Question about Organic Hydro

[MintyFresh]

I am very new and I have been reading around but some things are very confusing. I was thinking of using a 'hempy bucket' style but for the life of me I can't find vermiculite anywhere, lowes, home depot, sutherlands, etc. I decided to use mostly perlite with some peat moss thrown in. Would peat be considered organic?

Ok I have another question.

I have read that peat is very acidic and that your ph will be very high with it. I was thinking of mixing some of my tap water (very alkaline) with my RO water to help but decided to test it first...I ran RO water through a 2:1 perlite, peat mix and tested the run off...it was somewhere between 6.2 and 6.5 (the color was hard to tell exactly). So now I am very confused..is this normal?

I know this is likely a very noob question..but well..if the noob hat fits..:smile:

 

[GreenThumbBumb]

Yes peat is organic, the kind a get from lowes comes ph'd with lime, its in a red bag. Add dolomite lime to correct the PH. Get the pulverized lime by the lawn nutes at lowes dont get the pelletized. Here are 2 good threads i think you might like.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=116431

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=94461

 

[MintyFresh]

Thank you for the reply. I forgot to mention that I also have a hard time finding lime, I look and look and even asked the people and they just scratch their heads.

Pretreated peat might be the reason. I have the Miracle Grow peat moss, it is all I could find..I figure I just wouldn't feed the plants for a week or two to use up what is already in the moss (and the perlite too as well- again the MG is all I could find.)

but the lime is proving to be difficult to find..any thing else I can use? What about the ph up/down for fish? Would that hurt? I can't order online, can only get what is available in stores....and no hydro shops or any garden centers for that matter.

Oh and thanks for the links..I have started to read them.

 

[Sleepy]

i knew a guy named Organic Hydro...

i sure miss him, too.

 

[MintyFresh]

??

Anyhow I have finally found lime! Turns out there is a nursery outside the city that sells it. But now I am wondering if I should use it. The run off right now is 6.5, using lime would make it go higher and I want somewhere between 5.8 and 6.3 right? So instead of using lime, I need something else to make it go up a little...right? I definitely can't get a hold of ph up/down so it has to be something I can get from the nursery they had all sorts of things like cotton seed meal, garden grade corn meal, etc..

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Ahh, the fine art of pH buffing!

Having long since gone microbially-assisted organic myself long ago I've had to bother little with pH adjustment. Occasionally the finer points of oxygen-injected organics can be a little mysterious and frustrating and I sometimes miss aspects of sterile hydroponic gardening. However, one thing I will never miss is pH management. That said it isn't impossible and good predictable additives aren't too difficult to come by if you know what to look for.

Hydrated lime is a (relatively) fast-acting source of calcium and will raise your pH (make it more alkaline) to a controllable degree. Alternatively some sources of potassium (potash) as in burned organic matter will buff the pH upwards nicely. To lower your pH (make it more acidic) add a source of sulfur. Straight-up 'Garden Sulfur' can be found at Lowe's and is nearly pure sulfur but it doesn't hydrate well. Epsom Salts are Magnesium Sulfate crystals (MgS4) and the stuff is 100% water soluble. It will kick the pH downward. Keep in mind you need four times as much magnesium available to the plants as sulfur and so Epsom salts are exactly opposite from the desired ratio. Be sure to provide additional Mg from a separate source.

Good luck with your Hempy Bucket! I have seen some peeps on this forum get astonishingly good results although I believe that the best ones around come from gardeners who embrace the pro-biotic side of organics (whether they know it or not). Despite what the method's originator, DaliHempy, claims; straight hydro nutes in a sterile hydro-style pearlite/vermiculite whicking pot is not fully taking advantage of what makes it good. The Hempy Bucket is great because it makes low maitinence possible via its bath. A very spongy medium keeps things nice and oxygenated. This in turn encourages the development of aerobic bacteria who vastly improve the soil chemistry and break down complex organic fertilizers into raw components suitable for intake from the plants. Much extra vigor is generated while nutrient efficiency goes up and susceptibility to pathogens goes down. Fertilizing with organics, using natural compost, or even whipping your own bacterial culture jaykush-style can create increasingly good odds for harboring beneficial microbes.

In this gardener's opinion to use organic ferts while not thinking about or taking time to develop beneficial microlife is to miss the goddamn point entirely! Either stick with all-salt ferts and do it sterile hydro style (which has its merits) or come to grips with the fact that there is NOTHING you can do to prevent some bacteria from living in and among your cannabis plants. If they are going to be there anyway you may well take the time to make sure your precious ladies have some upstanding tiny neighbors who will help them along their way to greatness.

Either way though, the HempyBucket is at least a predictable method, you shouldn't have too much trouble making it a tolerable place for your plants to live. If you are doing your buckets hydro-style, which is to use all concentrated liquid hydro nutes with very regular feedings and do your best to keep microbes out of the equation then you want a pH right around 5.8 On the other hand, if you want to use organics and therefore leverage micro-life in any way you would really prefer to have a much more soil like pH in the neighborhood of 6.5 Finding some good buffing agents isn't hard, you've already got material to raise the pH; just go to the drug store and grab a carton of Epsom Salts and keep in mind that you need to supplement some magnesium. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[MintyFresh]

Thank you! Actually I rather like the organic method and I was reading about a variation on the hempy bucket that used soil, so I would think you could use organic soil as well. I was a little intimidated at first about organic because I couldn't find the right stuff, but now that I can get everything I am doing more heavy reading into it. thank you again for helping me out!

