My fellow virtual neighbors, meet Octopot.
I’ve been staying in the home of BrixNewb, waiting on an apartment in a local senior community, and during this stay I’ve had the pleasure of documenting his introduction to Octopots. I’d come across the concept over a year ago when Pigeons420 tried one in his garden and covered that failed attempt on his YouTube channel.
Things got quiet, that bit of information stashed away in my gray matter until it was needed. Then one day overlord brought it up in conversation as a method that’d caught his eye, and one thing lead to another. Before long Brix was interested enough to order his first pot and give one a go. She’s the Pineapple Chunk pictured in the lead photo, taken just as she began to open up.
It didn’t take her long to look like a field flower.
By New Year’s Eve she’d grown so huge he had to string her up.
Watching this plant grow was one of the most exciting things I’ve witnessed in the years I’ve been growing. It reminded me of the thrill I’d felt when I turned my first plants over to their SWICK basins and let them water themselves.
At harvest Brix pulled at least 12.5 ounces of huge, chunky, frosty and fragrant buds. He grew with used Doc Bud’s HBB kit soil (first run) , vegged with Urban Farms Vegetable Fertilizer, and flowered her with Urban Farms Texas Tomato Food nutrients. Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy, as Brix likes to say. Lol!
BrixNewb has a number of Octopots running in his garden at the moment, testing out nutrient lines to find the one that suits his plants and growing style best, and we decided it was time to get me started on one and get some excitement generated in the community.
I recently came across a delightful little chemovar grown by @MagicJim that fired my libido up with an energy that consistently caught me off guard.
You bet I had to have a cut. Lol! A little finagling, a bit of cosmic whimsy, and @beez0404 had a rooted cut in my hands.
Today Brix hooked me up with a 3-gallon Octopot, The Sunshine #4 medium to plant in, and the Mega Crop 2.0 nutrients I’ll be feeding her.
Evidentially, I’m challenged about reading instructions before I jump in head first. I made a couple missteps in the assembly, but they won’t make a lot of difference in the end. I neglected to moisten the medium before assembly, and overcame that by doubling the amount of water on the initial - and only- top drench, and filling the reservoir a little higher to allow for more wicking this first time.
I also neglected to pH adjust the water, something I’ll correct the next time. @InTheShed has an interesting thread on why one doesn’t need to pH the water going in, but rather check the medium with a slurry test. A slurry test won’t be possible with this system, since you won’t ever saturate the medium enough to get a read, so it’s safest to keep the nutrient water to the recommended 6.3 - 6.8 range.
Next watering I’ll begin checking pH and adjusting accordingly.
There are a number of manufacturer videos available on YouTube explaining the system, and I’ll let you search them out at your leisure.
This thread is to generate the excitement I feel on a broader level. At the moment we know of five members already signed on to the system, @BrixNewb, @PhatK (who I’ve yet to meet
), @Rooster1 (just ordering his equipment), @overlord, and myself. I’d appreciate any others that might have been missed jumping in to join the fun.There are no expectations of involvement with this thread other than that you’ll post updates and comments any time you get the urge.
The particulars of my own grow are:
Chemovar: It’s It Punch (clone) from Sun Grown Genetics
Medium: Sunshine #4
Method: Octopot soil/hydro hybrid
Nutrients: Mega Crop 2.0
Lights: Powered by @TimberGrowLights, 100 W Vero 29 COBs for veg and 3000k quantum board for flower
Hey.... let’s have some fun and learn to grow even bigger plants.
interesting, 
You won’t regret it. 
