This hybrid system can be modified into any flood table. Living organic soil on top of DFT! Pure water goes in the soil, salt nutrient circulates in the tray. A one inch hydroton layer prevents upward cross contamination of salt, and a 2 inch rockwool layer suspended just over the water prevents the beneficials from just washing away. The organic living soil creates a biological teabag for constant inoculation of salt hydro. Designed for the soil to be removed, recomposted, and recycled at scale. These Gelato 33’s have just been FIMed and are almost ready for flower. This is my answer to the terp problem in hydro and the yield problem in organics. Hypothetically these two disciplines will lean on each in times of stress, and produce a organic tasting product with water culture growth. This is a live experiment that could fail, but the pursuit of data is more important. Will post follow ups!
Currently switching from hydro to no-till for the exact reasons mentioned above. I’ll sub along curious to see where this goes
Here is day two of flower! The growth rate is moving right on hypothesis. The previous picture was taken 72 hours before this one!
Day 5 of flower. Before beginning this endeavor I made sure to survey the Octopot people on Facebook to get an idea where the PH in a hybrid system should lie. They checked their systems and the number they came back with was 6.2-6.5. It seems my data is backing that up too, I am keeping it right at 6.2, but it likes climb to 6.5 as they drink the nutrient. Everything looks healthy so far, I have been using the net for a little LST to get the plants in the approximate shape I am looking for. Algae is factor when using DFT, so I trying to staying on top of the blooms with res changes. I am using digestive enzymes (hygrozyme, cannazyme) to keep everything biological this time. But if the Algae gets out of control, the nice thing about a layered system is I could sterilize the bottom with H2O2 if things get out of hand. Next time I might experiment with a sterile nutrient and h2O2 from the beginning, but I am convinced that high terpene production is a direct result of beneficial organism homeostasis in a given system.
Day 11 of flower! System seems to be holding strong. PH continues to climb daily to 6.5, which I adjust to 6.2 when the lights come on. PPM is pretty consistent between 850-950. I have only used LED lights once before, and I had to abort that crop halfway through flower because they got too big. I dropped the veg time down to only two weeks from purchased clone for this run. I am very interested to see how much, and what quality the LEDs will produce. I have done a full res change since last post. During this I was able to remove the planters root mass and all, and place them on a large piece of plastic while I spent 10 minutes cleaning the system and replacing the nutrient. My original hypothesis that the aquatic layer would lean on the tertiary layer in times of stress seems to hold up, as the tertiary layer prevented the aquatic layer from drying out while they temporarily existed outside the system for cleaning.
The system worked 100% according to theory from start to harvest. The LED not so much, the buds are super bomb but micro sized with 8 ounces total weight, but they burn like candles. I am going to do the exact same thing with a 600 watt HPS next winter. Will attach it to this sub when I fire up again