Be skeptical of your measuring tools

Fangthane said:

I'm made it a point to avoid the Solo Cup challenge. Your idea sounds a little more interesting to me. I have one hydro grow so far, but that was with bubbleponics. If the growth rate is anywhere near as explosive, I'm probably gonna dig coco.

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Let do it, coco nuts vs soil jockeys reverse growoff

Big tent won't be clear until late November probably. After I've harvested that and made my nut for a while, I can afford to possibly fuck up an entire grow in an experiment. Then, I'll be game.

Fangthane said:

Big tent won't be clear until late November probably. After I've harvested that and made my nut for a while, I can afford to possibly fuck up an entire grow in an experiment. Then, I'll be game.

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Mine will be done around then too probably. Im going to get reading up on coco

Fangthane said:

Fuck. I'm already about half convinced that some of the bags of FF soils I've gotten from Amazon were fakes. Don't make me start doubting the authenticity of the nutes, too. There's a crummy little nursery about 45 miles away that has seriously overpriced nutes, and soils that they habitually store outdoors in the elements, but the nearest actual hydro stops I know of are about 190 miles due east of me. Not a drive I wanna make unless absolutely necessary.

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Yeah read the 1 start reviews on Amazon nutes...or any Amazon product for that matter. Tons of fakes!!

Cpappa27 said:

Mine will be done around then too probably. Im going to get reading up on coco

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There is a LOT to read.

Here's a great starter thread...I read all 67 pages before my 1st coco grow. (and still had issues, lol)

manfredo said:

There is a LOT to read.

Here's a great starter thread...I read all 67 pages before my 1st coco grow. (and still had issues, lol)

A few things that I've learned about growing in coco with a drip systm DTW

Ok let me chime in with what I've learned about coco. The majority of my growing life was spent growing with organic soil, I used bio bizz nutes with compost teas and it was great, I grew in 12Ltr pots and watered every 2 days, wet-dry cycles..... Now I was happy growing like that but then I...

www.icmag.com

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Thanks yeah it seems like its going to be some work but thats ok, Ill be trapped inside for the winter in this Arctic Tundra anyways. Be a good time to learn some new techniques

Cpappa27 said:

Thanks yeah it seems like its going to be some work but thats ok, Ill be trapped inside for the winter in this Arctic Tundra anyways. Be a good time to learn some new techniques

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I can tell you even with all my mistakes, my yield was about 50% more than in soil, so it's worth learning.

manfredo said:

my yield was about 50% more than in soil, so it's worth learning.

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My single hydro run had a yield increase of 300%+ of my typical soil grow. Quality wasn't great, but weight was crazy.

Here's a half-assed grow journal I did for that experiment: https://www.rollitup.org/t/hello-first-attempt-at-hydro.1084951/

manfredo said:

I can tell you even with all my mistakes, my yield was about 50% more than in soil, so it's worth learning.

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Well that would be a damn good incentive to give it a shot alone.

Fangthane said:

My single hydro run had a yield increase of 300%+ of my typical soil grow. Quality wasn't great, but weight was crazy.

Here's a half-assed grow journal I did for that experiment: https://www.rollitup.org/t/hello-first-attempt-at-hydro.1084951/

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WOW 300%. What do you think the reason was for the quality decrease?

Cpappa27 said:

WOW 300%. What do you think the reason was for the quality decrease?

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On the average, probably get typically 2-3 oz per plant in soil. Got over 19 with those 2 plants, which fucking blew my mind.

I was fighting pretty drastic pH spikes fairly often, so I'm sure there were some micronutrients that probably didn't get absorbed quite as well as they should have. Also kinda got complacent the last few weeks. Both plants had gotten so top-heavy that just moving them around enough to switch out the buckets was creating a lot of sway that scared me. Roots ended up getting slimy and brown at the very end from not changing out buckets, which I'm sure didn't help the quality much either. Weed wasn't bad by any means, just didn't have a whole lot of flavor. Also wasn't quite as dense as I would have liked.

Fangthane said:

On the average, probably get typically 2-3 oz per plant in soil. Got over 19 with those 2 plants, which fucking blew my mind.

I was fighting pretty drastic pH spikes fairly often, so I'm sure there were some micronutrients that probably didn't get absorbed quite as well as they should have. Also kinda got complacent the last few weeks. Both plants had gotten so top-heavy that just moving them around enough to switch out the buckets was creating a lot of sway that scared me. Roots ended up getting slimy and brown at the very end from not changing out buckets, which I'm sure didn't help the quality much either. Weed wasn't bad by any means, just didn't have a whole lot of flavor. Also wasn't quite as dense as I would have liked.

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Thats awesome. Im looking into organic coco and hydro now it seems quite interesting and with the sand thing, people use a flood and drain sort of system on their sand beds from a fish tank. The water feeds the plants with fish poo, then gets filtered throught the sand naturally and then back into the tank. They do this every few hours and up to 300 times with the same water and the plants are super super healthy . It fucking blows my mind how amazing that farming method is. I am so intrigued.

manfredo said:

Thanks for the quick reply, and I was thinking of trying MaxiBloom for the simplicity...Like you said, once you know your measurement it's the same every time.

I use RO water too, and I think that's where some of my issues are. I was adding Armor Si at 5 ml per gallon the first 2 weeks, then dropping to 2 ml, and ran into some deficiencies. I read some people use 5 ml per gallon start to finish.

Sounds a lot easier than this...and I am running into some weird burn / bleaching crap this new run already...Hence looking to change!

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Yeah if you use RO you will need some Armor Si and pH UP because MaxiBloom is very acidic when mixed into purified water. I would use tap if my well water wasn't complete ass.

