i'd be in but i'm a little bit ahead of you since you plucked your old one, sorry so many people recommended getting rid of it, we would have only been about a week or so apart
I am growing bag seed do to limited funds. I started germinating the seed two days ago and put it in soil yesterday. It's just a competition to see who's techniques work better and therefore increase the yeild or quality and we'll compare the end products
The only things necessary to enter the competition are it being an indoor grow, only one plant can be entered, and it has to be soil. No hydro here
Well I'm fucked cus my dad found my plant): So this Quemo shall be waitin a few months to plant unless I can still plant outside at this time of year? In MD
I agree, BOO! I'm about to start my first DWC grow in one week. Suck to be GT420- parents just don't understand.
Deep water culture, its a hydro method. Hence the boo, since you wanted a soil competition. Good luck with the parents. No disrespect at all but, you shouldn't grow in their home without their consent as they could face legal troubles because of your actions. Believe me its not worth it. I actually live in my step dad's house, I had to get his permission before I started growing. Luckily he's cool, and it's legal where I am. Do continue your quest though. Growing is so much fun.
Since I haven't started it yet my info will be limited. A quick google search will give you plenty of info. It's a hydro technique in which the plant is suspended above the reservoir that the roots grow into. Highly productive, but not for large scale growing. I'm told it produces fast results with high yields and is one of the simplest hydro techniques out there. Seriously, it consists of a bucket, an air stone, an air pump, and a net pot. You can easily build one extremely cheap with a quick stop at home depot and the local hydro store. Luckily my local hydro store has the whole setup for 35bucks. I bought 5 of them. Don't be fooled, it may one of the easiest methods of hydro, but it still needs more maintenance than soil- the advantage is the faster results. Do a youtube search for deep water culture and there are videos galore on it. Also, check out the link in my signature and you can see how and ebb and flow/flood and drain system will produce. The results are fast. Very fast. Any other questions let me know.
Oh, I forgot, Deep water culture requires a good water source because the roots are constantly submerged. If you don't have great water the roots will rot. I have a reverse osmosis filter that I use for clean water.
the water source doesn't have to be "great" plenty of people use tap water in their hydro systems just fine and needing more or less maintenance than normal is only based on how your setup runs, my current dwc setup only requires me to add water when its low every 3-4 days, no transplanting or worrying about over/under watering
Like I said, I haven't started DWC yet, I was told good water is more important for DWC than other hydro methods. Even if using tap water in hydro you "should" let it sit out for a few days to let the chlorine evaporate. It's pot, its gonna grow no matter what. How good depends on what you put into it. As far as maintenance for DWC, once again, haven't started yet, I was told it was way less maintenance than my current ebb and flow, but my point was that all hydro is more maintenance than soil. Thanks for commenting, that's why I love grass city- we're all here to learn from one another and share our growing experiences. Cheers!!
Hey iamblayz, do you have any trouble keeping the temp down on the water in your buckets?? If so, how do you maintain it? My Rez's in my ebb and flow stay at about 70. I worry that my buckets may get to hot though. Any suggestions/info??
my system is pretty small so i haven't had to watch temps too much for res temps most people freeze a bottle of water and drop that in the res to cool it down, you can get chillers and other things to maintain it better but those solutions are more expensive(which is one drawback hydro has over soil, start up cost to get meters and things to maintain the res) but i still think depending on your setup dwc can very easily be less maintenance than soil, i could literally leave my setup untouched for a week and all i'd have to do when i got back to it is fill up the res with water and add my nutes, and i could leave my system running for another week to me soil seems like its more maintenance, transplanting to different sized pots, watering them enough but not too much, etc. if you res is 70 why do you think your buckets may get too hot? i dont know much about the ebb and flow systems they seemed more involved than dwc to me, but normally your okay with water temps in the 70 range as long as you have enough air being supplied to the water, but i'm a new grower myself so i'm speaking from what i've read not years of experience or anything, you may want to get in the habit of keeping a bottle or two in the freezer as is needed though, i think mid to low 60s is the ideal temp
We are so on the same page that it's ridiculous. I know about the frozen bottle thing, just didn't wanna have to do that because it seems tedious. The only reason I say soil is less maintenance is that things happen so much slower that it's more forgiving and easier to correct mistakes. To me soil seems like more work with all of the dirt and runoff testing, not to mention the pests it invites. My ebb and flow system needs to have the pH maintained every day, I could let it go for maybe 3 days but that's it. That's why I'm starting DWC because people told me it can go for a week without having to worry too much. The reason I worried about the temps is that my buckets are black which can generate heat from my lights, and I don't want the roots to rot due to high water temps. Your response put my mind at ease so much. I can't start my DWC for another week just to keep on pace with my grow schedule but I'm crazy stoked to get started on it. Sorry to jack homeboys thread- but maybe he got some good info here too. Thank you Sir!