Hempy bucket help!!

Hello I'm a first time grower looking to have a couple of questions answered in regards to my specific method of growing in "Hempy Buckets" I did some research on it and was on the simplicity of it in many aspects such the vermiculite and perlite combination are both PH neutral, the fact the there's a reservoir for the roots to tap into and constantly have nutes available etc. But I seem to be having a problem with controlling my PPM for some reason by this I mean that I mix my nutes at the given ration of the bottle for instance the GH 3 part micro series as indicated on the bottle for beginning of flowering and i measure the nutes and their still under the 1000 PPM readings then I take a sample of the reservoir and its at 500-600 PPM and I'm frankly stumped?? It's been about two months and I haven't flushed can it be that there's a salt build up and have caused a block or something in that sense? I really need advice and help I'm using mostly the line from Advance and I'm open to all suggestions....


Thanks

Please help me out guys I need all inputs and advice I'm a rookie at this and need your guys help!
Thanks

Hey, I've grown plenty of hempy. I'm not sure from reading your post what your problem exactly is. Are your plants not growing or looking poorly? How old/large are they? What size container?

You make up a solution that's 1000 ppm and then when you apply it and test the runoff it's down to 500-600 ppm? That's not likely, so I must be reading this wrong. Can you clarify?

Okay thanks for taking interest in helping me well bascially there in their second week of flower and there looking great and growing good their in 3 gallon buckets and 1 in a 5 gal some leaves are looking like a gold color like loss of green even though it's not many I'd like to know why? I'm using a folitech foliar spray and I'm not sure if it has anything to do and yeah about the nutes I mix them at 1000 and when I test the run offs PPM it's like under 600?

I'm thinking the resevouir nutes are less and are diluting it???

Thanks ?

BigToker420 said:

Okay thanks for taking interest in helping me well bascially there in their second week of flower and there looking great and growing good their in 3 gallon buckets and 1 in a 5 gal some leaves are looking like a gold color like loss of green even though it's not many I'd like to know why? I'm using a folitech foliar spray and I'm not sure if it has anything to do and yeah about the nutes I mix them at 1000 and when I test the run offs PPM it's like under 600?

I'm thinking the resevouir nutes are less and are diluting it???

Thanks ?

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Are the yellowing leaves on the lower part of the plant or all over?
Other than the yellowing are the leaves looking bad in any other way?
Got pix??? That would be most helpful.

What kind of fertilizer are you using? Is it a bloom formula? And why the spray? Were you using that before you noticed the problem?

My questions are the same as above, but also, what is your water/feeding schedule like? Do you alternate between watering and feeding, like this: water, water, feed, water, water, feed? Or are do you feed with every watering?

Well there's yellowish leaves at the bottom but i know that's from lack of light and that they should be removed which I will do later today but it looks almost as if the leaves were bleached in random spots and its the only problem I notice. The fertilizers are GH flora series the three colors and some additives from advanced like big bug, bud blood, folitech flower spray etc the feeding program was given to me by the advanced nutrients owner. I normally to be honest don't top the resovouir daily and I normally feed with every watering? what do you guys reccomend?? I will try and post pics later....

If you feed every watering I would suspect your girls are heavy feeders. Try raising the concentration of your feeding, bring it up 100-200ppm each feeding until the ppm of your feeding and the runoff become about the same. This will make sure your girls are getting the right balance of food and water, as they want it. Take your time though, too much food is more damaging then a lack of food.

EDIT: Hold it... I think I may have glossed over something here earlier:

"It's been about two months and I haven't flushed can it be that there's a salt build up and have caused a block or something in that sense?"

Do you let the res dry out a bit between waterings? With these nutes salt does build up and it doesn't dissolve quickly with a single top off. I like to bottom flush my hempies and soak for about 20 minutes before I feed. It helps with the salty stuff.

Hempies and these nutes work fine together otherwise.

Yeah the res does dry up before water because there's a good amount of evaporation or consumption of nutes because if i water today then about a day later the resevoiur is dry again... What doe you about soak for 20mins? And how often do you flush them?

BigToker420 said:

Yeah the res does dry up before water because there's a good amount of evaporation or consumption of nutes because if i water today then about a day later the resevoiur is dry again... What doe you about soak for 20mins? And how often do you flush them?

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Put the hempy bucket inside of another, larger bucket filled with water, let soak for a while, then lift the hempy bucket out of the larger water bucket, let drain, top feed, and done.

I used to follow this cycle: water, water, flush + heavy feed, water, water, flush + heavy feed. I once went well over a month without flushing and saw a decline in health in the plants, so just decided to do it before every feeding. You can probably do it every other week just fine.

My medium is 3 parts perlite one part vermiculite. So today i flushed the plants tested the run off so that it test to pure water i mixed a fresh batch of Nutes at 1100 PPM and PH of about below 6.0 not exact reading using one of those cheap drop test kits then poured them in and tested the runoff and got pissed when it test below 600 PPM I give up i cant understand why this happens? The majority of my nutes are from advanced nutrients and have designed my program a bit diff starting with sundays not doing anything then feed one day water the next then feed followed by watering the next day and then feeding and feeding again sat then next week same program but a flush on sunday to start off the week I'm considering this to flush them twice a week. What are your thoughts and suggestions??

Flushing twice a week is fine, it's probably more then necessary, but it won't hurt. The only thing bad about flushing is you have to re-introduce nutes. Some people flush less often to save nutes.

After a flush there'll be nothing but plain water in the res, the feed will be diluted by the water already in the res. This is why I like to step up the feedings in 100-200 increments and read my plants rather then simply follow a non-marijuana specific chart on the bottle. Measure the res before flushing so you can keep track of the ppm changes.

If the ppm drops over time your plants are hungry and want more food in their water. If ppm rises over time your plants are thirsty and want less food in their water.

I may be a bit late at jumping in here but I have been using hempys for a little while now with impressive results. I don't even bother to check the PPM or the PH. I use a mix of verm and perl starting off in milk jugs then I move to four gallon trash cans from wally world. I use plain tap water that I let set out for a few day to dechlorinate. I am using GH nutes, for veg it's 15 ml/gal grow, 10 ml/gal micro and 5 ml/gal bloom. For flowering it's 5 ml/gal grow, 10 ml/gal micro and 15 ml/gal bloom. I go straight from the cloner, where I only use canna rhizotonic, to the milk jugs and the GH nutes, I have had no nute burn to speak of, of course thats with clones, seedlings are a bit different you will need to ease them up to that but you shouldn't need to worry about your PH or PPM in hempys, I have lots of pics if you want to see them, my plants are very healthy and very dense foliage.

Yeah from what I have read you should never have to check ppm in Hempys. I guess it wont hurt to know more about what your using though.

Hey vh13 using your feeding schedule you never skip days where you dont water\feed. I am very interested in your answer as I have had issues during my whole grow and my schedule is water, skip, feed, skip, water, skip feed, ect.