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Aha!

Soil-based Hempy Bucket variations? That is getting awfully close to a mutant low-maintenance organic hydro technique of my own design tentatively known as the Organic Bubble Bath Tub! The OBBT is fairly similar to the HempyBucket design in that it features a light spongy medium up top and a rock-filled water bath in the bottom. Despite the similarities though the OBBTs operate in a way that is a radical departure from the HB method and is indeed unique in the world of cannabis cultivation for what it is able to accomplish.

Here's the problem with running an organic HempyBucket: Even though a good HB medium is fairly oxygenated it lacks a method for rapidly replacing that oxygen. HempyBuckets are entirely at the mercy of osmosis. DaliHempy claims that this makes them fail-safe and extremely low-maintenance. To a point this is true, the method is not effected by power or pump failure like so many other hydro methods. However I take issue with calling a DaliHempy-style HB 'low maintinence'. DaliHempy himself claims that the 'best' way to run an HB is with all hydro nutes and no organics. This means that you have to feed the plants every day. That means you must either be prepared to hand-water the plants on a daily basis (hardly low maintenance) or set up an automated drip system (great, but didn't we go with the HB method to keep things simple?)

While doing it like DaliHempy recommends will net you very predictable results it is hardly the best way to take advantage of passive hydro. I think user Bass Akwards said it best:

Whether his spelling is the result of a learnig disability, a lack of formal education, lousy keyboard skills, or a deliberate facade ( which is possible ), "Hempy" has made one thing crystal clear:

You can make something work, without knowing how, or why it works.

[EDIT] I THINK: DaliHempy doesn't really know what is going on inside this wonderful technique that he has created. When boosted by beneficial microbes and fungus Hempy Buckets are a force to be reckoned with and I have seen some truly spectacular results from this technique. Hempy completely lacks the understanding that organics and micro-life can far and away outperform straight hydro nutes.

Best way is to start them in RW or Coco starters if you grow them in soil you infact stress the plant by washing of soil and infact risk taking over nastys to the hydro medium...

These supposed 'nastys' that he is talking about are potentially beneficial microbes. DaliHempy flat-out refuses to acknowledge that organic fertilization and strong micro-life are capable of taking his technique to a new level, even when other gardeners have done just that! He is convinced that the advantages of hydro lie with the usage of specialized hydro nutes and maintaining a 'sterile' (IRL this is impossible) grow medium.

Rubbish

The only real advantage that hydroponics have over medium-based grows is the huge oxygen levels they are able to provide to the root zone. It is well known that terrestrial plants need to "breathe in" CO2 in order to make their food, however it is much less popular knowledge that they need oxygen to carry nutrients into their roots. All forms of hydro, Hempy Buckets included, have design features that increase oxygen levels in the root zone compared to traditional soil grows. The hempy bucket uses its spongy pearlite based medium along with the suction made when water is added into the top of the bucket to get more oxygen in the root zone that usual. This coupled with an organic nutrient regime can yield terrific microlife. Wonderful, but many growers on this forum have failed in their quest to create organic Hempy Buckets. There are many examples of grows that didn't work. For whatever reason the gardener failed to get completely beneficial microlife and some kind of pathogen managed to work its way in and ruin their garden.

The problem with trying to get good microbes in a Hempy Bucket is that the technique was not designed with microbes in mind. DaliHempy, the technique's originator, is completely ignorant about micro-life and was giving it no thought when he stumbled across a method that is actually quite good at leveraging it. Many gardeners on this forum have successfully retro-fitted Hempy Buckets with provisions that made them successful at harboring beneficial microlife. But for every one of these there are many failures. Instead of experimenting on your own to get an organic HB you may want to try a similar method instead.

Organic Bubble Bath Tubs where engineered from day one to make the best possible environment for beneficial micro-life. It's medium consists of at least 20% organic soil which means that it can support aerobic bacteria in addition to Mycorrhizal Fungi. Now if you have been a good new gardener then you have already read all of the sticky threads at the top of the Organic Hydro Forum. If you did that you already know how important this fungus is. If not, start reading NOW! Mycorrhizae fungus and Aerobic Bacteria are two parts of a powerful team that works together to constantly adjust your soil chemistry. These combined pro-biotics complete a dizzying number of tasks. They buff the pH, fight off pathogens, add drought resistance, increase nutrient avaliability and decrease required feedings. The beneficial fungus and bacteria radically improve a grow's nutrient efficiency. What is not widely known about salt ferts and hydro feeding regimes is that they are incredibly wasteful! An all-salt-fert gardener will struggle to see more than 10% of the added nutrients actually being used by the plants. The vast majority of the nutes in, say, an ordinary non-organic Hempy Bucket are completely wasted as they are washed out and run through the overflow drain.

