World Of Hempy

There has been a lot of talk about what is the correct size for a hempy bucket, correct medium, watering etc.

Well here’s my “opinion” based on my observations running hempy growing machines.

First what is hempy? It is a passive hydro system. What is a Passive Hydro? It’s just that, no pumps, airstones, automated drain valves etc. Hempy is just a type of passive hydro.

How & Why does “Passive Hydro” (PH) Work”? Well you need a rez that is small enough to be used up in a short enough period of time to not have the need to use recirculation, airstones, chillers, adjust ph during the life span of the rez, add H2O2 or other rez cleaners. I’m not saying a little bleach or H2O2 won’t help or shouldn’t be used if needed, but conceptually & in a properly working bucket it isn’t necessary.

What’s the right size for a hempy container? I personally believe that when your hempy machine is running at full capacity it should need to be watered every 1 to 2 days. So if you are looking for accelerated growth throughout all phases of growth you’ll have to change container sizes. If you’re looking for big plants, starting in the final bucket size is not a wise idea.

Let’s look at known winning size containers, they can show us the machine aspect of the bucket.
(I may refer to a thread members post as reference to some info)
2L when filled with medium has a height of 7” (18cm) to top of medium, with a hole 2” up from the bottom that’s 5” to top of medium. Rooted clone with a couple inches of root that is buried ½ to 1inch above the roots, leaves a gap of only 2 to 2 ½ inches from root tip to rez.

2gal is only an inch more than the 2L at 8”, but has a much larger dia. using jella as subject. Start in RR 1 ½” tall put in solo cup 3 ½ to 4” & vegged, transplanted into final 2gal bucket. So at transplant of RR into solo only 1 to 1 ½” roots to rez, then Solo to 2 gal the gap is 2 ½ to 3” roots to rez.

3.5gal Is 10” deep and the same diameter as a 5gal bucket. Using my grows, soil solo cup for clones or 2” pots for seed transplanted into 2 to 3 qt soil pots 4 ½ to 5 ½” deep for longer veg. Again 10” minus 2” hole = 8”. So the gap from bottom of root core to of rez is 2 ½ to 3 ½. IMHO anything over 4” is too large a gap from root ball to rez, to achieve maximum production from your hempy machine.

5gal is 13 ½” deep from bottom to top of medium, so just add 3 ½ to the 3.5gal #’s, and you’ll get 6 to 6 ½” gap, I’ve tried this and IMO it took way to long to set roots and get after it. I’m not saying it won’t work it’s just another time factor you have to allow for in your grow schedule.

What’s the best medium? I’m currently leaning towards coco. But there are many options. I started my study of Passive Hydro through news group threads written in the 90’s, and the geometry was the same but the chosen medium was perlite to above the hole and a 50/50 mix of soil and perlite on up. So I’ve never really had a problem with the use of soil in a hempy bucket. I’ve done many mixes from all soil to straight perlite, the one thing I can say is that a 1 to 2” top cap layer of soil over perlite will improve the bucket’s performance.

What’s best for you? Your growing environment and growing style will be the ultimate deciding factors here. Moe has no head room, so 12/12 from clone will lead the growing style list, which works better with a smaller container, so the machine can start faster. Your veg space or lack thereof can be a huge factor in your choice. But you’ll never know what’s best until you jump in and get your feet wet.

Happy Growing

Well, I just switched back to my 400w HPS.. I am not sure if its because of the CMH Bulb, but I have never had such small Buds at this stage of my grow, and quite frankly, I have also never had such Healthy Plants, so I was certainly expecting to see quite a bit Bigger Bud Sites from these girls, and they really just dont look like they are going to become the Size they should. On my worst HYDRO Grows, I had better looking buds.. I am wondering if I got a BUNK BULB. Its definitely NOT as Bright as my 400w MH or HPS, but I figured that was just because of the Full Spectrum. Anyhow, now its time to see if I can get these girls to plump up and help with my final numbers. Too bad, I liked the Open Hood use of the CMH

Well i have some startling news, its been almost 3 days since i pulled the roots off of my clones and attempted to reclone them and it appears to me that my blue cheese clone is already reproducing roots, it looks pretty bad my white russian looks a lot better, but ive looked at it with my jewlers scope and i swear it has roots if it lives and my White Russian dies im going to be pissed.

