Soil grower. Convince me.

What’s wrong with Hempy ?

Full 100% perlite or 3:1 perlte / vermiculite - simple DTW - Maxigrow ( start to finish )

Modern Selections said:

DWC sucks. Ph swings, changing out buckets of water with finding a way to support plants while bucket change etc.

Simple flood and drain table. Res, tray, net pots, hydroton. Change res once a week. Most minimal amount of work in growing.View attachment 5333599

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Lovely pic, looks awesome!

bUT...

changing out buckets of water with finding a way to support plants while bucket change etc.

You can just use a hose and a pump to drain out the rez, and flip it backwards to re-fill...you can just leave the plants in situ.

That's what I do..I have a bath tub in the next room, so i drain it all out into that, down the drain. Then I fill the bath tub up, and balance the new water/feed in the tub before pumping it back into the rez.

I couldn't get dwc right till I was introduced to hydrogaurd, then I found that garden friendly fungicide for. Way cheaper only use maxi series now days

RDWC is the way.

Budzbuddha said:

What’s wrong with Hempy ?

Full 100% perlite or 3:1 perlte / vermiculite - simple DTW - Maxigrow ( start to finish )

View attachment 5336699View attachment 5336700

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A MOTHERF*CKER

Honestly recommend coco/perlite, fabric or airpots. feed 1-2x daily, 10-20% run off, you can get some good growth at a fraction of the price and hassle. IF you really want to use a res consider drip irrigation or autopots,

I had been wanting to try rdwc after my first dwc run, I hate the fact that I cannot leave a trellis, and having to move her entirely when changing the res 2x a week.. I could either cough up the money for a hydrabucket, meh, or build my own recirculating system for my 3x3, and honestly I think it would be more of a pain in the ass, considering the potential problems that are carried along with it. and my grow environment.

F_Dupp said:

I run an aero system. These plants spent 15 days in a cloner and 18 days in veg. Infinitely faster than my results in soil.View attachment 5333245

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Have any details on your system? Looks like a clean setup!

ProPheT 216 said:

No pests, no flushing, complete control over what your plants have immediate access to. If you mess up just change your res out. No cost of soil or clean up and removal of soil. Faster veg growth.

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All of these are some great benefits but there are some drawbacks of course.
From my experience, DWC was very tedious. I found myself making constant adjustments to the pH and having to constantly worry about my res temps, unpredictable swings in pH so I could never predict where it was going to go, and when.
I loved DWC because it gave me complete control, but I also learned that it is damn hard to have all of that control and it required daily maintenance. But again, this is just from my experience in dwc.
I'm now growing in rockwool and even tho it has come with its own challenges, I don't need that daily work, the way that dwc required

Growth rate and yield are great, but for the pain in the ass it creates, it isn't worth it for me. Power outage worries gave me anxiety. Noisier, in some cases, creates more heat, constant cleaning and calibrating pH probe. Don't get me wrong, It's cool to watch, but soil is so much easier, imo.

It really depends on the style of hydro, once you get it dialled in you can really get 'a feel for it' and in veg espesialy, I can let mine go a week without really doing anything other than checking the water for PH&EC just to confirm nothing much has changed and taking corrective action if it goes too far in any direction.

I'm also a heathen, as I don't chnage my res out at all apart from when switchng to bloom ferts from veg ferts, or unless something goes really wrong.

MintyDreadlocks said:

I've had thoughts of DWC swimming through my head. I've done soil for the last 10 years and thinking about changing things up. Tell me what I'm missing out on and why I'd like DWC more than soil.

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DWC is great but between grows you need to get as close to sterilizing everything as possible. Sanitizing isn't enough. Bleach and scrub the crap out of everything. Otherwise at some point you will get an infection.

senorthc said:

I had been wanting to try rdwc after my first dwc run, I hate the fact that I cannot leave a trellis, and having to move her entirely when changing the res 2x a week.. I could either cough up the money for a hydrabucket, meh, or build my own recirculating system for my 3x3, and honestly I think it would be more of a pain in the ass, considering the potential problems that are carried along with it. and my grow environment.

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I converted my 2 Hydrobucket DWC to RDWC recently. It's in a 2x4 tent and everything is in a 2x8 closet. I made frames that mount to the Hydrobucket lids to attach nets or support rods to for each plant. This way I can rotate each plant on it's bucket independently to work on them. With the cooler reservoir the total capacity is 20 gal. The flat spots on the buckets make mounting the 2" bulkheads a snap.

In the future I'm planning on upgrading to a 4x4 or 5x5 tent in an extra bedroom. Then I'll have room to add 2 more buckets and use a larger res and make access easier

For me anyway, RDWC has been a total game changer.