7th Grow: Hempy Bucket w/auto watering

I tried to copy Flowamasta's "hempy bucket"-style system with a separate reservoir and timed pump to water every hour or so. Top bucket contains only coarse Perlite, with 5-6 big holes drilled in bottom and lined with a paint strainer bag. Buckets and bag are all 5 gallons each. These are livestock feed buckets, the shortest I could find so far. The red bucket underneath has a single bulkhead in the bottom to drain water+nutes back into the res. The bottom plastic pan is the reservoir. It's a food prep tray that holds 5 gallons easily. Inside of it is a water pump that's plugged into an interval timer. (Currently set to water 15 min every hour during lights on.) There's also an airstone in there bubbling air into the nute solution.



This is the first time I've tried something other than DWC. So far my plant looks healthy after the first day. This setup is a little taller than my DWC tank was, so I'm going to cut out the bottom shelf in my cabinet, so that it can sit on the floor. (My cabinet is a little height-challenged.)

Aug 07:
5.88 pH
385 ppm

Subbed up Dave, this is an interesting concept and I'd like too see if it beats out regular hempy buckets in numerous categories.....I have the same watering halo's and 1/2" tubing but I gravity feed from a bucket up higher since my coco/rockwool only needs watering every 3 days during flower. I depend on the air/water ratio the medium provides, yours will take advantage of frequent oxygenated feeds with a porous medium. Could you tell us a little about your strain and nutrient line-up?
Stay lit, stay cool...jela10

This girl is really growing fast in that hempy bucket! Very healthy looking too.





Barneys Farm "Critical Kush" Feminised Seeds


It's a cross between Critical Mass and OG Kush. Supposed to yield a very high THC and CBD content.

I love how close together the nodes are so far. After she grows a little taller, I'll try to LST the whole plant. I'll just bend the whole thing over to one side.

I'm using Advanced Nutrients hydroponic nutes:

• Sensi Grow A & B
• B-52
• Voodoo Juice

This system seems to work a lot better than DWC so far. Plant is super healthy. I never saw such big leaves before. This is a new strain of pot for me, so maybe that's the reason for the big leaves, but wow!



You can see that I started to LST her by pulling the whole plant over to the left with a string.

I noticed back when I changed the water last Wednesday that roots had already grown through the bottom of the inner bucket quite a bit. Here's a picture of them that I took today:



Today I made a few improvements.

1. Cut a hole in the floor of the cabinet, to give the plant a few more inches to grow vertically. The res now rests on the floor of my room.
2. Made a new top for the res, which the 2 buckets sit on. I previously had one rectangular sheet of plywood with a few holes drilled in it, but it was starting to warp after only a couple weeks. So I bought 2 shelves that together cover the res completely. If you look closely, you can see that I drilled 2 holes right where the 2 shelves butt up against each other. That's so I can remove the water pump easily by simply separating the shelves. And I can get into the res easily by removing just the front shelf, leaving the buckets in place on top of the wider rear shelf.

AWESOME!! Couldn't get ANY more healthy! really great start, good luck + rep!

HOLY SHIT DUDE! That plant looks GORGEOUS. Sorry, couldnt stop yellin. Subbed and + Rep for those friggen leaves!

What nutes are you using?

DB

flowamasta said:

AWESOME!! Couldn't get ANY more healthy! really great start, good luck + rep!

Click to expand...

Thanks man! I've wanted to rep you for the idea, but riu won't let me. But my plant wouldn't be doing so well without this type of system that I learned from you.

Darth Budder said:

HOLY SHIT DUDE! That plant looks GORGEOUS. Sorry, couldnt stop yellin. Subbed and + Rep for those friggen leaves!

What nutes are you using?

DB

Click to expand...

• I'm using Advanced Nutrients hydroponic nutes:
  

  • Sensi Grow A & B
  • B-52
  • Voodoo Juice

  
  I think I need to stop giving her Voodoo Juice, because the roots are already growing out of control.
  
  Maybe it's the strain of pot that I'm growing, too. I've never seen leaves that big before. Looking forward to big things with this grow.
  ​

This plant is poking out a bunch of tops on its own. I did physically top it, but the 2 tops from that are too small to show up yet. Nice dense foliage... almost tropical.




---
I also made some minor improvements since yesterday. I added another fan on the wall above the big CFL on the left, to blow the heat from that light up towards the exhaust vent. Also secured the 2 shelves together with a strap and a bungee cord.



Res water:
6.03 pH
364 ppm

That looks amazing, I have wanted to do something similar. Can you share a little more on how you have the auto feeder set up?

Does it drain back into the res? How often are you pumping water up into the top?

you LSTed it right? Bent it right over? I may be wrong, but i think that might have caused the Auxins to go into overdrive and shoot you another top or two?

hbbum said:

That looks amazing, I have wanted to do something similar. Can you share a little more on how you have the auto feeder set up?

Does it drain back into the res? How often are you pumping water up into the top?

Click to expand...

Hi there! Welcome. All that stuff is described in my first post in this thread. There's a pump inside the res underneath the buckets. It's plugged into an interval timer that turns it on for 15 minutes every hour. You're correct that the water just drains back down into the res by gravity. See the first post for all the details.

Glad you like it. I got the idea from Flowamasta's thread here: <click>

Darth Budder said:

you LSTed it right? Bent it right over? I may be wrong, but i think that might have caused the Auxins to go into overdrive and shoot you another top or two?

Click to expand...

That could be the reason. I didn't expect it to happen so soon. I'm not an expert on plant biology though. LST is just a simple trick that I know will cause more tops to develop, for whatever reason.

With a plant that healthy, and leaves that big, i wouldn't be surprised at how fast anything good happens

DB

wow. I don't know how i missed that, thanks.

I counted 9 tops today.

Bushy Kushy.

Looking nice.. pulled up a chair to watch this one out...

Now and then I help some of the tops poke out between the big fan leaves. Here's what she looks like tonight:






Got a feeling she's about ready to explode. Think I'll need to switch to 12/12 this week. I only have 20" of vertical space left in my cabinet for her to grow in, unfortunately.

Good work Dave, super green and healthy keep it up.