Rider509
Well-Known Member
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of dirt, I will fear no weevils: for the spirit of the deep water is with me; thy pump and thy air stones they comfort me.
Panama x Malawi - Probiotic & Organic Indoor Soil Grow
Coco is super easy with the exception of feeding watering frequency. I like penny and a few others just drain to waste with it. i use the general hydroponics compressed bricks with zero additives. I just rehydrate it, rinse it real well, charge it with cal mag and a light nutrient mix and its into service in 3 gallon fabric pots.
I look at soil as anything but easy. I would go DWC before going to soil. Thing with coco is if you have a problem you flush the plants and reset. Advanced nutrient ph perfect coco nutes are almost fool proof but admittedly not cheap. I have seen great grows on here in all mediums so its all doable. Its just for me coco seems easier.
I’ve used flood and drain and drip feeders with coco and both worked out well.
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- #304
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
But I must preach the Gospel of the Deep Water to the dirty heathens and bring them into the light! LOL.
Uh-oh, Rider's gone friar on us!
I've got a little drip feed system setup to irrigate the pots right now. My only concern with coco is having to flush the pots out if I use a synthetic based nutrient like I've used because I know something like General Hydro's Flora Nova gets super salty really fast. I have EarthJuice too, but I'm not really sure how the natural (re. biological) ingredients would do in a reservoir or if things would start growing, get nasty/clogged, etc. I've heard of peope doing organic coco so I know there must be some kind of inbetween. I don't really want to go back to having to flush out pots though.
Don't you need a lot of run-off to do coco?
As long as you have some run off that’s enough. Remember that a lot of strains were developed in high salt environments and thrive in them. Chemdog/ Diesel/ OG’s all fit in that category.
No. You don't. I water 2x per day and water to a little run off. I don't have to do it twice a day in 3 gallons but i do. Cultuvator has a great thread on it and he is damn good at it. Nutes wise you should back off what they reccomend for strength of the mix. A lot people dont flush. I will a couple of times durring the grow but am not convinced it has to be done.
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- #307
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
I don't know, I had Blackberry Kush and Platinum Girl Scout cookies, both of which should have some OG lineage ( the PGSC moreso ) and both got pretty messed up when the soil would get salty. But I think that Flora Nova also has a reputation as being one of the saltiest nutrients.
I don't know, that's one reason I don't want to go back down that road again, is that there's a million different bottled nutrients out there and they all range so much in price and reputation, it's kind of a nigtmare.
I like EarthJuice but just don't know how it would do running through a drip-feed system.
If you were feeding synthetic nutrients in soil that’s a whole other animal. Soil and coco are very different.
Yeah. I didn't pick up on the synthetic nutes in soil. That is a totally different animal.
The advanced nutrient line is very straight forward to use in straight coco. I thought the fox farm stuff with its dry additives were a little on salt heavy side. A sub $20 ppm meter and your set.
A ppm meter is a must.
I really think that if you can get vermi-composting up and running, it will solve most of your issues.
Allow you to work within your budget, you can keep the plants smaller and in small containers (think SOG) which would be easy for you to manage when you aren't feeling well. The vermi-composting will keep your need to mix things together to a minimum. Keep you from needing to buy a bunch of new equipment. You won't be tied to your plant like Coco growers (no offense to you guys....I just know Fert sometimes has periods where he doesn't feel well or want to be overly active) with needing to water 2x day.
Each method of growing has its appeal and its pitfalls. If you can get your soil dialed in (which admittedly is more difficult with a tight budget), you will be set for some of the easiest growing you can imagine, especially with your auto watering system.
Speaking of your auto watering system, I wouldn't run any ACT in there. ACT can get nasty once its been sitting for more than day and I can only imagine what a week will look like.
Allow you to work within your budget, you can keep the plants smaller and in small containers (think SOG) which would be easy for you to manage when you aren't feeling well. The vermi-composting will keep your need to mix things together to a minimum. Keep you from needing to buy a bunch of new equipment. You won't be tied to your plant like Coco growers (no offense to you guys....I just know Fert sometimes has periods where he doesn't feel well or want to be overly active) with needing to water 2x day.
Each method of growing has its appeal and its pitfalls. If you can get your soil dialed in (which admittedly is more difficult with a tight budget), you will be set for some of the easiest growing you can imagine, especially with your auto watering system.