Damn Wattsaver .. posts like that deserve 'sticky' status.

i got them back mo, here we go again.

I'd like to add one thing to Wattsavers awesome post. If by chance you're starting your clones in an aero-cloner. Let the roots get some good length on them first and then transplant them to the optimal container size. That way the need for the veg stage is taken out. May be more beneficial for the SoG app, but could be used as a jump start to larger containers as well!! I don't have this option yet, but will be building a DiY cloner asap. Peace!!

On a side note, my clones at 8 days in my homemade RR are just starting to spit out roots That being said I must have screwed up the PH of my RW cubes, or my strains don't like RW lol

Shaggn said:

I'd like to add one thing to Wattsavers awesome post. If by chance you're starting your clones in an aero-cloner. Let the roots get some good length on them first and then transplant them to the optimal container size. That way the need for the veg stage is taken out. May be more beneficial for the SoG app, but could be used as a jump start to larger containers as well!! I don't have this option yet, but will be building a DiY cloner asap. Peace!!

On a side note, my clones at 8 days in my homemade RR are just starting to spit out roots That being said I must have screwed up the PH of my RW cubes, or my strains don't like RW lol

Click to expand...

Yes roots in the rez to start will be the absolute least lag time in a hempy transplant. The smaller the gap the better.

WattSaver said:

Well here’s my “opinion” based on my observations running hempy growing machines.

First what is hempy? It is a passive hydro system. What is a Passive Hydro? It’s just that, no pumps, airstones, automated drain valves etc. Hempy is just a type of passive hydro.

How & Why does “Passive Hydro” (PH) Work”? Well you need a rez that is small enough to be used up in a short enough period of time to not have the need to use recirculation, airstones, chillers, adjust ph during the life span of the rez, add H2O2 or other rez cleaners. I’m not saying a little bleach or H2O2 won’t help or shouldn’t be used if needed, but conceptually & in a properly working bucket it isn’t necessary.

Click to expand...

Awesome post man, thank you!

I just have a question about the above quoted...

What about recirculating hempy?

I know recirc. hempy doesn't get mentioned much, or at least, I haven't seen it mentioned much. It's possible my definition of "recirculating hempy" is messed up and it's not really hempy, it's actually something else.

Let me attempt to describe it, and if I'm misunderstanding please correct me so that I can get my terms right!

I use a setup with a medium filled bucket inside another bucket, a return line running from outer bucket to a separate res, res has a water pump with a send line to the top of the bucket inside another bucket setup. Inside the inner bucket is a screen so that the medium (I'm using perlite) and roots don't fall/drop into the outer bucket and clog the return line.

It's kind of like a GH "waterfarm", if you have seen one of those prebuilt units, except it would be connected to a separate res instead of using the bottom/outer bucket as a res.



Or actually, think of just the GH "waterfarm" itself. I believe it has a system where the roots will actually drop down into the lower section/outer bucket...which I think is even more "hempy" than the setup I use.



But yeah, is that type of setup "recirculating hempy"? Or something else?

WattSaver said:

IMHO anything over 4” is too large a gap from root ball to rez, to achieve maximum production from your hempy machine.

Click to expand...

Wattsaver, excellent write up, but I have to diverge on one little bitty item. The roots to the res gap is not really a concern with mediums that have a good wicking property (coco). Remember those monster C99's of mine last grow. Those were seeds germinated in towels with a 1/8" tap root and put right into the 2gal bucket of coco with the res half full. I think I actually saved time to harvest by never performing a transplant. Those beasts came down at 57days of flowering. However, to converge a little here, the coco coir medium may be the only medium out there where this is possible. Perlite?..right on....it's got a gap to res issue.