On the other hand, strong microlife and an all-organic feeding regiment can push nutrient utilization titillatingly close to the %100 mark. This is why my OBBTs use drastically smaller quantities of nutes at much larger intervals. Even the most aggressive OBBT grows only need to be fed about once every 2 weeks and watered on a weekly basis (sometimes even less!) This is true low-maintenance growing. You will never have to fight pathogenic infections, you will never see nute burn, you will never have to obsessively check Total Dissolved Solids or babysit the pH. Correctly tuned micro life will hold the pH at a rock-steady 6.5 and there is nothing (as far as I know) that the gardener can do to change it without harming the plants.

in summary: Going organic without taking the time to consider the needs of beneficial microlife is to miss the point entirely. To quote myself:

Its funny how organic gardeners seem to think that their plants benefit from the fact that their nitrogen (and other nutes) is coming from a natural (organic) source. THIS IS NOT TRUE. THE PLANT DOESN'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT WHERE THE NITROGEN CAME FROM! NITROGEN IS NITROGEN, THE END. Its as if they think that the feel-good sentimental value that they get from using organics will somehow transfer to the plants. IT IS A PLANT. IT HAS NO FEELINGS. IT DOES NOT FUCKING CARE WHERE ITS NUTES COME FROM.

The plant couldn't give two shits that the nitrogen came from blood meal and not some urea-based chemical salt. This is not what make organics cool! Organics are awesome because it allows you to deliver potent nutrients to your plants without wrecking the micro-life present in the soil. Salt nutes kill microbes. Organic nutes do not kill microbes. This is the ONLY important difference between salt and organic nutes, period. In order to actually be getting any real advantage from organics you have to embrace the micro-organisms that will take residence in your soil.

I heartily encourage all cannabis gardeners to embrace organics, but you must embrace them for the right reasons. To ignore this is a recopy for disappointment. Since you seem interested in organic Hempy Buckets I would heartily recommend that you hit the link in my sig to check out the thread on my OBBT method. Even if you do not end up emulating my grow style there is a lot on that thread to learn about how to best construct an organic medium to get desirable micro-life. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[MintyFresh]

Once more, thank you! I will be reading your idea, but not only because I am interested, but because I like to read everything I can get my hands on to best learn. I have read the sticky's and I love the idea of the microbial little guys taking care of my plants...I am mostly dubious about killing them off myself by accident! LOL....plus since I am so new to growing (I lived in a small apartment with not so much as a houseplant my entire life). Honestly I would prefer to go completely organic and stay away from everything else, I have even started to read up on creating my own compost pile and worm bin. Anyhow I will be going over to your thread and reading. thanks for pointing it out to me!

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

MintyFresh,

It is wonderful to see a new grower with such enthusiasm! As a newbie gardener you are at both an advantage and disadvantage. Your current knowlege of horticultural science is very limited and you have a lot to learn. On the other hand your lack of preexisting knowledge means that you have no forces of habit or otherwise entrenched modes of thought when it comes to growing cannabis. This means you are well positioned to embrace a whole new style of growing that I am attempting to popularize. Although I often suggest gardeners copy my OBBT style I really just want to get some momentum behind the idea of active oxygen injection for organic medium-based grows. The OBBTs are the best way I know of to accomplish this but there are surely others that will work just as well.

I'll tell you right now that 100% organic gardening is not the most n00b-friendly part of cannabis growing culture. The forces that drive purely organic soil chemistries are mind-bogglingly complex to the point where modern science still doesn't fully understand what goes on down there. Couple that with the fact that many all-organic instructionals you might find on this forum and others are generally written by growers who have developed their methods based on feelings rather than hard scientific fact and you have a dire situation for a newbie such as yourself. I have seen many many dissatisfied organic gardeners here on this forum. If you want to get started cultivating cannabis with good, predictable results right away then the world of pure organics may not be for you, it is a lot of work.

That said, organics and the microlife they subsequently generate can make for a grow that is much easier to manage than anything from the world of ordinary hydro. Active oxygen injection makes this low-maintinence state of being easier to achieve. Oxygen injection makes it very difficult for harmful microbes to gain a foothold in your medium and makes it equally difficult for the gardener to cock things up. As long as you use primarily organic ferts and don't do anything stupid like, say, add hydrogen peroxide then there is very little you can do to harm the beneficial microbes benieth. In a high-oxygen environment they will flourish in spite of you.

I am very glad that you are so enthusiastic about advanced organics. Active composting and worm bins are part of this world and are a great place to start. There is an untold quantity of knowledge and good instruction out there on how to do these things. Slightly more fringe in nature are organic teas. This is another technique that uses oxygen injection to rapidly multiply beneficial microbes. It is the primary method for delivering organic nutes in liquid form and is something you will need to study in depth. Even less common but most beneficial of all is producing your own aerobic bacteria cultures. Under many circumstances this can be difficult and requires high tech equiptment. However, one extreemly beneficial range of bacteria known as lactose bactilii are very easy to produce. Forum user jaykush has a wonderful thread on how to do this:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=96325

Lactos Bactilii are a fabulous addition to any organic grow. I have started to use the stuff both in my medium and in combination with my usual foliar treatments.

Let me be the first to enthusiastically welcome you to the world of organic cannabis cultivation MintyFresh! Successfully being a part of it is going to take a great deal of research and familiarization on your part, but the benefits of it can be so great I personally see them as without an equal. It seems that you have the only things you really need to be successful in this realm: tremendous curiosity and a willingness to learn. Armed with these I have no doubt you will be another satisfied and successful organic gardener!