Speaking of your auto watering system, I wouldn't run any ACT in there. ACT can get nasty once its been sitting for more than day and I can only imagine what a week will look like.
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- #312
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Yeah I was thinking about the coco thing and though I do have a auto-water setup, it's got tiny reservoirs, so I'd be filling them up quite frequently in a coco grow I think.
Got it, not gonna try the ACT in there. That was the feeling I got after just seeing what grows on the airstone after 48 hrs of brewing. Pretty sure things would get ugly real fast.
I think it'd be great to get a soil mix together that would preclude me from having to do ACT as well. Admittedly I don't find it as much a pain in the ass as mixing nutrient solution, I still think it's pretty disgusting and a hassle of its own. I'm thinking that a proper mulch layer like they do in no-till style growing would probably substitute the biological payload that ACTs supply. But that's just a random guess.
I'm probably gonna give it a couple more runs before I abandon hope. The initial run didn't go so bad, all things considered. I could probably do a lot to learn how to better train the plants to account for yield troubles, but as far as trial-and-error of this mix goes I think maybe it might be time to just nix my mix and use something more tried and true like Clackamas Coot's, or Stank Soil
Still trying to figure out the logistics of getting a VC pile going, while also having soil to grow my plants in. I've got about 4-5 cu. ft of that mixup of AmazonBloom/HappyFrog/My1stCustomMix and all pretty much cooked so I can throw that into a VC pile. But I also have 4-5 cu. ft. of stuff in my pots right now that I"ll have to recycle after harvest, and I don't know how I should go about that in terms of starting a new VC pile.
What I would eventually like to get going is to have a VC pile about 8 cu. ft. in size, as well as 8 cu. ft. of soil in my pots at all times, so that at the end of a cycle I could take that soil, and mix it about 50/50 with the VC pile, and plant new plants in that. Then I'd take the other half of the old cycle's stuff, and addit to the VC pile so be composted and wormed for months. Then just keep repeating that pattern.
It seems doable like that, but I've got to figure out how to get 8 cu. ft. of VC going along with 8 cu. ft. of planting soil
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- #313
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Yeah I was thinking about the coco thing and though I do have a auto-water setup, it's got tiny reservoirs, so I'd be filling them up quite frequently in a coco grow I think.
Got it, not gonna try the ACT in there. That was the feeling I got after just seeing what grows on the airstone after 48 hrs of brewing. Pretty sure things would get ugly real fast.
I think it'd be great to get a soil mix together that would preclude me from having to do ACT as well. Admittedly I don't find it as much a pain in the ass as mixing nutrient solution, I still think it's pretty disgusting and a hassle of its own. I'm thinking that a proper mulch layer like they do in no-till style growing would probably substitute the biological payload that ACTs supply. But that's just a random guess.
I'm probably gonna give it a couple more runs before I abandon hope. The initial run didn't go so bad, all things considered. I could probably do a lot to learn how to better train the plants to account for yield troubles, but as far as trial-and-error of this mix goes I think maybe it might be time to just nix my mix and use something more tried and true like Clackamas Coot's, or Stank Soil
Still trying to figure out the logistics of getting a VC pile going, while also having soil to grow my plants in. I've got about 4-5 cu. ft of that mixup of AmazonBloom/HappyFrog/My1stCustomMix and all pretty much cooked so I can throw that into a VC pile. But I also have 4-5 cu. ft. of stuff in my pots right now that I"ll have to recycle after harvest, and I don't know how I should go about that in terms of starting a new VC pile.
What I would eventually like to get going is to have a VC pile about 8 cu. ft. in size, as well as 8 cu. ft. of soil in my pots at all times, so that at the end of a cycle I could take that soil, and mix it about 50/50 with the VC pile, and plant new plants in that. Then I'd take the other half of the old cycle's stuff, and addit to the VC pile so be composted and wormed for months. Then just keep repeating that pattern.
It seems doable like that, but I've got to figure out how to get 8 cu. ft. of VC going along with 8 cu. ft. of planting soil
Whoa @Van Stank ... @Blew Hiller just blew my mind with a totally simple, obvious option.
Just use dirt from my backyard for the VC pile. That would solve a looooot.
Thats what....about 56 gallons as it pertains to CF? if you divided that by 3......you need to run 3 bins of about 20 gallons. So you would need three 30 gallon bins.
