Hey Sc00bie, I saw pics of you babies in the lounge...looking really nice. 5-6 weeks already?? Have they begun to show their naughty parts yet?
popped seeds early july so yeah 5 weeks is about right i think. no signs of gender yet, its still early though as they havnt started alternating nodes. been training them to branch out and i think ill have enough to take clones in a week or two at most. thanks for stopping by
Hey Sc00bie...waaay off topic..I was trying to find the dog shampoo recipe in the no-till...found your post about it and they went back 20 pages trying to find it...gave up then I couldn't find your post. Do you still have that recipe?
hey scoobie! i bought a blumat feed line finally and was curious if i just cut the line and insert the black line adapter of the tropF carrot to the feed line or am i going to need any additional parts? i bought the reduced pressure hose adapter, the feed line, and a bunch of carrots. i already have the carrots and the directions are in dutch i think. i just ordered and realized i may need additional parts so i was hoping if so, i can change my order today.
morning ML! sounds like you got everything you need. the pressure reducer connects to the 8mm feed and yes you cut the feed to insert the T connection that should come with each carrot. the 3mm line of the sensor connects to the T, and you can chain as many T's as you like one after the other. just make sure the end of the line is sealed somehow (i attach a 2-3" piece of 8mm to the last T, fold it and tie a zip tie so it stays sealed) hope that makes sense. anyway once you get all the parts it should be clear, its fairly simple. ask away if you get stuck
An hour after I posted, blumat called me back and added a T connector so my feed line is a closed loop and will have better water pressure to the carrots. Instead of relying on gravity, I'm using the garden hose pressure reducer and can hook it up to a reservoir that's not up in the air. That was the thing I couldn't figure out because one day is 6-10 gallons so I need a garbage can sized reservoir. I saw they had a pump system that's $700 but it's a tiny pump and a bunch of carrots. Seemed easy. If my pump idea doesn't work because I'm worried about running a pump 24/7 in water because it will warm up, I can hook it up to a garden hose but I don't like this idea because of the unlimited supply of water where a reservoir runs dry. What if a dropper gets stuck and it floods my garage? Even the smallest Active Aqua pump heats 25 gallons in no time. So I'm curious if it will work. But anyways, the blumat guy was really nice and didn't try to up sell me some crap I didn't need. It was a good experience. I was worried I would be buying a ton of connectors and wanted your advice first. Thanks!!
wait you are going to connect the pressure reducer to a res and pump? im not sure it will work with just an aquarium pump. dry reservoir is what can mess up a carrots calibration if the water in the carrot runs dry. thats why unlimited supply is better for blumats, id hook it up to a garden hose/faucet if i could. you could install a solenoid valve connected to a water sensor to shut the water flow if it floods but im not sure a blumat system can flood really. the closest i ever got was when i used to run a single res and if it would dry up, the soil would dry up completely and when i refilled the res, the water would rush out very fast (cause everything is dry and all the sensors are wide open) but since it takes the sensor some time to react, water could run for a short while until the sensor fully hydrates and shuts off. but it always shuts off eventually. that's why you want constant pressure so the sensor is always in moist soil and never fluctuates too much.
I looked up the pump they use and the head level was low. Like five ft high and low pressure. I have one with similar statistics. I have heard horror stories from people about flooding. I read from the blumats gurus that you will have at least one flood if you're using them. The blumat guy said that air bubbles can get in the lines and keep a dripper open full blast or if a carrot becomes dislodged or loose, that too will also cause a flood. I don't want to be in my garden and knock a carrot out with my leg and come back to a flood. We store merchandise for our retail store and if any of it got ruined, that would really suck. If I had a garden hose, then it would keep running and a reservoir would eventually run out of water limiting the flooding. I don't know if keeping a hose on all the time would cause the water pump for the well to run and that would be expensive. Using a hose/pump keeps a consistent pressure where the reservoir that is gravity fed has less pressure as the water drains out. Guess we will find out soon. I hope it works because I can't figure out a way to get a big reservoir to raise off the ground with my limited space. I've had this system since before I made my account here back in the day so I am dusting it off now since I am not going to be moving plants in and out anymore. I didn't want to hook up carrots just to spray IPM. I can't walk into my room so that's why I have yet to use it. Now the mites are gone so I am not worried about it.
took clones for sexing today. excited to try out the new surface blumat! i put down a few layers of disposable kitchen towels (the fabric kind) to act as a capillary mat. the sensor sits on the "mat" and i hooked it up to a ghetto plastic water bottle reservoir. took the cuts this morning and they have been sitting in cups with kelp and aloe tea for a few hours. decided to use x200 aloe powder this time and see how it works as a rooting powder. alcohol and cotton to clean the scalpel.. i dont scrap the sides of the stem, but i do try to make a very long cut at 60-70 degrees so more of the inner part of the stem is exposed. i cut just below a node if possible. dip in aloe powder. if you do this put some powder aside, dont dip your clones into your main aloe powder jar or it will gunk everything up! about a teaspoon was more then enough for the 15 clones i had. into rapid rooters and on the capillary map misted the inside of the propagator dome and closed it. hopefully the surface blumat delivers! had an extra clone so i stuck it in the soil next to its mother/father just to see if it will catch enjoy your weekend everyone!
I was never really happy with the amount of mulch i had in the no-till so i bought 2cf of oak chips and dumped it on top, now the mulch layers is at least 2-3 inch thick! good thing i changed the blumats to distribution drippers as they were super easy to pull out and replace once the mulch was down. also stopped by the beer shop to get more nutez! clones on day 5 now, looking good but no roots yet.
You shouldn't have to mulch for a long time. Easy peezy! Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum mobile app
yeah that was the idea of using chips, i can still keep adding trim and whatnot, i know the rollypollies like dead leaves i leave for them i also feel the any top dress would find its way through the mulch easier then when it was just leaves since they tend to mat up, but the chips will allow everything to fall through easier.
its been 6 days, clones still looking good. they are juuust starting to yellow now so i think ill start seeing roots by the start of the week. seems like the blumat was redundant so far as not a single drop of water was removed from the little bottle reservoir i hooked up. using a capillary mat and the plugs seems to be working well though.
Almost there! Are you misting them with anything particular? Cheers Sent from my Nexus 4 using Grasscity Forum mobile app
its been kinda warm so i shpritz them with water and some aloe once a day, supposed to be good for heat stress.