever offered you here.

i have explained that i don't have time to deal with debating physical qualities and characteristics anymore.

i feel that your presence here is creating confusion for new readers and so i'm going to politely ask you not to post here anymore until such time as you decide to actually build and operate one of these devices or a device that truly operates on these principles.

you will be welcomed with open arms and a lot of goodwill then.

sincerely, delta9nxs

 

[catman]

well. it's obvious that you have a better grasp of the way things work in the physical world than i do.

and, it is obvious that you are not here for help as you have categorically rejected every single recommendation anyone has ever offered you here.

i have explained that i don't have time to deal with debating physical qualities and characteristics anymore.

The sarcastic passive-aggressive is very disrespectful. I'm not sure what your problem with me or my ideas is, but at least I can separate my ideas from my emotions.

I've rejected everything? Oh brother... All one has to do is read my posts to see you aren't being truthful, are confused, and/or are slanderous.

As always.. I've learned a lot in this thread, am grateful for the resource and those who provide it, have misunderstood many things in the past and perhaps present, but if nothing else, I've shared my experiences in a descriptive and truthful manner. I've also been right about a thing or two that I was advised was wrong. Not my loss if anyone wants to systematically reject what I've shared...

i feel that your presence here is creating confusion for new readers and so i'm going to politely ask you not to post here anymore until such time as you decide to actually build and operate one of these devices or a device that truly operates on these principles.

You accused me of this several months ago, but I've yet to have seen a single post as an example of such confusion inflicted by my posts. Can't say I haven't seen plenty of confusion otherwise.

A principle that has changed since conception of the PPK is to remove roots from sitting in stagnant water as fast as possible. Why have them sit in any stagnant water for any duration? If I wasn't able to be home, to take care of my plants, I've personally got bigger issues. Only reason the tailpiece needs to be submerged and multiple line pulse heads used to create a plunger/vacuum effect is because of redundant and unnecessary holes. Although it may not be a principle of an acceptable definition of a PPK as defined by delta9, if a volume of water exposed to atmospheric pressure is drained, gases will disperse to fill the volume of that space.

Anyone who builds one of these systems should install the tailpiece first, fill the bucket with medium, and play around with adding large volumes of water over brief periods of time by hand. Go ahead and add more holes to the bucket, you'll just have to dump more in or faster. Having a hole in the upper buckets sets the max height of a possible perched water table which renders the submersion of the tailpiece as a moisture tuning mechanism worthless above the hole. If faster/higher pressure/larger volume of flow is a principle behind success, use a larger or more than one tailpiece and/or a coarser medium.

I would never expect any member to take my word over delta9's in this thread, but there it is for those who trust their own eyes. Hopefully anyone who does this will share their experiences for the potential greater good of everyone; unlike those passing private messages back and forth because for whatever reasons. Passive Progress Killer.

 

[delta9nxs]

i rest my case

 

[Guest 142956]

I just have to say thanks for helping me improve my wick system to it's present point. Perfect roots top to bottom, beautiful plants and virtually carefree growing.

 

[petemoss]

Hi d9, just a quick note to tell you that you were right about the algae. After a couple of days, there was a clear jell like growth in my flood tray. Not green like algae but a solid sheet on top like ice. pH was up to 7.5 (!) so I changed out all the water and re-nuted to 1.2 EC with pH of 5.7. I made a cover from heavy pond liner and cut some holes for the wicks to dangle down. Hopefully I won't have any more algae problems and my plantlets will continue to grow healthy and vigorous. These wicks are working very well!

 

[high life 45]

I was just wondering if you were gonna do something like this pete. Let us know how it is holding up in a week or so.

 

[delta9nxs]

Sorry I wasnt being clear.. I'm not sure how/why the overflow occurs at all (except there is too much water!! DUH!). When I see the 'overflow stains' that form at the bottom of the the holes (I think)along the lowest row of holes in the top bucket, it leds me to believe that the pulse is filling up the bottom of the 'pot' and overflowing the holes: yes?

but now, holes drilled at 2 inches (the bottom of the holes drilled at 2.5 inches) it should, easily, hold the 2 quarts/90 min pulse. Wait. Are you implying that the overflow is coming from the pulse wave while it is moving downward and not the collection of liquid at the bottom of the bucket, filling up and then overflowing?

sorry it has taken me so long to respond but i was distracted, again.

there are several things happening simultaneously.

the pulse has to have enough volume and duration to create the pwt and an excess.

the pwt is being drained at the same time at high speed but very temporarily there is enough excess to cause the gravitational flow potential to overcome the forces of cohesion and adhesion and force water out of the sidewall holes.

at the point in time when the excess is drained off, either through the tailpiece or out of the sidewall holes, even though the pwt is still temporarily there, the flow out of the sidewall holes stops.

you can observe this when you are loading and washing the medium in the container. i wash it in place with the hose and tap water. when i stop the water is flowing heavily out of all the holes in the sidewall plus the tailpiece. when the excess is drained down to the point where the pwt would naturally occur water stops coming out of the holes in the sidewall and can still be observed coming out of the tailpiece for a few more minutes. during this period the pwt is being removed from the grow container and into the tailpiece, where it is much smaller. the difference in volume is being expelled.

when you look at the new hole pattern with 3/4" holes drilled at the 2.5" point from the outside bottom edge the height on the inside from the bottom to the lower edge of the holes is 1.75". the diameter of the bottom of the bucket is 10.25", so, 5.125 x 5.125 x 3.1416 x 1.75 divided by 231 gives a volume of approx 62.5 ounces total at that level. a little less than a half gallon.

but, we also have media sharing the same area with the liquid. with the turface/ricehull mix of 3/1 you get an approx air porosity of 35% and a water holding capacity of approx 35% so that means the total free water holding capacity of the already wet medium is temporarily approx 35%. by free water i mean water that will not be retained in the medium after draining.

as 35% of 62.5 oz's is 21.87 oz's with a 64 oz pulse you are left with approx 42.13 oz's that is going to be drained. editing to say that this is the amount above the volume that is required to form the pwt.

you could just figure this out for your application and only give the precise amount and, as we have just had pointed out to us, this will work and grow a plant. probably a very nice plant depending on who you are but if you give it an excess that both maximizes the gas exchange and really gives the medium a good bath you will grow a bigger nice plant. the design modifications that we have done reflect this thinking. the experiences that we all have collectively here prove it.

again, sorry for the delay.

 

[delta9nxs]

I just have to say thanks for helping me improve my wick system to it's present point. Perfect roots top to bottom, beautiful plants and virtually carefree growing.

hey, bill, thank you and i'm glad it's working out for you. growing your own medicine is extremely gratifying.