SIP tubs, Earthboxes, Global Buckets, these things from http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mainstays-16.7-Creamy-Parchment-Self-Watering-Planter/17011307 ------anybody using them? Are you running with siphon tubes and a reservoir? Would blumats and smartpots be superior? Just what is going on here?
I grow tomatoes with them on my patio. My college threw out 3 of them with the whole setup in the trash. They're 30 dollars a piece so I got pretty lucky I found them. These work great, I'm using 1/2 miracle grow & 1/2 peat and these will produce no matter what color your thumb is.
Check out Ed's thread for some good info: http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-grow-journals/957636-eds-organic-sips.html
I myself have haven't been able to source large (20-50#) smart pots. The largest size i could acquire was 5#. I personally didnt like how it seemingly dried out sooooo fast. Sometimes my flowering plants would dry out and stress and decrease yield. After trying a SIP pot, the plant is always properly hydrated and never stressed. Yield increased, and never stressed. I always spaz out with normal pots with the thought of "washing out" nutrients. With those SIP pots its watered from the bottom up and never "washed out". I am slowly converting my entire grow to SIP pots. And I'll never go back!
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Except for the Miracle Grow it sounds interesting. I've come up with a few alternate names for the MG products, what do you think? Catastrophe Grow Tragedy Grow Disaster Grow *lol* j
How big do they make them? I like big pots for no till but working out of town watering is always a darn issue.
Im actually ganna start looking for large sized sturdy pond liners and see if i can convert it to a gigantic SIP. It all sounds fantastic. But i may have to wait to get goo prices. If not i'll just stick to my 5gallon buckets. They work great, but i dont know if they'll last a week between refills.
Jerry, I'm going to build 18 gallon 1's for my tomatoes next year, after a little bit of searching I found this tutorial on how to make the big 1's from Food grade 18 gallon totes. He also includes what to avoid when making these in his notes, as many of the plastics sold to consumers in the USA are contaminated with harsh chemicals. Homemade Self-Contained Gardening Systems
Awesome stuff. I was thinking if you hooked up a reservoir to a couple of SIP pots, you could call it organic hydro. "I used to run hydroton, but now I'm using peat, compost, and lava rock for media. For veg and flower nutes I'm running DynaGro ProTeKt-----all shallow water culture with lots of medium."
Go to the hardware store . . . . They have 15 gallon buckets, giant totes, and different shaped bins and trash cans you could stack 2 and make something with ingenuity. I'm pretty happy with my smart pots, but I may have some experimenting to do
lol Shallow water culture.. That's a good 1, this dude on here G45 set his SIP buckets up to a control bucket with a release valve and a reservoir. Basically it takes the SIP idea, and turns it into something even more care free, just change the res out every so often and add liquid fertilizer supplements to the control bucket, the rest of it "slow release" they put around the rings. Wish I could explain it better than I am but the valve is sort of like the toilet, it releases enough water to fill the crapper with so much water then shuts off when the water reaches its peak (which would be the same action happening in the control bucket, drawing water from the res instead of the city like your toilet).
Its been a while since looking at G's grow. Honestly, his shyt gets me J and i dont wanna look at it lol. Really tho, his thread is as valuable and information dense as Possuum, jerry, or any other organic or any grow period for that matter. He really knows his shit and is always making things as good as he possibly can for his particular scenario. It would be a good idea to subscribe and just lurk. That is if you aren't already It's my aspiration to have the highest quality grow similar to guys like that. I feel as though I am on the brink of breakthrough to that highest echelon of growing. I feel as though I currently have almost all the tools necessary, i just need some tweaks here and there to get the highest potential of my grow parameters. I keep getting gifted these "great" strains like, blue queen, OG Kush, and a few others. But the clones i get are always of the worst possible quality. Always 3" tall, partially flowering and attacked by bugs. N thats why they usually give em to me. Anyway sorry for the rant. N yeah follow G45!
Oh, my Gawd, my kids all grew up watch Fival the mouse! Thanks for the memories. I thought that these were a good find and probably not too hard to make. They use a more stardard round planting container to 'convert' to sips easily. http://www.gardeners.com/Adjustable-Reservoir/34-507RS,default,pd.html
For you no-till types and SIP'er looking to move up a few notches you should check out some of the goodies made for the cattle industry. Southern States Online Store - Livestock - Tanks, Waterers & Heaters This is just a sample. Another selection that might be good is the 50 qt or 70 qt slop buckets. They stack just like 5gal buckets. If I were to put something this large together as a no-till bed or a SIP I would use soaker hose laid out in layers as I put (100gal of soil) in and have that arranged on a self-water. I'd also have drip lines on the surface and of source the SIP or no-till concept whichever applies. My experience with larger containers is keeping the soil uniformly moist 100% of the time. It was a challenge for me anyway. Sumpin' to think about.