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[MintyFresh]

Wow! I was just posting on your page, I love your setup but I am restricted in space IE I can only grow in the rubbermaid tubs.....I need to do a micro sog that is perpetual. BUT your system is something I will definitely keep tabs on as I learn more about organic growing....I am worried about finding microbes, I have seen people post about buying them..but I know for sure I have nothing like that around here....then you go and give me a link to making your own microbes...sweet. I really want to use your method, I completely understand the need for bubblers...lots and lots of air....but I can't see running a ton of tubes into little bitty containers.

 

[mrwags]

I was reading through the advice and as always it's damn good advice BUT If I was to give any advice to a new grower it might be K.I.S.S. That being Keep It Simple Stupid. To me the more growers we get involved in our little revolution the more chances we have years down the road of future leaders coming from a society that realizes Weed's not such a bad thing.

For less that say $80.00 US dollars you can get a bag or Biotanicare Ready Grow Soil, A bottle of Pure Blend Pro Grow and Bloom, Cal-Mag and some Liquid Karma. Thats all ya need to grow bud no meters no worrying about ph because when used properly the buffer works and you got all your girls need to prosper.


Now later on once you get a few grows in then ya play Mad Scientist and play with your mixes and foods but do so with the extra cuts ya took off your mommy plant because you got bud to smoke and some more growing

Otherwise like many others you play Mad Scientist right off the bat spend big money on some beans kill them dead and go back to looking for your local dealer and that in itself is the Real Crime.


PM me if ya understand what I'm trying to say and I'll show ya the goober proof way of growing Good Bud.



My Penny
Mr.Wags

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Hey there wags! Big fan of your magical 1000 watt-on-a-mover bucket grow.

Your advice is one for the ages and simplicity is the greatest ally to a newbie grower. Many a fledgling cannabis cultivator have given up on the hobby after failing in their first attempts because they tried to go mad scientist from day one. Fancy hydro kits, spendy designer seeds and the like often attract the most n00bish of growers and they are often disappointed by what all of their big investment gets them.

I had no intention of winding MintyFresh up and getting him all stoked about a super-complex technique that he could never hope to get good results from on his first try. I do a lot of explaining and arm-waving when talking about the OBBTs and the way I address them can make the whole process seem very complex. However the techniqe has to be one of the simplest in existance beyond just sticking soil in a pot and letting it get on with its own devices. MintyFresh expressed interest in the HempyBucket method and specifically wanted to employ organics. All-organic hempy buckets can be tricky business as I was explaining that they wheren't designed to support microlife. MintyFresh could very easily go with a soil-supplimented organically-fertilized hempy bucket and be deeply dissapointed when he didn't happen to develop the right microbes fast enough and the whole thing gets eaten by root rot.

Conversely a properly set-up OBBT is almost completely idiot-proof. What you suggested, as you said, requires no meters or bother with pH buffing. Niether do the OBBTs! Beyond that, not only do they need no adjustment but they will actually resist being messed up. I struggled for ages without avail to adjust the pH of one of my OBBTs to be more acidic for the tomatoes I was growing. It was impossible. The OBBTs are actually very n00b friendly. They resist droubt, fight off infections, prevent nute burn, prevent nute defficeincy, balance the pH and allow you to re-use the medium without fear of breeding pythium. All of the required matirials for the OBBTs can be had from local hardware stores and nursuries, no advanced nutrients or constituents are required. They are very cost-effective, barely being more expensive than an ordinary soil grow. It is actually cheaper to run one over time because nutrient usage is many times lower (because it is more efficient) than that of ordinary hydro or salt-nute-treated soil grows. Trust me, when I made all of my suggestions and complex ranting I did keep in mind the fact that MintyFresh will need simplicity on his side to be successful.

I have yet to scale the OBBT method down to a size suitable for micro SOG. The individual valving and such is too much trouble to reproduce a lot. However, not every iteration of the OBBT had the dump valve and I don't think that it is neccessary for success. It just gives your more flexibility and the ability to do a flush/starve regiment. You could try a smaller simpler OBBT in 1/2-1 gallon square containers with only an overflow drain (like a hempybucket) and a small 1 inch cylindrical air stone at the bottom. You can T off a single air line many times if you use small stones, a moderate air pump would be pleanty of oomf.

Alternatively, if you are seriously height-restricted you might want to try your hand at the ScrOG technique. This would involve far fewer plants woven into a wide mesh screen. Though it takes longer to finish than other methods ScrOG has a lot of advantages. If you are using floro lighting it is really the only way to go if you want dense yields with consistent potency. Buds tend to be of a more uniform quality with very little 'popcorn' bud. ScrOG combined with supercropping techniques can create grows in mind-bendingly low headroom, much lower than even the shortest of SOGs. However, a well-managed ScrOG does not sacrifice much yield even when forced into an absurdly short space. .7 grams per watt and up are possible in as little as 8 inches of headroom, even with floros! This is especially true if you use overdriven floro tubes. T12 tubes in overdrive coupled with a good ScrOG are a growing force to be reckoned with and can be operated in the shortest grow spaces possible. I've authored an excellent pictoral guide to overdriving here:

http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=119213

This is, I think, the ultimate solution to cost-efficient low-headroom lighting. That guide is for 48 inch long tubes but the technique works all the way down to 18 inch T12s. It is neigh impossible to get as much light power in as small of a space as can be had with overdriven floros. Perhaps LEDs, but only if you want to shell out a grand for your lighting!

