Roseman's Closet-Grow Tutorial

Let me review here.

Preparation.

You have to have supplies, that can be obtained at any Pet Store, Aquarium Department, Hardware Store, Walmart, Lowes, Targets, or Home Depot. If you can order off the internet, www.amazon.com has everything.

A list to consider is
a Camera, Reflective Material of Mylar or white paint or panda film, or white plastic sheets like they use for garbage bags, 2 sided tape to hang the mylar, a hammer, two screw drivers, flat and phillips, a box of extra large thumb tacks, a roll of duct tape, a roll of masking tape, 2 dozen extra large twistie ties, large scissors, a black magic marker, small scissors, a razor knife, wire cutters, two clean empty plastic gallon water jugs, a clean quart jar, a large collander, a tea strainer, a straightened wire clothes hanger, a can of pressurized air, a big spoon, needle nose pliers, regular pliers, wire cutters, a measuring cup, clean water, seeds, nutrients, lights, pH UP and Down, reflectors, extension cords, surge protectors, an extra 5 gallon bucket, a syphon hose made for aquariums, 24 feet of small cheap chain to hang lights and reflectors from, a large trash can, trash bags, vacumn cleaner, oscilating fan, styrafoam saucers to make lid covers, fishing weights to hold down the air stones,
sun glasses and a cap to wear so the lights don't blind you, my Grow Bible, a notebook and ink pen to take notes and make a daily diary journal, pH test strips, grow cups, rockwool, hydroton, water pump, air pump, air stones, 1/4 inch plastic tubing, ODOR CONTROL, Pesticide, Large Spray Bottle, and the Reservoir TANKS.


Ask me or the BubbleHeads at :
Questions about Bubbleponic Growing Thread
where to get those supplies and what to expect to pay.

Preparation
SAFETY
If you are not in a legal medical growing state,
Rule One, DO NOT TELL ANYONE. Even if you are a legal grower, DO NOT TELL! Someone will steal your grow.
I've been on this site 3 years. The NUMBER ONE reason for getting busted is the X-wife or X-Girlfriend got mad and psissed off and told the Law.
#2, Nosey Neighbors. don't let them see you hauling in strange things. Don't let them smell your grow.
# 3, Cats! Yes, house cats sure do ruin a lot of grows.

Location
Is it empty?
Can you control the smell? the household pets?
Can you control the Humidity? the Heat?
Can you make it ALL Dark with NO Light?
Central Heat and Central Air Conditioning sure help.
Is the area private, and away from visitors?
Is your area clean and bug free?



You can not bring in buckets, tools, or anything from outside, into the indoor grow area. You wil be bringing in bug eggs, spider mite eggs and all kinds of undesirable bugs and microscopic creatures and things that will ruin your grow.

To do anything well, you have to understand it, so let me provide a little background and information here.

Hydroponics
Way over 2600 years ago, a great king named Nebuchadnezzar built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon....the first Hydroponic Garden. 2000 years later, all man had learned was to grow in water, the water had to be flowing or moving. I think most of us have seen hydroponic vegetables growing in containers that look like giant rain gutters, with water running over the roots.
About 50 years ago, man figured out that if the water was highly oxegenated, with air bubbles, then the water did not have to be mofing or flowing.

Today there are several Hydroponic Systems.
I will explain a few here, VERY Simply.

DWC, Deep Water Culture, is the most simple. It is simply roots dangling in water with air stones in the water making bubbles. (sometimes this is mistakenly called bubbleponics)

DWC:



There is also Ebb and Flow, also called Flood and Drain
That is simply a system of flooding water on and off the roots, timely and systamatically.









There is also the N.F.T. System. (Nutrient Film Technique)
I can't find a pic of that, but it is simply using a SPRAY or a flow of water on a timer, spraying the roots.


There is also a DRIP System.
This is a DWC with feeder tubes DRIPPING water onto each grow cup and root base from above. That DRIP has to be on a Timer.

And the Aeroponic System, using a MIST on the roots from below, inside the tank.