This winter has been tough on growin' Hawaiian stains, it's been below 0 F every night for more than 6wks straight.
Got 5 girls under the lamp, all the same KM, the 3 on the left are the ones that were revegged after showing sex, the 2 on the left were the last to show and were left in 12/12, the one up front was the runt of the crew, but has a tighter, and equal nodes, and its showing more frost while being at least 1wk in maturity behind the other, it's carrying seeds from the tripod male (runt X mutant). With the re-vegger's they are 1wk 12/12, the front one was the most aggressive so it's in a 3.5gal coco, middle in 3.5 perlite w/ soil cap, and the back one is in a 2gal perlite w/ soil cap this one ran ate all the OC+ during veg, so I put it in the smaller bucket to put the soil core 1" above the rez.





Here's the next run, another homemade Hawaiian cross, Maui Wowie X Purple Herion....... Hopin' for some color, these are 8hrs short of being 2wks from when I stuck the seed into the soil. I'm transplanting them later tonight into 2qt of soil and give them 2 months worth of food.

Sad at this stage when the girls start getting ugly...dropped nutes in half last week and now its plain RO water till this weekend. So, these will be the last pics you'll see until I trim. I'll for sure get you some pics of them manicured.
Notes on the Mapito medium experience;
* Excellent water retention with still lots of air to be had in the PU foam.
* The buckets got so light when the res was exhausted it was scary, but no wilting seen...ever.
* Watering frequency did not get shorter as with coco. It got down to every 3 days but stopped there...as a matter of fact in late flower I had runoff occur before the 1gal per feed was exhausted...so 1/4gal went to the bushes outside for the last 2 weeks. Could have been the lower temps of winter though.
* A little bit of light colored crust formed on the top of the mapito..no biggy...probably mildew. I'll resuse it one day with the addition of Cannazyme.
* Is the Mapito responsible for this mass of plant tissue seen here? Can't say...I shared some offspring with others using coco and they are freaking monsters I hear, but in 5gal non-hempy buckets under 1000W lamps.
* Anybody guessing the final dried weight of both plants combined... to the nearest half-zip...after a 2 week cure... gets +rep.

Rusty Shakelford said:

Well, I just switched back to my 400w HPS.. I am not sure if its because of the CMH Bulb, but I have never had such small Buds at this stage of my grow, and quite frankly, I have also never had such Healthy Plants, so I was certainly expecting to see quite a bit Bigger Bud Sites from these girls, and they really just dont look like they are going to become the Size they should. On my worst HYDRO Grows, I had better looking buds.. I am wondering if I got a BUNK BULB. Its definitely NOT as Bright as my 400w MH or HPS, but I figured that was just because of the Full Spectrum. Anyhow, now its time to see if I can get these girls to plump up and help with my final numbers. Too bad, I liked the Open Hood use of the CMH

Click to expand...

Thats too bad to hear, Rusty. If you think you have a bad bulb, would you consider trying another CMH bulb to see if your results are different?

jela10 said:

Sad at this stage when the girls start getting ugly...dropped nutes in half last week and now its plain RO water till this weekend. So, these will be the last pics you'll see until I trim. I'll for sure get you some pics of them manicured.
Notes on the Mapito medium experience;
* Excellent water retention with still lots of air to be had in the PU foam.
* The buckets got so light when the res was exhausted it was scary, but no wilting seen...ever.
* Watering frequency did not get shorter as with coco. It got down to every 3 days but stopped there...as a matter of fact in late flower I had runoff occur before the 1gal per feed was exhausted...so 1/4gal went to the bushes outside for the last 2 weeks. Could have been the lower temps of winter though.
* A little bit of light colored crust formed on the top of the mapito..no biggy...probably mildew. I'll resuse it one day with the addition of Cannazyme.
* Is the Mapito responsible for this mass of plant tissue seen here? Can't say...I shared some offspring with others using coco and they are freaking monsters I hear, but in 5gal non-hempy buckets under 1000W lamps.
* Anybody guessing the final dried weight of both plants combined... to the nearest half-zip...after a 2 week cure... gets +rep.