Give these techniques some thought. Depending on how short your space is I think that ScrOG could net you a far larger yield than SOG. Fewer plants would mean lower maintinence and would allow you to use dump-valve-equipped OBBTs. This in turn means the possibility of a flush/starve scheme wich is critical for getting potency to rival the best of hydro!

As far as aquiring micro-life there are many ways to go about it. I prefer to get mine from an ordinary bagged organic fert called Bio Tone Starter Plus. It is made by Espoma and is carried almost universally by Lowe's. If even that is impossible however there are natural ways of getting the good guys. jaykush's lactose Bactilli culturing instructional is a great place to start, I posted a link to it in your thread. Beneficial fungus can be had just by digging about some pine trees or letting some active compost sit outside for a while. There are many good threads on this forum for natural sources of beneficial microbes.

 

[mrwags]

Oh please don't misunderstand my good man all I was saying was your knowledge is gold and should be followed and knew you ment not to wind him up lol I like that one hehe. I read his first post about lime and ph and run off and thought oh damn man your taking the fun out of it lol. Thats what I was posting about, I should have quoted it but I'm tired and old half blind and don't see real good out of the other.

To take something from a little cut of even a seed and grow it into a 5-6 foot monster tree is IMO the fun part.



No Harm No Foul
Mr.Wags

 

[MintyFresh]

Well before I respond completely let me get this little bit of misconception cleared up.

MintyFresh is a girl.

Not that it really matters I guess but since so far I have seen so few female growers I am just that vain to wanna wave and say, "hey looky I'm a girl."

I am a big fan of KISS....the less there is for me to frak up the better. I want my first grow experience to be fun, but I also want to give myself the largest possible chance for success. Right now I have peat and perlite...so I was concerned about all this PH and that is when I learned about organic growing.

I have looked into scrog and love the concept, but it looks like a lot of work as well and part of my goal is to have something that is easy for me to maintain as the reason I am doing this is I suffer chronic pain and I am tired of being a zombie on all the prescription drugs and still never feeling good.

My biggest problem is that I can only get stuff locally..I can not order online or through the mail. That is why most of those ferts and such are a no go for me.

I am growing only for my own consumption and don't need a whole lot, plus my state doesn't have laws on number of plants, only the weight of the stuff itself that is why I am to do a perpetual sog, in out no muss no fuss, tiny little plants that go through the cycle quickly. My only concern is how do I grow them..what is the best possible way for what I want. You guys have given me much to consider and more to research!

Thank you SO much!

 

[mrwags]

Minty this is ICMAG you could be purple with six arms and 4 legs and as long as you are nice and try to share the love of the weed your welcome here. :smile: Gender means nothing do a search for Teresa and see what a women can do she is the tree king and shows the boys up from time to time.

Sorry for the situation for getting nutes. Can ya maybe get a po box or a safe addy to send it to. The only reason I'm asking is because it will make life a lot easier for ya if we could get ya some food for your girls. Now understand it can be done with water just like ya can build a house with just logs but its sure nice to have the extras.


Mr.Wags

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Ah! Ms. MintyFresh it is then! Apologies, spend enough time on the interwebs and you become convinced that there are no actual girls on it. Happily this isn't so!

ScrOG can be a bit labor-intensive. Compared to some styles of free-standing growing it can be quite laborious indeed. I am a huge proponent of supercropping, something that is necessary to run a good ScrOG. Because I supercrop reguardless of my the chosen grow style I tend to consider ScrOG to not be much extra work in comparison. However, compared to an un-supercropped SOG it is surely a lot of work.

Sounds like you need an offshoot of my method. Forum user Mt Toaker and I did some pontificating over on my thread about a way to get multiple containers of organic soil based medium suspended above a single bubble bath. I've got some ideas on how it could be done. Executed correctly and it could be a rival for NFT and other mass-hydro techniques that are suitable for large SOG table grows. Sadly I've never gotten around to doing any real-world trials on this technique which means anyone interested in giving it a stab would need to do a lot of the legwork to get one running. As a newbie this is not something you need to be doing.

Even though it sounds like the current revision of the OBBT technique is not what you need you could still benefit from organics. I think that beneficial microbes could definitely thrive in an organic HempyBucket and that getting a good population of aerobic bacteria and mycorrhizae fungus could drastically reduce the amount of pH babysitting required. Microlife is one of the greatest allies to the low-maintenence gardener. Keep reading up, glad to have you on the organic side of things regardless of what method you end up using.

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

 

[Dalaihempy]

Aha!

Soil-based Hempy Bucket variations? That is getting awfully close to a mutant low-maintenance organic hydro technique of my own design tentatively known as the Organic Bubble Bath Tub! The OBBT is fairly similar to the HempyBucket design in that it features a light spongy medium up top and a rock-filled water bath in the bottom. Despite the similarities though the OBBTs operate in a way that is a radical departure from the HB method and is indeed unique in the world of cannabis cultivation for what it is able to accomplish.