The ones I got Walmart are cheap and sturdy. I think you could stack two on top of each other, but not sure I would go three. You might be able to put 2 side by side and slide the third on back and forth between the other two for easy access to feed them. You might be able to make a perpetual go using three bins that size.
You figure, 3 months from start to finish for 20 gallons, if you started the next bin at the 30 day mark of the first bin, you could set yourself up to essentially have a new batch of soil every 30 days once you get it running. When your 1st batch is at 60 days, start your third bin. That gives you one at 60 days, one at 30 days, and one at 1 day. Fast forward thirty days and you will be harvesting the 1st bin and you can take the worms straight from the 1st bin and start a brand new bin and repeat. I really think it will be doable for you brother. I think your biggest issue will be providing enough scraps to keep the worms going (but something that you can remedy fairly easy if you get out and talk to some neighbors or local restaurants).
I kid you not, I have my two bins in my house, against the wall next to the closet. Once it warms up a little more, I will move them down to the basement. You don't need a lot of space and if necessary you could go with smaller bins that are more easy to handle. Hell get several that will hold 10 gallons....and stack them 3 high.
The ones I got Walmart are cheap and sturdy. I think you could stack two on top of each other, but not sure I would go three. You might be able to put 2 side by side and slide the third on back and forth between the other two for easy access to feed them. You might be able to make a perpetual go using three bins that size.
You figure, 3 months from start to finish for 20 gallons, if you started the next bin at the 30 day mark of the first bin, you could set yourself up to essentially have a new batch of soil every 30 days once you get it running. When your 1st batch is at 60 days, start your third bin. That gives you one at 60 days, one at 30 days, and one at 1 day. Fast forward thirty days and you will be harvesting the 1st bin and you can take the worms straight from the 1st bin and start a brand new bin and repeat. I really think it will be doable for you brother. I think your biggest issue will be providing enough scraps to keep the worms going (but something that you can remedy fairly easy if you get out and talk to some neighbors or local restaurants).
I kid you not, I have my two bins in my house, against the wall next to the closet. Once it warms up a little more, I will move them down to the basement. You don't need a lot of space and if necessary you could go with smaller bins that are more easy to handle. Hell get several that will hold 10 gallons....and stack them 3 high.
Free and readily available! Can't beat that! Just gotta get some coir and aeration for it after its done becoming VC. Though I suppose you could add it before, certainly wouldn't hurt anything!
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- #316
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Well, like the song goes, we get by with a little help from our friends....
I've got a backyard I can keep all the piles of soil in, totes, whatever, and my girlfriend's agreed to let me take a couple bucket fulls of the apples her dad feeds to his cows. He has a ranch so there's probably all sorts of cow manure and straw that I could grab too.
I'm gonna read that a few more times to wrap my head around it, but yeah it does sound feasible and like it would keep me from running out. I"m trying to look at this as if it were a campfire... You always gather 3 times as much wood as you actually think you'll need.
See this is the shit I love.....planning things to try to meet demands. Its like a mad scientist with a contraption that has a ton of knobs and dials and you gotta figure out what to turn and how much so it doesn't mess anything else up.
Completely agree on the fire wood thing. I also caution people to always add a 10% time line to the end of what they think something is going to take in terms of time. I say that because Murphy is one of my best friends and he always shows up when I don't want him around or need him around and when he does show up, it always costs me more time than I had. So I would factor if we think we need 90 days to break down the VC, schedule it as a 100 days!
Completely agree on the fire wood thing. I also caution people to always add a 10% time line to the end of what they think something is going to take in terms of time. I say that because Murphy is one of my best friends and he always shows up when I don't want him around or need him around and when he does show up, it always costs me more time than I had. So I would factor if we think we need 90 days to break down the VC, schedule it as a 100 days!
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- #318
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Heh, the logistics of things is actually one of my least favorite things because I feel like it never really works out to plan. LIke for example, the 60 day thing already gets complicated since I probably only have about 50 days until I harvest.
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- #319
TheFertilizer
Well-Known Member
Tomorrow will be 5 weeks since flipping to 11/13 for the girls under the CMH. Bout 5-6 more to go
Those buds are looking nice brother. They still have a lot of bulking up to do. Should give you a good yield!