SIP thread -- (Sub-Irrigated Planter)

[meangreengrowinmachine]

Congrats on your light evolution!

First thing that comes to mind is that the COBs and T5s need to be at different distances from the plants, basically I think the T5's would get in the way of the COBs, being below them. I've used COBs as supplemental lighting to HPS, but never fluorescents.

As far as vegging goes, if you have a designated veg tent and wanted to use COBs, I'd stack it with 4000's. I really like vegging with those because I have limited height in my tents and they really keep the plants tight and low so I can veg longer.

you think its worth taking out the floros for the 3500 COBs? or should i just get the flower room ready for these to move into? Basically I would have one COB over each plant.

 

[Humanrob]

you think its worth taking out the floros for the 3500 COBs? or should i just get the flower room ready for these to move into? Basically I would have one COB over each plant.

It's a little hard for me to picture, but from what you are saying I'd say leave it be, mostly based on coverage -- and that's the part I can't really picture. I would imagine that 5 cobs in one row 12" apart is basically going to cover about an 18" x 72" footprint (depending on how many watts the cobs are running at and how high off the canopy you keep it)... Would that work in your veg room?

Also, keep in mind that changing from floros to cobs mid-grow will take a few days to harden the plants, almost like when you start them indoors and have to harden them under the sun when you move them outdoors.

Edit: I was up way too late last night and I'm having brain fade, sorry if my answers were missing the point... I should probably not operate any heavy machinery or a keyboard... lol

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

sounds good thanks for the input man! I'll get some pics up once these start doing things, right now they are just being topped and vegged so boring lol. using 14 gallon intainer design posted far earlier on the thread.

 

[Humanrob]

sounds good thanks for the input man! I'll get some pics up once these start doing things, right now they are just being topped and vegged so boring lol. using 14 gallon intainer design posted far earlier on the thread.

I look forward to seeing the pics, let us know how it goes

 

[Tim Fox]

Question for you COB guys on the thread... Currently I have 5 sips vegging under 4 T5 fixtures... total of 240W floro light in an approx. 4' x 7'ish space. This is just my veg stuff. For flower I have been using just a 600 Watt HPS in approx 5.5' x 5.5' space. The plan is to start off by supplementing my HPS with the COB bar (I bought a 250w 5 CXB3590 3500K COB set up and just put all five cobs 12 inches apart on center on one bar) and then eventually buy 2 or 3 more of the same 250w 5 cob set up and then switch to all COBs for flower. My question is should i switch out the floros that are over my sips in veg (I have nothing in flower yet) or is it worth it to try to somehow keep the floros in there AND add the COB bar? I would assume 250W of COBS will far out perform 240 W of floros.... so maybe I Just answered my own stupid question and shouldn't have clogged up the thread... Maybe I'm just excited I am finally starting my COB journey! Feel free to input, tear me apart or troll me to death

welcome to the dark side

 

[Tim Fox]

Sipping along 3 weeks flower

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

welcome to the dark side

gonna get on this mainling thing too after these are done. Do you know some good strains to run with it? Think I want to order up some new strains soon here.

 

[PDX Joe]

Sipping along 3 weeks flower

Bonsai Master

 

[CaptainSnap]

New SIPS gardener here and thanks to Tim Fox to sharing this thread with me! Easiest way to garden by far and I'm happy to have found a place full of useful information all in one spot. Happy gardening all

 

[Tim Fox]

New SIPS gardener here and thanks to Tim Fox to sharing this thread with me! Easiest way to garden by far and I'm happy to have found a place full of useful information all in one spot. Happy gardening all

good to see you here buddy

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

New SIPS gardener here and thanks to Tim Fox to sharing this thread with me! Easiest way to garden by far and I'm happy to have found a place full of useful information all in one spot. Happy gardening all

Welcome! SIPs are by far the easiest way to grow that I have found and you can use all organics and No till and mainlineing all kinds of things can be adapted to SIP's!

 

[CaptainSnap]

Thanks for the friendly welcome MeanGreen!! I can't wait to have the whole garden in sips and all flowering ladies in no till sips containers. I've been practicing organic methods for awhile now and have seen impressive growth already with my first 20 gallon no till sips container. Just flipped this girl this week!! Top dressed with bsf frass, ground oyster/lobster, and ground malted barley.

 

[Tim Fox]

Thanks for the friendly welcome MeanGreen!! I can't wait to have the whole garden in sips and all flowering ladies in no till sips containers. I've been practicing organic methods for awhile now and have seen impressive growth already with my first 20 gallon no till sips container. Just flipped this girl this week!! Top dressed with bsf frass, ground oyster/lobster, and ground malted barley.

your soil sounds almost good enough to eat,, hahahah,, good looking plant

 

[Humanrob]

Thanks for the friendly welcome MeanGreen!! I can't wait to have the whole garden in sips and all flowering ladies in no till sips containers. I've been practicing organic methods for awhile now and have seen impressive growth already with my first 20 gallon no till sips container. Just flipped this girl this week!! Top dressed with bsf frass, ground oyster/lobster, and ground malted barley.

When you top dress your sip, do you water from the top at that point (at least to wet it down)? This is something I've been considering because I usually top dress my non-sip pots around the beginning of flower, but I haven't been able to figure out if top feeding a sip would be effective. And other than adding nutes to the res, I haven't found a way to freshen up the nutes during a run.