Here's the problem with running an organic HempyBucket: Even though a good HB medium is fairly oxygenated it lacks a method for rapidly replacing that oxygen. HempyBuckets are entirely at the mercy of osmosis. DaliHempy claims that this makes them fail-safe and extremely low-maintenance. To a point this is true, the method is not effected by power or pump failure like so many other hydro methods. However I take issue with calling a DaliHempy-style HB 'low maintinence'. DaliHempy himself claims that the 'best' way to run an HB is with all hydro nutes and no organics. This means that you have to feed the plants every day. That means you must either be prepared to hand-water the plants on a daily basis (hardly low maintenance) or set up an automated drip system(great, but didn't we go with the HB method to keep things simple?)

hi DM i claim no method of hydro or growing for that matter is fool proof but lets be frank here how hard is it to fill a bucket with a medium and mix nutrents as directed by the nutrient bottle then hand water it i mean does it get any simpler than that if it does in the world of hydro show me it as iv yet to see it.


And it is low maintinence how hard is it to feed plants and walk away and yes hydro nutrients is better much better yields better quolity flowers and faster growth in veg.

I have spoken to People done a lot of research and ;like i have posted and sed before it comes done to hydro nutrients being avaluble to the plants as soon as you feed them were organics need to brake down before the plants can take them up.


The only true organic hydro nutrients out there is bio canna i ran an experent with bio canna and also a diffrent organic fert made by a guy thats been into organic gardening for over 40 years i belive who i spoke to about organic hydro and i also spoke to a leeding guy in hydro about organic hydro so i did the research before i started.

The resolts were clear organic hydro didnt even come close to normal hydro and lets be honest hydro is basicly giveing the plants what nature would any way at a faster rate salts and minrals any way.

And you dont need to water the H-buckets daily you only do that when you first put seedling or freshly rooted clones in and under a HPS to avoid the top layer of medium from drying out and stressing the plant once you see the plant show some growth that means the tap roots headed down tawards the rez and you can stop watering daily and water as it needs but i give people a basic formula so they dont screw up.

While doing it like DaliHempy recommends will net you very predictable results it is hardly the best way to take advantage of passive hydro. I think user Bass Akwards said it best:

DM is that so then why is it that people are turning off there DWC buckets and useing my method and have for years the amount of experenced growers that have pm me and thanked me speeks valumes.

No offence but were are your plants mate from start to finish my pics dont lie or do the people that use my method those that have followed me basic formula are very pleased and thats all i cear about i couldnt give a rats if people grew useing my methor its something i use and have for decades and i sheard it with any that wanted to also use it and years later people from all over the world now use it and are more than pleased thats all that maters end resolts.

As for Bass Akwards who cears what he they have to say.

DaliHempy doesn't really know what is going on inside this wonderful technique that he has created. When boosted by beneficial microbes and fungus Hempy Buckets are a force to be reckoned with and I have seen some truly spectacular results from this technique. Hempy completely lacks the understanding that organics and micro-life can far and away outperform straight hydro nutes.

I dont ha ? Intresting comment that one mate the fact is organics is not even close to hydro thats fact proven not only by my experements but known fact by many im not a scientice but put simple organics need to brake down at a micro level before plants can take up the nutrients hydro is taken up by the plants as soon as there feed thats why hydro with out perform every time and untill they can make a organic hydro nutrient that can to it wont even be in the same race.

These supposed 'nastys' that he is talking about are potentially beneficial microbes. DaliHempy flat-out refuses to acknowledge that organic fertilization and strong micro-life are capable of taking his technique to a new level, even when other gardeners have done just that! He is convinced that the advantages of hydro lie with the usage of specialized hydro nutes and maintaining a 'sterile' (IRL this is impossible) grow medium.

Show me proof becouse i know from my experementing it just aint so my friend or from the research and the experts i have spoken to must also be rong yet your right.

Rubbish

The only real advantage that hydroponics have over medium-based grows is the huge oxygen levels they are able to provide to the root zone. It is well known that terrestrial plants need to "breathe in" CO2 in order to make their food, however it is much less popular knowledge that they need oxygen to carry nutrients into their roots. All forms of hydro, Hempy Buckets included, have design features that increase oxygen levels in the root zone compared to traditional soil grows. The hempy bucket uses its spongy pearlite based medium along with the suction made when water is added into the top of the bucket to get more oxygen in the root zone that usual. This coupled with an organic nutrient regime can yield terrific microlife. Wonderful, but many growers on this forum have failed in their quest to create organic Hempy Buckets. There are many examples of grows that didn't work. For whatever reason the gardener failed to get completely beneficial microlife and some kind of pathogen managed to work its way in and ruin their garden.

Mate you can use volcanic rocks clay rocks lots of diffrent mediums the reson people fail is simple becouse they did not lisen and follow the most basic of formulas and or they thort they knew better.

