Is Organic DWC / Hydroponics Possible

Hello

I have been growing DWC with General Hydroponics 3 part with no problems. Great growth, taste, yeild and buds.

I decided to try Organic DWC using pura vida and so far not so good. I mixed according to package and it burnt the snot out of the plants. I am now at 1/2 strength and they are doing better but not great.

I have searched up and down and there is not a lot of info on organic DWC. From what I have read, the reservoir needs to be changed almost weekly to avoid salt build up and pH problems.

When using GH, I never changed the res, just topped off and then replaced with straight water the last 2 weeks with molasses and drip clean and it works great.

Is there any way to do organic hydro with the same ease I am doing it with GH?

Any experienced help would be great. Thanks.

mas3372 said:

Hello

I have been growing DWC with General Hydroponics 3 part with no problems. Great growth, taste, yeild and buds.

I decided to try Organic DWC using pura vida and so far not so good. I mixed according to package and it burnt the snot out of the plants. I am now at 1/2 strength and they are doing better but not great.

I have searched up and down and there is not a lot of info on organic DWC. From what I have read, the reservoir needs to be changed almost weekly to avoid salt build up and pH problems.

When using GH, I never changed the res, just topped off and then replaced with straight water the last 2 weeks with molasses and drip clean and it works great.

Is there any way to do organic hydro with the same ease I am doing it with GH?

Any experienced help would be great. Thanks.

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most companies will tell you that it's possible, I think, with some reservations. I've seen plants growing in coco and organic ferts. i've also rooted plants in a DWC with Biogrow and they were pretty good with that. guess I was lucky with the dosage.

The problem with organics I believe is first that they may "cheat" your EC meter to make you think they are less potent than they really are if you are relying on the test of EC. I'm not sure about how this works with specific kinds. The second thing is that with organics, I think, you need the life of the soil in order to break down the nutes from your fert. This can also work with hydro i guess but maybe just not as well.

also of course problems with salt buildups and sometimes foaming of the fert, can also clog your pumps etc. all and all, to me it doesn't sound like a very viable option, I think mineral ferts are better for a hydro setup, but i might be wrong

I agree. I think I am going to change over to General Hydroponics which I have had success with in the past. I have tried the organic dwc for 2 weeks now and ended up with these problems that are difficult to handle.

1. pH fluctuated from 5 to 9 and was almost impossible to keep in the 5.5 to 6.5 range.
2. Nutrient burn at 100% and at 50% and lock out at 25% strenghts.
3. Sediment on the bottom of buckets that occured regardless of how much air I pumped in. I had the water rolling with 4 large airstones and still had sediment.
4. The airstones clogged quickly with the sediment and had to be cleaned everyday.

Is it possible: - I think it would work with daily airstone cleaning and solution mixing. The pH would have to monitored regularly and adjusted-which harms the plants. Solution would have to be changed weekly and constant flushing to avoid salt build-up.

Think I will stick with GH Lucas Formula with magical and drip clean; proven in the past, might was well stick with it.

mas3372 said:

I agree. I think I am going to change over to General Hydroponics which I have had success with in the past. I have tried the organic dwc for 2 weeks now and ended up with these problems that are difficult to handle.

1. pH fluctuated from 5 to 9 and was almost impossible to keep in the 5.5 to 6.5 range.
2. Nutrient burn at 100% and at 50% and lock out at 25% strenghts.
3. Sediment on the bottom of buckets that occured regardless of how much air I pumped in. I had the water rolling with 4 large airstones and still had sediment.
4. The airstones clogged quickly with the sediment and had to be cleaned everyday.

Is it possible: - I think it would work with daily airstone cleaning and solution mixing. The pH would have to monitored regularly and adjusted-which harms the plants. Solution would have to be changed weekly and constant flushing to avoid salt build-up.

Think I will stick with GH Lucas Formula with magical and drip clean; proven in the past, might was well stick with it.

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so yeah, that's your answer right there

I grow with coco, and it's a bigger question there because of its soil-like features. Personally I prefer not to use organics with it, but I've heard of people who succeeded in doing so.

I also have a coco set up that I top feed with the Lucas formual with GH nutes and it works great. Needing to water everyday gets old thats why I wen with DWC this time. I would be that organic pura vida would work better with the coco than in DWC because you don't have to worry about sediment and clogged airstones. But watering to waste uses a lot of nutes and pura vida isn't cheap. I guess you could recycle the nutes perhaps, but who knows.

I switched to GH nutes this morning and within 10 hours, they had their color back and looking good.