Usually when I top dress (regular pots) I add additional dry nutes to soil mix I'm laying out, and then subsequently watering through that brings those nutrients into the pot. I suppose with a sip the roots near what was the previous top of the soil line would no longer "air prune" and could continue to grow upward into the fresh added soil mix? Since the top couple of inches of my sip are mostly dry, I'm just not sure how top dressing would help?

For some background, I'm not a no-till soil building guy, I just use a mix of out-of-the-bag FF Ocean Forest and Happy Frog, and I add dry time release nutes to my soil. Lately in my non-sip pots (inspired by the trench in sips) I've been mixing dry nutes in a more concentrated way into the soil in the bottom third of the pot and leaving the upper 2/3's just soil. So far the plants seem to really like that.

 

[CaptainSnap]

Howdy Humanrob!

This is my very first run doing no till and sips gardening. All forced to as a car accident changed what I can handle. I used to do similar style as you. Mix ffof and a cheap organic bag and beefed up the bottom portion on the soil with an all purpose dry fertilizer. Then I got into just reusing my soil and beefing up that soil with all sorts of amendments. I now use this in the bottom half of these 20 gallon sips and then just reuse soil from a previous grow with added compost mixed in for the top half of the no till sips.

I only plan to water from the bottom as long as possible until I see issues. After topdressing I scratched the surface and did a light watering. My top 2 inches is pretty dry so I'm not sure how effective the top dress is but if I see issues I can water with an sst and release those nutrients! Shluby does a similar style but adds worms to the top...he recommended it to me to break down those dry top dressed ferts but I don't think my surface is moist enough to add them!

Time will tell though! I'm sure I'll be making adjustments as time goes on. Hope that all made sense

 

[Humanrob]

Time will tell though! I'm sure I'll be making adjustments as time goes on. Hope that all made sense

Yes it did, thanks I've tried all kinds of things, like putting a length of 2" diameter PVC pipe into my soil, so that I could pour liquid nutes into the pipe and have them be delivered into the middle layer of the sip soil... Not actually sure if that did anything... lol - I "experiment" but don't have a control group for comparison, so it's going to take years of playing around and eventually if I'm lucky I'll develop something like a "gardener's intuition" based on an amalgam of things that seemed to work in the past.

Below are some pics of the one sip I have going this grow. The sip is a DIY 5 gallon fabric pot over a 10 gallon Rubbermaid container, and I am using an air stone in the res. In an attempt to always improve I'm always trying new things, this time I'm using some different dry nutes in the trench than I have before.

The plant I have in there is a GG4, and they are light sensitive and light feeders. This one is showing relatively mild varied nute issues in random leaves, and I'm really not sure if I've over or under fed it (or it could be a water PH problem, or too much light...). To that end, I'm just going to let it go for now and see if it evens out on its own -- especially since the new growth seems to consistently come in pretty healthy. This brings up the second biggest impediment to my accumulating functional knowledge; I change strains pretty much every run, and they are so different from each other that what works with one may not with another. Knowledge is not always transferable.

this is a shot of the whole set up, taken about a week ago


and this is a shot of the canopy from this morning. It's an odd scrog screen, using what I had on hand -- which was two things that could not work alone and sort of work together...



I'll probably flip this to 12/12 on Monday, that will be 6 weeks of veg. I had hoped to go 8 weeks, but I am not confident that the nutes in the soil would last for the duration of a run with a plant as large as one that vegges for that long... if that makes sense.

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

Well looks like my hand may be forced... my center t5 fixture went out over the night... so now I either take down the whole rigged up thing take it all apart go buy a new t5 fixture or scavenge one of my shop lights... or hang up the cob lol... So should i keep these about 18" from the plants and keep them all the way dimmed? For how long?

 

[CaptainSnap]

Humanrob nice clean looking set up! Im a big time treehugger and am always doing diy projects with what on hand so I appreciate that your doing the same! Your plant looks like a mag issue but it could be just locked up...not sure and I would take that with a grain of salt. That is a long time for a plant to be in a 5 gallon fabric pot. You topdress compost or new soil ever?

I used to use 3 and 5 gallon pots until i got sick of watering to often and yellowing to early in flower! I went to 10 gallons for flower and because I have the room and went no till now went upto 20 gallon pots. Big difference in growth and flowerin...granted I understand we all have different growing restrictions and environments.

Thanks for sharing your set up and style of growing!! Look forward to seeing the results!

 

[Tim Fox]

Well looklike my hand may be forced... my center t5 fixture went out over the night... so now I either take down the whole rigged up thing take it all apart go buy a new t5 fixture or scavenge one of my shop lights... or hang up the cob lol... So should i keep these about 18" from the plants and keep them all the way dimmed? For how long?

Isn't all the way dimmed something like 10 watts? Do you have a watt met weter you can hook inline

 

[Humanrob]

Well looks like my hand may be forced... my center t5 fixture went out over the night... so now I either take down the whole rigged up thing take it all apart go buy a new t5 fixture or scavenge one of my shop lights... or hang up the cob lol... So should i keep these about 18" from the plants and keep them all the way dimmed? For how long?

I'm not sure there is a definitive answer. Starting at 18" and dimmed about 50% (do you have a kill-o-watt meter?) could be a good place to start. You'll need to keep an eye on the plants for the first few hours, looking for signs of bleaching or taco-ing. I'd say it's better to start too gentle than too harsh, so even starting 24" for the first half-day or day (literally) couldn't hurt.

I'm sure there are lots of opinions on this...