The problem with trying to get good microbes in a Hempy Bucket is that the technique was not designed with microbes in mind. DaliHempy, the technique's originator, is completely ignorant about micro-life and was giving it no thought when he stumbled across a method that is actually quite good at leveraging it. Many gardeners on this forum have successfully retro-fitted Hempy Buckets with provisions that made them successful at harboring beneficial microlife. But for every one of these there are many failures. Instead of experimenting on your own to get an organic HB you may want to try a similar method instead.

DM im far from ignorant i wont go into my past fully but i grew up on farms and have an organic farming fast i also put a lot of thort /effertand and lots of experementing went into the h buckets so please dont carrie on like you are better than me or any one person in this site as that shows a aregent side in a person few will like and respect.

Organic Bubble Bath Tubs where engineered from day one to make the best possible environment for beneficial micro-life. It's medium consists of at least 20% organic soil which means that it can support aerobic bacteria in addition to Mycorrhizal Fungi. Now if you have been a good new gardener then you have already read all of the sticky threads at the top of the Organic Hydro Forum. If you did that you already know how important this fungus is. If not, start reading NOW! Mycorrhizae fungus and Aerobic Bacteria are two parts of a powerful team that works together to constantly adjust your soil chemistry. These combined pro-biotics complete a dizzying number of tasks. They buff the pH, fight off pathogens, add drought resistance, increase nutrient avaliability and decrease required feedings. The beneficial fungus and bacteria radically improve a grow's nutrient efficiency. What is not widely known about salt ferts and hydro feeding regimes is that they are incredibly wasteful! An all-salt-fert gardener will struggle to see more than 10% of the added nutrients actually being used by the plants. The vast majority of the nutes in, say, an ordinary non-organic Hempy Bucket are completely wasted as they are washed out and run through the overflow drain.

On the other hand, strong microlife and an all-organic feeding regiment can push nutrient utilization titillatingly close to the %100 mark. This is why my OBBTs use drastically smaller quantities of nutes at much larger intervals. Even the most aggressive OBBT grows only need to be fed about once every 2 weeks and watered on a weekly basis (sometimes even less!) This is true low-maintenance growing. You will never have to fight pathogenic infections, you will never see nute burn, you will never have to obsessively check Total Dissolved Solids or babysit the pH. Correctly tuned micro life will hold the pH at a rock-steady 6.5 and there is nothing (as far as I know) that the gardener can do to change it without harming the plants.

in summary: Going organic without taking the time to consider the needs of beneficial microlife is to miss the point entirely. To quote myself:



I heartily encourage all cannabis gardeners to embrace organics, but you must embrace them for the right reasons. To ignore this is a recopy for disappointment. Since you seem interested in organic Hempy Buckets I would heartily recommend that you hit the link in my sig to check out the thread on my OBBT method. Even if you do not end up emulating my grow style there is a lot on that thread to learn about how to best construct an organic medium to get desirable micro-life. Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM

Lets cut threw the bull shit shall we pics dont lie heres a plant growing in coco it has perlite lower down in the rez so the coco works as it should as i tryed to run coco only but it stayed to wet and would not work as the medium should an inch of perlite solved that.

This plant is running on say 40 watts per sq foot max infact its under that and has been on the outter of the garden from veg and the pic was taken say 1 and 1/2 weeks ago i can take an up date to show you and the rest how much she has put on since that pic.

Organic hempys V salt n mineral hempys is no match trust me i have tryed and you can run bubblrs you can even pain your buckets in gold you aint going to out perform hydro no mater how much you try fact.


If i was going to run organics it would be as nature did it shes had millions of years to perfect her art.

Lets see some pics mate best i have achhived to date is just over 19 oz cured from a single plant match it then we will talk.

 

[MintyFresh]

Hi Dalaihempy. That is an impressive plant! What a monster. I need to re-read your thread again, it was the hempy bucket/hempy buquet thread that first got me interested simply because I can't grow those monsters and the other method was in my size range....I wonder if I use the hempy bucket as it was made with hydro if it would be completely unmanageable with my height restrictions....while organic base is lower in yield, it is more feasible for what I need....but then again I could be completely wrong.

I like that hydro makes growing time much shorter, but I was concerned about chemicals in the smoke and taste, but it seems flushing takes care of that....though I guess I still favor a more natural approach, I am also interested in a fast producing box. This is a lot for me to consider. I guess I want my cake and eat it (or smoke it?) too. Fast, low maintenance, short.

 

[DrunkenMessiah]

Why hello there DaliHempy, I figured that you would show up eventually but I had no idea you would take such offense!

If you look carefully you will note that I praised your method for what it is: a rigorous set of instructions that will yield large quantities of bud with low-tech ingredients in a very predictable and repeatable way. I applaud your technique for doing this, there are many many gardeners out there who just want good reliable yields without having to experiment or build some very complex system.

The problem is that your guidelines are very strict and, for whatever reasons, many gardeners find merit in the concepts you have written about but do not want to execute the idea in the same way you do. Attacking anyone who suggests this simply demonstrates your ignorance of this community. It is one thing to get irritated at someone who wants to use your technique in a way you did not intend but then endlessly asks you questions about what they should do. This is perfectly understandable, you should not have to dole out advice to people who want to experiment with your instructions. However, it is something else entirely to actively seek out those who wish to modify your ideas and attack everything they have to say. Its not like you can justify your actions by saying that what I've been claiming is wrong. By coming in here and 'correcting' me you are not protecting newbie gardener MintyFresh from being given unsound advice. I have no pictures for you, but plenty of other people in this community do:

plant by user pray4pistils

plant by user SilverSurfer_OG

Both of these guys, and many others, have had very successful grows using organic versions of the HempyBucket. There is flat no way that you can say my suggestions are misinformation. Therefore, you have barged into a perfectly civil conversation about organic cannabis cultivation to dole out a tongue-lashing for no reason

Frankly Mr. Hempy, Nobody asked you!