A true Bubbleponics System is my favorite. It uses a submersive water pump, that pumps water to an Irrigation Hub, also called an Irrigation Manifold, that divides the water into 6 streams to each grow cup and root base. It is the MOST rapid growing system available. I can get an average of one inch growth in height daily using the Bubleponics Sytem.

So, What Is Bubbleponics, Exactly?

The world’s first continuous plant feeding system, Bubbleponics is a hybrid design that takes the best from both worlds of the Deep Water Culture (aka DWC, “bubbler”) and drip systems. Since the nutrient mix is highly oxygenated, Bubbleponics converts its drip function to a constant feed flow directly to the inner roots. Without needing to take breaks to allow the root base to drain and absorb oxygen, plants in the Bubbleponic system are able to deliver unparalleled growth energy.

This advantage is particularly pronounced during early vegetative phases when the plant’s root mass is still relatively small. Cuttings placed into the system experience no noticeable transplant shock and practically start growing immediately. In experiments measured against leading aeroponic systems, the Bubbleponic design shaved, on average, four days from a two week growing cycle, a 30% growth rate increase over Aeroponics in the early vegetative stage; truly amazing. As the root mass of the respective plants grow larger, growth rate advantages were less evident, however, the plants in the Bubbleponic planter maintained their 4-5 day lead over the aeroponic plants throughout the cycle.

In a series of stress tests, plants in the Bubbleponic system performed remarkably when recovering from an over-fertilized condition. With almost the entire root mass destroyed, Bubbleponics was able to revive 67% of the plants which started re-growing new roots and were able to complete their cycle. None of the other plants in the aeroponic products survived this stress test. The tests concluded that the Bubbleponic system provided significant recovery advantages over other systems when it came to anything that stressed or killed that root mass.

Hub Feeding Ensures Consistency

The Bubbleponic design is, ironically enough, one of the first hydroponic products to use real irrigation parts. This includes a hub feed system, where the main flow from the water pump is broken up into 6 smaller feeder tubes via a pressure regulating irrigation distributor. No other plant’s sites are thus dependant on any other as they would be in most drip systems that use T’ed designs. This also ensures identical feeding conditions at each site.

For this grow, we wil use Bubbleponics . If you do not want to get the water pumps, that is OK, you can still follow along and do a plain DWC.
You will still learn alot here.

of course I'm subscribed

Roseman....what do you use for the Gnats that love to lay larvae on the hydroton. Both as a preventative and once you get an infestation in the DWC ? This would be most helpful.

QUESTIONS will be answered faster here:
Questions about Bubbleponic Growing Thread

From Post # 11, J R


The Home Defense Pesticide in the next pic is odorless, stainless and works great.
Every week on this site, I see 4 to 6 new posts, complaining that spider mites ruined their crops. Eggs and larvae and all kinds of critters can ruin a crop, and better and easier than finding a remedy and cure, is using a preventative.
You have to make your grow area "bug proof"!
SPRAY the walls and floor good with a good pesticide, not one just made for ants or roaches.

J R, good question.
after 7 grows, I've never had one gnat, bug, mite, or egg, no critters. I don't ned a cure, if I don't get the problem.
I use Home Defnese Spray, and Stickey Big Strips. You have to go through 4 doors to get to my grow room from outside. I never bring anything into my grow room that a bug or egg could be on. As I previously posted, I throughly wash all my tools and equipment before they get into the room.

I am a very extra cautious grower.
You can't get a DUI offense if you don't drive drunk.
You can't step in cow dookey if you dont walk through the cow pasture.
You can't get algae in the tank, unless you let LIGHT in it.
You can't get root rot, if you don't allow the water to get too hot.
You can't get gnat larvae, if you wont let gnats in the grow area.

Originally Posted by hubebaba

Good luck friend! I subscribed, not only to see all I have done wrong, but to see what ALL of those lights are for. If I need that many lights, I am in BIG trouble. That looks like a lot of money for someone on disability (actually for a lot of people I would think).

Looks good Roseman, subbed.