Now I just have to wait for the burned leaves to recover so it dosn't look as bad.

i tried the same thing and got the same results, clogged stones and major ph problems.

i am now i coco and loving it. much cleaner/no bugs than soil and way eaiser than hydro.

oldschooltofu said:

i tried the same thing and got the same results, clogged stones and major ph problems.

i am now i coco and loving it. much cleaner/no bugs than soil and way eaiser than hydro.

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what do you feed?

I feed the same with the coco. GH Nutes Lucas forumal plus calmag, superthrive and drip clean. I throw some molasses ontop of the coco and wash it in when I water. It sticks in the roots a bit, not sure if it makes a difference.

We grow in coco as well, but the nutes we use can be used for DWC systems too. Earth Juice Sugar Peak nutrients... almost 100% organic except for some mined rock. So it's 100% natural, haha pretty stupid with all the labels. Anway it's supposed to work great for all hydro systems. :]

Good morning. I was wondering the same thing about using organics in dwc and in ebb n flow. I am currently roughly 2 weeks from my first harvest in ebb n flow using organic teas and (gh) bio thrive , bio bloom.

I brew my teas for 48 hrs and dilut noe it roughly 3-1... And topping off the reservoir as need with 50/50 tea mix throughout the week. No prob with ph holding. 5.8 -6.2

I also use this same technique in my dwc. I mix my bio thrive in to get ppm of 4-500 and top off the buckets with the tea as needed.

I won't lie. I did run across lockout earlier on but that's because I was just starting this experiment. And went th other way 3 parts tea and 1 part water. Had crazy ppm numbers but figured it was from the dry ingredients playing games with my blue lab meter.

I am also trying this in my diy spray/ drip system. ( I was bored when I built this lol). So far so good.

Here is a pic of all ingredients I use. Again not sure if I. Doing it all as the pros do. But what I have come up with is definitely working also and fish sh.t!

And here's is my tea brewing - what's left of it.after 48 hours I try and bottle it all up for when I need it

Ouchy you guys. Lol

I guess it depends on your definition of "organic growing". A salt derived from organic material or a salt that's been synthetically created are the same compounds that plants depend on for availability. For example, you can purify and concentrate pure ammonium nitrate from certified organic material, and I'm sure in certain places on earth you can then call it "organic". I don't see why I'd go to that trouble, considering synthetic ammonium nitrate is cheaper to make and likely has a less large environmental footprint than the "organic" version. I think we have to examine motives here, like why would I use a salt from organic sources rather than synthetic, considering they're chemically the same in the end. Likely the plastic bottle you bought it in and the transportation to bring it to you caused more environmental degradation than the stuff in the bottle regardless whether it's organic or synthetic.

After trying DWC for a few years and even a crazy ebb/flood system, I went organic for my own reasons and my definition of the term based on what I wanted to do. So I don't use the organic or synthetic stuff and haven't for many, many years now.

Northwood said:

Ouchy you guys. Lol

I guess it depends on your definition of "organic growing". A salt derived from organic material or a salt that's been synthetically created are the same compounds that plants depend on for availability. For example, you can purify and concentrate pure ammonium nitrate from certified organic material, and I'm sure in certain places on earth you can then call it "organic". I don't see why I'd go to that trouble, considering synthetic ammonium nitrate is cheaper to make and likely has a less large environmental footprint than the "organic" version. I think we have to examine motives here, like why would I use a salt from organic sources rather than synthetic, considering they're chemically the same in the end. Likely the plastic bottle you bought it in and the transportation to bring it to you caused more environmental degradation than the stuff in the bottle regardless whether it's organic or synthetic.

After trying DWC for a few years and even a crazy ebb/flood system, I went organic for my own reasons and my definition of the term based on what I wanted to do. So I don't use the organic or synthetic stuff and haven't for many, many years now.

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So what do you use? Not being argumentative. Really am curious! Plain ph water?

First time grower73 said:

So what do you use? Not being argumentative. Really am curious! Plain ph water?

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Also I was just experimenting. Trying to find my way that's all

First time grower73 said:

Also I was just experimenting. Trying to find my way that's all

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We would still be living in caves and wishing for fire if people never experimented with something new. Who knows, you might even invent a way to create your own organic liquid nutrients for hydro. For my grow-style now I just use plain water, obviously something you wouldn't want to do in hydro. I do think ideas like aquaponics and similar methods hold a lot of promise and could even be closed-loop systems in the future where you could grow salmon and weed on a space station or moon base. That would be cool.