MintyFresh has already expressed interest in organic gardening and that she wishes to shy away from salt nutes. She has made it abundantly clear that she does not want to mail-order any materials for her grow. If you had taken the slightest of moments to read about the concerns of the OP, which is the whole reason why this thread is even here, then you would have known that there is no way she could use your technique verbatim. She can't order the fancy hydro nutes that you would have her use. She wants to grow with what she can find locally which means her best bet for complete plant nutrition is going to be broad-spectrum organics.

You see Mr. Hempy, even though she is a complete newbie I respect user MintyFresh. She has been brave enough to push past the stigma against the sacred herb, to fight back against big Pharma and get her pain under control. For reasons that I am sure are very important to her she has certain limitations on how she wants to grow. Rather than tell her she would be better off doing things differently I want to help her construct a grow that is best for her specific situation, not to most closely match a set of instructions that some guy thinks are 'the best'.

It is because of this respect for her that I will not launch a counter-attack on all of the things you said in this space. I will not rant about how non-microbally-assisted grows waste the majority of the added nutrients or how it is impossible to grow any plant without it coexisting with microbes on some level. Frankly DaliHempy we just have deep-seated disagreements on the significance of micro-life which means that we will never fully agree on what one might consider to be 'the best' way to grow cannabis.

Suffice to say that I respect your experience and the prestige you have gathered from this community. You don't get as many loyal followers as you have without doing something very right. However, I didn't come onto one of your threads and start telling you how incorrect you are (and I do think you are incorrect on several fronts). I did use your name and made specific statements [assumptions] about you, but the reality is that everything I said was simply my own opinion. How right or wrong my opinion about you might be is not something we need to discuss; that responsibility falls on whomever might be reading this. We are on an internet forum! It comes down to what the reader perceives to be my credibility versus your credibility to see what our opinions are worth. The fact that you reacted to my opinion in such an inflamed way says much more about you than it does about me. Why don't you content yourself with the fact that you have created something that is worth talking about and experimenting on to many people. Leave us organic gardeners to our 'inferior' methods and we will leave you to reign supreme as HempyBucket Master of the Universe; I have no desire to wrest the title from you. Honestly, I don't see how the opinion of a single user who has no reputation [me] has managed to get you so upset. Someone as important and celebrated as yourself should know that anyone who is popular will always have dissenters. Why so insecure? Perhaps you think that what I say has some merit and you had better shoot me down before other people start noticing? Ah, I shouldn't speculate, you are a very mysterious man DaliHempy, I'm sure whatever motivates you has reason to it. May you continue to hone your fabulous technique and add ever more to this great community.

MintyFresh, I apologize for hijacking your thread as it was not my intention, but I knew I would have to have speaks with Mr. Hempy eventually. Hopefully this settles his and my differences and we organic gardeners can continue to go about our business.

Anyway, mrwags seems to think that your life could be made easier if you where able to mail-order some supplies for your grow. This is undoubtedly true but I think that it is possible to get along with locally sourced stuff. The nice thing about using a micro-life-assisted medium is that you have great flexibility on what gets added in. While it sounds like you can't run individual OBBTs for your plants you may want to consider borrowing my technique's first step. If you where to build a single large OBBT that contained no drain holes, just some rock at the bottom (not as much as I usually suggest, just an inch or two) and lots of medium on top you could run an incubation period. Mixing up your initial medium with all of the initially-added organics and some sources of pro-biotics (dig around pine trees for fungus, do jaykush's lactose bactilli culture for bacteria) and then pushing air through the whole mess for a week or two would give you a large quantity of very stabilized, high-potency organically fertilized medium. It would be teeming with all sorts of beneficial life. You could then take appropriate amounts of this activated medium and add it into as many small hempy-bucket style tubs as you desire for your perpetual SOG. This would add a great deal of stability to your organic medium, reducing fluctuations in the pH and providing a long-term nutrient background to constantly feed the plants. This in turn would reduce the number of feedings and generally make everything lower-maintenance. The incubation period would allow you to add a broad spectrum of organics to the medium up front without worrying about harming new plants. Nutrients would be available for immediate uptake and the process of braking down the organic material to provide new nutes over time should be able to outstrip the demands of your plants.
If you can pull this off then you should be rewarded with seriously quick growth rates and very high quality bud, not to mention a lower-stress and simpler grow overall.

Why don't you try and post a bit of an inventory? Tell us all the sorts of of organic nutes and soil constituents you can get your hands on locally. With a decently comprehensive list some of us organic gardeners could help you pick out a good blend to incubate and decide what additional stuff will be added as a tea down the road. With your local access to home improvement stores and nurseries I'm sure we can cook you up something workable.

Good luck and happy gardening!

-DM