You can use up all those supplements with the maxibloom too, just replace the micro, grow and bloom with 1 tub. I would recommend buying the 16 pound tub for the best value, if your able, buy the 50 pound bucket, cause the more you buy the less you pay overall per/gram. I get the 50 pound buckets shipped from Amazon for around $250 as of now. That will last my 6 light flower room a solid 4-5 months feeding 30-50 gallons per/day.

p.s if your using RO cause you have city water has chlorine or w/e do not worry about that at all, you can probably use the city water and not need armor si and pH up. I don't use any microbes and get great results. If My reservoir gets a biofilm or I notice any funkyness going on I will add 0.1ml/gal of Clorox 7% disinfecting bleach to my water and feed the plants without issue.. I would not use RO filtered water if I could use my well water, or filtered well water, but either way it comes out the end, it's not good. I have a shallow well with a high water table and I live in the iron belt of the midwest so my water prefilters look like orange/red within a couple days of running them and if I fill a bucket with water even through a sediment + carbon filter its a orange hue by the next day.

curious2garden said:

From the pattern I believe the bleaching was your lights not your nutrients. Unfortunately once damaged the leaves never recover. I think you'd have a much easier time with only Flora Micro, Grow, Bloom and Ca/Mg to start. The others I've found to be not required.

The Maxi's are simple and you don't buy water. I still with Flora because that's all they had in '96 when I started. So it's dead simple for me. But I keep looking at Maxi.

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Definitely get the 2.2 lb bag and try it out on some plants, just give them maxi and make sure the pH is around 6.0 and you will wish you did it years ago, I know I did.. Just know in ProMix and similar mixes you can feed a lot less and less often because it holds a lot of nutrients, I learned with maxi in coco you gotta go hard and feed daily when your allowing adequate runoff.

Fangthane said:

Big tent won't be clear until late November probably. After I've harvested that and made my nut for a while, I can afford to possibly fuck up an entire grow in an experiment. Then, I'll be game.

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Coco is cheaper than soil and way harder to fuck up. You can correct issues on the fly where with soil if its a bad batch or mix your whole run is over.

calvin.m16 said:

Coco is cheaper than soil and way harder to fuck up. You can correct issues on the fly where with soil if its a bad batch or mix your whole run is over.

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I suppose if you buy blocks of coco and manually prepare them, it'd be cheaper. In this nowhere shit hole of a region, I'm either going for a painfully long drive or buying what I need from Amazon. The pre-bagged, buffered and washed 70/30 coco products I've seen pretty much all cost at least as much as the Happy Frog I've been getting - $35+ a bag.

The issues I've had that I decided were from bad soil all showed themselves pretty early on. So far, I haven't had to completely bail on an established soil grow that's in flower.

Prepping a brick of coco is trivial.
I much prefer the bricks over bags.

Fangthane said:

I suppose if you buy blocks of coco and manually prepare them, it'd be cheaper. In this nowhere shit hole of a region, I'm either going for a painfully long drive or buying what I need from Amazon. The pre-bagged, buffered and washed 70/30 coco products I've seen pretty much all cost at least as much as the Happy Frog I've been getting - $35+ a bag.

The issues I've had that I decided were from bad soil all showed themselves pretty early on. So far, I haven't had to completely bail on an established soil grow that's in flower.

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Bricks cost the same here as bags.

calvin.m16 said:

Definitely get the 2.2 lb bag and try it out on some plants, just give them maxi and make sure the pH is around 6.0 and you will wish you did it years ago, I know I did.. Just know in ProMix and similar mixes you can feed a lot less and less often because it holds a lot of nutrients, I learned with maxi in coco you gotta go hard and feed daily when your allowing adequate runoff.

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I have them in my cart and fell asleep LOL

Maybe there is an actual fix for the cheap hygrometers.

As in, re-polarizing the sensor correctly, or wiping away some of the lacquer coating it was dipped in, etc. Some easy hack that takes less than a minute?

Maybe you could buy a bulk bag of the same exact sensors for cheap, like 50 of them. Then pick through and test for the good ones, and replace the ones in the units that are off.

Fangthane said:

Fuck. I'm already about half convinced that some of the bags of FF soils I've gotten from Amazon were fakes. Don't make me start doubting the authenticity of the nutes, too. There's a crummy little nursery about 45 miles away that has seriously overpriced nutes, and soils that they habitually store outdoors in the elements, but the nearest actual hydro stops I know of are about 190 miles due east of me. Not a drive I wanna make unless absolutely necessary.

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The kicker about Amazon is if you find two sellers of the exact product you want to buy and the prices are:

Seller A: $35
Seller B: $45

But you investigate and come to the conclusion that Seller A is likely selling counterfeit goods and Seller B is a legitimate dealer for the brand of goods you're looking to buy, so you decide to pay the extra $10 for the peace of mind that you're buying legitimate goods.

Now say you live in California. If the counterfeit product is stored in Amazon warehouses on the west coast and the legitimate product is stored in Amazon warehouses on the east coast, they will ship you the product that is closest to where you live in order to make delivery faster, so you will get the counterfeit product even though you paid the extra money for the other seller's item.

All Amazon knows is that X brand calmag needs to be delivered to this address and they don't know which ones in their warehouses are legitimate and which are counterfeit, so they pack up the X brand calmag that is closest to the address that ordered it so that they can get it in the next day or two.

After buying some nutes on Amazon for a great price that seemed questionable that I didn't use, I always pay the extra cash and go to a brick & mortar shop that is an authorized retailer of the nutes.