Hydro setup help.

Hello all:

I'm looking at doing an outdoor setup. I've got the setup planned out but I just have 2 questions I'm confused about....

Do you guys run the water drip 24/7 continously? My plants are in soil right now verging but I'll be moving them to 100% clay rock when the frost is over.

Also do I need an aerator added to the reservoir for O2?

I do outdoor hydro hot peppers using coco in 5 gal buckets.

They get scheduled fertigation with some drip emitters, 3-5x day depending on the growth stage and weather.

Clay pebbles may not be the best choice for outdoors as it doesn't hold much water. This requires much more frequent fertigation. I did use a combo of hydroton and vermiculite for a few years with good results.

Ultimately, it depends on your setup and the environment.

My reservoir for the outdoor grow only lasts a few days at most; I've never aerated it, but your mileage may vary.

Billy the Mountain said:

I do outdoor hydro hot peppers using coco in 5 gal buckets.

They get scheduled fertigation with some drip emitters, 3-5x day depending on the growth stage and weather.

Clay pebbles may not be the best choice for outdoors as it doesn't hold much water. This requires much more frequent fertigation. I did use a combo of hydroton and vermiculite for a few years with good results.

Ultimately, it depends on your setup and the environment.

My reservoir for the outdoor grow only lasts a few days at most; I've never aerated it, but your mileage may vary.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your informative reply. Gave me a lot more to think about.

I've done soil in the past with success. Trying to venture into hydro while utilizing the greatest power source, our sun.

I'll add my experience with outdoor hydro. I too grow hot peppers in hydro. I use dutch buckets filled with 100% perlite. I line the buckets with 5 gallon paint strainer bags from Lowes and fill with perlite. This helps to keep the larger roots from clogging the drain.
I use a 17 gallon tote (also from Lowes) for a reservoir and dug a hole to set the tote in. This helps keep the nutrient solution from getting too hot from the sun.
I just use a small fountain pump with 1/2" tubing for the main line and 1/4" tubing going to the buckets. I insert a short piece of 1/2" pvc pipe in the perlite to direct the 1/4" tubing toward the plant base under the perlite surface. (Hope that makes sense) The 1/4" tubing is ran straight into the 1/2" pipe with no dripper attached. The pump is on a timer and I run it for 1 minute at a time. I'll start off the season with only 2 feeds per day and as the temperatures increase outside I'll up the feeds to 3 times per day and then 4 times being the max.
I ran the drains from the buckets into a pipe and it drains back into the tote. (reservoir) When the reservoir gets low I just refill it.
My pepper plants grown like this look better than any I've ever grown in soil.
There is a guy on you tube with a channel called mhpgardener that grows like this. Look him up and watch some of his videos.
I had lots of pics on this computer but I kept getting warnings about the drive being full so I either deleted them or moved a lot of my pics to a external hard drive so I'm unable to show any right now. If I get time I'll see if I can post a couple.

Good luck