I've always been curious to see how a hydro would go using coco as the medium, and teas in place of nutrients for your nute reservoir. Would take a lot of trail and error I imagine, but it's been something that has intrigued me for quite a while now. I've just never had the time to try it out myself is all.



A bit of a side note/tangent on organic bottled nutrients though; you will not get the same results as you would using dry organic amendments and compost and here's the reason behind that.

Consider a mathematical derivative. The derivative of x^2 = 2x. When you take the derivative of x^2, the end result is 2x. 2x is the end result of x^2, but is not x^2. Consider their respective graphs, where x^2 is a parabola, and 2x is a straight line. The graph of 2x is based on (aka the derivative of) x^2, but is not the same.

Lets plug 2 and 3 into both x^2 and 2x as a quick example.

2^2 = 4
2*(2) = 4

3^2 = 9
2*(3) = 6

As you can see, there are some instances where the original and derivative will produce the same results. But more often than not, the results are completely different as demonstrated above.

Now, let's take EWC and Fox Farm's "Big Bloom" as an example.

Big Bloom is pretty much a derivative of EWC and guano. It is the result of extracting the EWC and guano and synthesizing it into a bottled mix. It comes from EWC/guano, is made from EWC/guano, but is not purely EWC/Guano.

Yes, the Big Bloom is 100% organic because it is derived from organic materials. And yes it will provide good results if used properly in conjunction with proper grow techniques.

However, seeing as Big Bloom is a derivative of EWC and guano it will not have the same amount of organic life/micro-biology that the EWC+Guano would have if used in their purest forms.

Northwood said:

We would still be living in caves and wishing for fire if people never experimented with something new. Who knows, you might even invent a way to create your own organic liquid nutrients for hydro. For my grow-style now I just use plain water, obviously something you wouldn't want to do in hydro. I do think ideas like aquaponics and similar methods hold a lot of promise and could even be closed-loop systems in the future where you could grow salmon and weed on a space station or moon base. That would be cool.

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You're 100% correct on that. The best things we have are the direct result of someone being bold/brave enough to experiment and try new things.

However, what I've also realized in my own life is that some of the best things happen by complete accident.

Take cheese for instance. No one actually had the idea on how to make cheese, it was discovered by complete accident. Someone decided to store their milk in the stomach of the goat they just slaughtered, in hopes of preventing the milk from going bad traveling through the desert.

By the time the person reached their destination and went to retrieve their milk, they had discovered it had separated into curds and whey. As a result, making cheese was born.

Experimenting, and even fucking things up, are both valuable sources of potential information that could be useful in future endeavors

kratos015 said:

Take cheese for instance. No one actually had the idea on how to make cheese, it was discovered by complete accident. Someone decided to store their milk in the stomach of the goat they just slaughtered, in hopes of preventing the milk from going bad traveling through the desert.

By the time the person reached their destination and went to retrieve their milk, they had discovered it had separated into curds and whey. As a result, making cheese was born.

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Do you think the invention of salami and other fermented-dried sausage was an accident? I'm guessing someone could have been using pig intestines as a way to contain and transport chopped salted pork meat that ended up fermenting inside and left to dry out after it got moldy. The brave guy was the first one to try eating it after. He must have been terribly hungry! lol

Northwood said:

Do you think the invention of salami and other fermented-dried sausage was an accident? I'm guessing someone could have been using pig intestines as a way to contain and transport chopped salted pork meat that ended up fermenting inside and left to dry out after it got moldy. The brave guy was the first one to try eating it after. He must have been terribly hungry! lol

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I'm sure of it. That's what I think of too though. I've been getting into making my own sushi lately and that's been tripping me out. Someone had the balls to just straight eat fish raw. Just like you described, guy must have been too hungry to give a fuck and didn't want to wait on it to cook.

I could live on sushi and charcuterie for the rest of my damn life and have zero complaints.

First time grower73 said:

So what do you use? Not being argumentative. Really am curious! Plain ph water?

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Yes I have a filter on the kitchen sink it takes awhile but I try to get most chlorine out of it. Order a product of ebay to help with what's left or let it sit over night. Then ph the water and go for it. I only do five gal at a time. The ebb n flow table likes it. 1 week or so left on this girl.. wasn't u til today I found out I may have a fungus that doesn't eat the flower. Does affect yield and potency. going to have to super sanitize my tent. I just trimmed the dwc down to nothing. Ill keep you updated

Amazing canopy. So organic hydro IS a thing!