View attachment 2490626View attachment 2490628View attachment 2490629View attachment 2490630View attachment 2490633View attachment 2490634

Click to expand...

What was your veg time again?

jela10 said:

Wattsaver, excellent write up, but I have to diverge on one little bitty item. The roots to the res gap is not really a concern with mediums that have a good wicking property (coco). Remember those monster C99's of mine last grow. Those were seeds germinated in towels with a 1/8" tap root and put right into the 2gal bucket of coco with the res half full. I think I actually saved time to harvest by never performing a transplant. Those beasts came down at 57days of flowering. However, to converge a little here, the coco coir medium may be the only medium out there where this is possible. Perlite?..right on....it's got a gap to res issue.

Click to expand...

The more I deal with coco the more I like it. The coco's wicking is way above the curve, and it's ph buffering ability is amazing. But still the closer the roots start to the rez the sooner it can gear up to full speed, and I have to admit that coco has a gear I haven't seen before so I'll stop there, and say I have to make a few more runs.

blacksun said:

Awesome post man, thank you!

I just have a question about the above quoted...

What about recirculating hempy?

I know recirc. hempy doesn't get mentioned much, or at least, I haven't seen it mentioned much. It's possible my definition of "recirculating hempy" is messed up and it's not really hempy, it's actually something else.

Let me attempt to describe it, and if I'm misunderstanding please correct me so that I can get my terms right!

I use a setup with a medium filled bucket inside another bucket, a return line running from outer bucket to a separate res, res has a water pump with a send line to the top of the bucket inside another bucket setup. Inside the inner bucket is a screen so that the medium (I'm using perlite) and roots don't fall/drop into the outer bucket and clog the return line.

It's kind of like a GH "waterfarm", if you have seen one of those prebuilt units, except it would be connected to a separate res instead of using the bottom/outer bucket as a res.



Or actually, think of just the GH "waterfarm" itself. I believe it has a system where the roots will actually drop down into the lower section/outer bucket...which I think is even more "hempy" than the setup I use.



But yeah, is that type of setup "recirculating hempy"? Or something else?

Click to expand...

What you've got going isn't a true passive hydro system. If the rez can't be consumed by the plant if the pumps go out, there is a need for power assist to finish off the rez, and you're still having it maintain a rez independent of the plant container then it's not really passive. What you've got going is more of a bubbleponics system, but most bubbleheads won't recognize your setup due to the perlite netpot. I don't want to run you off, but if you want to see a great grow with the exact same setup try FlowaMasta What he does is well above the curve but I won't spend over $100/plant in nutes.
Then again all the rules except for rez maintenance (which is why most of us went passive) apply to your system.

WattSaver said:

The more I deal with coco the more I like it. The coco's wicking is way above the curve, and it's ph buffering ability is amazing. But still the closer the roots start to the rez the sooner it can gear up to full speed, and I have to admit that coco has a gear I haven't seen before so I'll stop there, and say I have to make a few more runs.



What you've got going isn't a true passive hydro system. If the rez can't be consumed by the plant if the pumps go out, there is a need for power assist to finish off the rez, and you're still having it maintain a rez independent of the plant container then it's not really passive. What you've got going is more of a bubbleponics system, but most bubbleheads won't recognize your setup due to the perlite netpot. I don't want to run you off, but if you want to see a great grow with the exact same setup try FlowaMasta What he does is well above the curve but I won't spend over $100/plant in nutes.
Then again all the rules except for rez maintenance (which is why most of us went passive) apply to your system.

