MrHowardMarks' experienced grower journal.

-Congrats Raiderman

-Thanks for the interest and kind words krippo

-Doogleef-

Being a temporary grow, the easiest setup is to have a bunch of buckets, setting up resevoirs and tables is a bit extensive for just a couple months. With soil, I just fill the buckets, and voila that's it.

I am doing 9 DWC, or bubble buckets, in the 5 gal with net pot lids.

I wouldn't do an ebb/flow ever, if anything I'd setup a drip table, or connect the DWC buckets to a common resevoir and have a drip feed with the bubbler and a overflow return.

Tables here are 100 bucks a pop, and the readymade resevoirs are the same price, so building my own table would be the route I'd go, and being a temporary grow, no dice this round.

If you're wondering "build your own table, how?"

-Build a frame with 2x4s, fill it in with plywood, and get a pond liner to cover the inside, custom fit to the required space and constraints.

So, I've been on the move for the past 5 years, new house every year, so packing up and moving out has always been an issue...

I helped an associate design his growroom, and we built our own drip tables, he runs 12 lights, 2 banks 6 each. His room is 30ft x 15ft, with a aisle down the middle of two long drip return tables, each measuring 6ftx 24ft. He has one resevoir for each of the two tables, 100 gal each, with chillers.

I'd snap pictures if he'd let me, but he's extremely paranoid, for good reason, his basement is a variable greenhouse 9 months of the year.

i must ask, being a user of flood tables, why do you say never? you say it like you have a good reason and id love to hear it. is it salt buildup from the bottomfeeding?

Well, there are a few reasons, it is a simple system that works, and I've seen good results... But...

The airation to the roots isn't quite as good as a bubbleponic application, or a drip system, and the bottom feeding never flushes out the roots, salts just get pushed up into the pot, and drain back down. Also, the water being exposed to direct light is no good. Don't get me wrong, you can have great results with a flood and drain setup, but I've seen two grower have a lot better results when they switched to a simple drip system.

Which gives me an idea...

I'm going to put a pump and drip on one or two of the bubble buckets to see if there's a dramatic difference between just bubbles, or bubble and drip... I have a few pumps lying around.

all that makes perfect sense and i kinda even have proof in my room right now. have you seen my update with the pics of my single site drip sys? its gotten friggin huge pretty quick if you ask me. i also upped the pot size too.

ive actually been thinking DWC lately since i keep my plant numbers so low. all my equipment is from when i didnt care about how many i had.

Yeah, I peeped your journal yesterday...

I saw my friend and many others get outstanding results with bubbleponics, at first I disreguarded it as a good system, because it seemed way to simple. But the results speak for themselves. So I'm gonna give it a try against my soil buckets.

my biggest concern wit DWC is power outages. anything more than an hour and your screwed right? drowned roots?

Yeah, pretty much. You can drain the bucket and water manually, but that's if you're around when it happens, and if you're able to water all of them. (Lots of work)

i guess thats better than watchin your girls drown. air pumps dont draw much power, i wonder what it would take to get an hours worth of backup? maybe even break that hour up into little bits so you can survive big outages.

I seriously doubt that I'm going to run into that problem. If I, or anyone, had to worry about days of power outage, then I'd get a generator. I'll load of some photos tomorrow, clones are looking great. 100% success on the first small batch, and some shouldn't have rooted.

MrHowardMarks said:

I feeding, Iguana Grow, Humic, Fulvic, B52, Carbo Load, Barricade, Sweet Leaf, Pirahna, Tarantula.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by this line in post #179? Are you saying that after you transplanted into 3 gallon buckets you sprayed with a mixture of those nutes?

..........

No, that's not a foliar formula, that's what they are being fed.

MrHowardMarks said:

Which gives me an idea...

I'm going to put a pump and drip on one or two of the bubble buckets to see if there's a dramatic difference between just bubbles, or bubble and drip... I have a few pumps lying around.

Click to expand...

does it make a difference the drip ? ive only ever done it, with so both results would be intresting

Don't know, that's why I'm going to test it out

I've been busy, I'll load up some recent pictures tonight, if not tomorrow. The second tray of clones should be rooted in a day or two. They'll be much better than the first set. Cutting another tray tonight, if I have time, I'll load pictures when I'm done.

ive got a few freinds that use a mix between nft/drip/dwc its what im using at the min cant give a commparrason as the ones i put in were stunted like i said any info or stats on how it goes ill be intrested as im sure other's will keep up the gud work, can tell u know wht ur doing like i said all the best with the grow

MrHowardMarks said:

No, that's not a foliar formula, that's what they are being fed.

Click to expand...

I see. Are you mixing all of those nutes together and feeds all at once?

-Thanks AfroSamurai (sweet anime) I hope to see if there's any differance.

-Rhollin1-
Well, to explain better...

The Iguana Bloom is the base nutrient, it contains the N-P-K, compariable to Fox Farm- Grow Big, or Earth Juice - Grow, or any other single part organic fertilizer... You can just use this as a complete regiment, all the other ingredients are beneficials.

Mother Earth (Grow/Bloom) - another base nutrient.

AN Humic/Fulvic Acid - Soil buffers, benefical for nutrient uptake.

AN Barricade - it's Potassium Silicate, which aids in nutrient uptake, and cellular growth.

AN Carboload- basic carbs (sugars) that feed the beneficials in the soil, it doesn't really directly get absorbed by the plant.

AN Sensizym - typical enzyme that breaks down organic matter in the soil so the plant can eat it.

AN Tarantula - benefical bacteria, stimulates root growth, eats carboload.

AN Piranha - benefical fungus, stimulates root growth, eats carboload.

AN B52, or Organic B - B vitamins, stimulates growth etc.

AN Sweet Leaf - Molasses mixture.

You don't have to use all of these products to have great results, mainly with organics you are more focused on soil composition. The soil is as alive as the plant, and it is what feeds the plant, not just the NPK that you put into the soil.

This is why with organic soil grown ganja, you'll end up with better tasting weed... IMO

Plants update;

Not long before I have all the clones I need!

Speaking of clones;