Click to expand...

Ive seen flowmastas setup, personally dont like the veg time required for it to work properly but also dont like the fact that he took a simple system and complicated it.

jela10 said:

Wattsaver, excellent write up, but I have to diverge on one little bitty item. The roots to the res gap is not really a concern with mediums that have a good wicking property (coco). Remember those monster C99's of mine last grow. Those were seeds germinated in towels with a 1/8" tap root and put right into the 2gal bucket of coco with the res half full. I think I actually saved time to harvest by never performing a transplant. Those beasts came down at 57days of flowering. However, to converge a little here, the coco coir medium may be the only medium out there where this is possible. Perlite?..right on....it's got a gap to res issue.

Click to expand...

CaliMackdaddy said:

Ive seen flowmastas setup, personally dont like the veg time required for it to work properly but also dont like the fact that he took a simple system and complicated it.

Click to expand...

I know what you're talkin about, his system is way too complex for an old man like myself. I do believe that you can follow a passive guideline with a meager rez, and still see the bennies of constant feed.

WattSaver said:

I know what you're talkin about, his system is way too complex for an old man like myself. I do believe that you can follow a passive guideline with a meager rez, and still see the bennies of constant feed.

Click to expand...

DTW drip will probably see similar results as his system.

jela10 said:

Sad at this stage when the girls start getting ugly...dropped nutes in half last week and now its plain RO water till this weekend. So, these will be the last pics you'll see until I trim. I'll for sure get you some pics of them manicured.
Notes on the Mapito medium experience;
* Excellent water retention with still lots of air to be had in the PU foam.
* The buckets got so light when the res was exhausted it was scary, but no wilting seen...ever.
* Watering frequency did not get shorter as with coco. It got down to every 3 days but stopped there...as a matter of fact in late flower I had runoff occur before the 1gal per feed was exhausted...so 1/4gal went to the bushes outside for the last 2 weeks. Could have been the lower temps of winter though.
* A little bit of light colored crust formed on the top of the mapito..no biggy...probably mildew. I'll resuse it one day with the addition of Cannazyme.
* Is the Mapito responsible for this mass of plant tissue seen here? Can't say...I shared some offspring with others using coco and they are freaking monsters I hear, but in 5gal non-hempy buckets under 1000W lamps.
* Anybody guessing the final dried weight of both plants combined... to the nearest half-zip...after a 2 week cure... gets +rep.

View attachment 2490626View attachment 2490628View attachment 2490629View attachment 2490630View attachment 2490633View attachment 2490634

Click to expand...

307 grams dry

Praetorian said:

What was your veg time again?

Click to expand...

31 days, 1 FIM on each. I usually veg for 3 weeks but availability of the flower tent wasn't there yet. This time around I had to switch my LED's to HPS, change the carbon scrubber and do a total cleanup/disinfection of the inside due to some pesky white flies.

Rusty Shakelford said:

Well, I just switched back to my 400w HPS.. I am not sure if its because of the CMH Bulb, but I have never had such small Buds at this stage of my grow, and quite frankly, I have also never had such Healthy Plants, so I was certainly expecting to see quite a bit Bigger Bud Sites from these girls, and they really just dont look like they are going to become the Size they should. On my worst HYDRO Grows, I had better looking buds.. I am wondering if I got a BUNK BULB. Its definitely NOT as Bright as my 400w MH or HPS, but I figured that was just because of the Full Spectrum. Anyhow, now its time to see if I can get these girls to plump up and help with my final numbers. Too bad, I liked the Open Hood use of the CMH

Click to expand...

Rusty thanks for sharing...lots of talk out there on these CMH's.....was that a Philips CMH bulb? And was the transformer ballast a generic variety for all HID type lamps? Reason I ask is there are "paired" setups for sale and I've always wondered if you had to buy a special ballast just for the CMH....maybe you can bust the myth.