SIP thread -- (Sub-Irrigated Planter)

[bearded.beaver]

I'd really love to have a bay window with a no till sips box in front of it and be able to grow with sun light and maybe some led lights to help offset cloudy days or veg earlier in the season. That's my ideas of a great way to utilize sips

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

Just fiddling with some numbers based on the earthtainer design I use which is a 14 gallon tote that uses a 5 inch net pot. It holds approx. 10 gallons of soil and 4 gallons of water.. using these numbers using a 4x4 model... I was thinking for height savings we make the soil bed 1.5 feet high.. this gives us 24 cubic feet of soil per the converter I found online that is approx 153 gallons of soil (can grow a monster in that! lol) now per the previously mentioned numbers for my earthtainer (and I don't know if this would upscale correctly but just sheer math wise) we would want a water res that would hold approx. 38 gallons (this might be far far too much but again sheer upscaling the math) and 55 inches of net pots. if we somehow had a res that was the entire 4x4 footprint we would want it to be approx 4 - 6 inches (this would also leave some air pocket room).

I think a more reasonable idea would be to basically build a raised garden bed and then in the bottom you drill holes (you could do 11 holes 5" net pots each to get your 55" worth of wicking) and then you have multiple rez's on the bottom so you don't need to work around trying to find or make a water tight 4' X 4' x 6" plastic tote lol ... let me know what you think of my first rough draft!

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

I'd really love to have a bay window with a no till sips box in front of it and be able to grow with sun light and maybe some led lights to help offset cloudy days or veg earlier in the season. That's my ideas of a great way to utilize sips

you could totally do that! I will be doing that once I no longer have kids in my house hahaha

 

[GentleCaveman]

The idea I shared earlier doesn't work %100. So my highschool teacher was right. Cool technical drawing tho. Thats what happens when you eat pot cookie at 6 in the morning.

 

[bearded.beaver]

From all that I have read I think that it is much EASIER to maintain a healthy bio micro herd in a larger mass of soil.... I have always been under the same impression as you that you need at LEAST 10 gal to really get the most benefits out of an organic and recycled soil system. I have seen folks on here doing it with smaller volumes though, but it seems much harder to maintain and also would seem like you would need to be a lot more attentive with teas and top dressing seeing that you will not have as much food and sugars in a smaller system for your micro herd. I have been playing around with the idea of a very large SIP that basically would cover most of my 5x5 flower area and act basically as a raised bed then I could do a sea of green with clones all in ones SIP.. the part I cant really get around is how to get to the back corner for pruning without A. a tom cruise mission impossible style harness(lolz) or putting the whole thing on a lazy susan so it could spin... but then you are into moving parts and all this and that is NOT what SIPs are all about. lol ... sorry rambling... there are my 2 pennys (-:

I think the lazy Susan idea is right on I want to do the same in a 4x4. And if the box itself was round and was able to turn on a lazy Susan that would be great. And if you had poles or posts attached to the box so you could have a scrog that turns with soil and plant.

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

I think the lazy Susan idea is right on I want to do the same in a 4x4. And if the box itself was round and was able to turn on a lazy Susan that would be great. And if you had poles or posts attached to the box so you could have a scrog that turns with soil and plant.

having something that can turn though with that much weight on it I don't think would be cheap.. I mean maybe you could just put the whole thing on casters and spin it that way? hmmm fabricating circles sucks also lol would involve bending metal or wood to some very specific arcs OR using very small specifically lengthed straight pieces to make a large octagon, or whatever you would call the shape you would end up having to make with like 20 small straight pieces lol. The idea of SIPs for me is the KISS method and that idea.. while cool... is not that lol but that does not mean I have given up on it though because having a giant bed of plants that is turnable for pruning would be amazing!

 

[budLIFE60]

Hey all just getting back into home growing and have a couple of earthbox sip containers laying around I'm gonna be using. Was planning to put two plants in one EB container and was wondering if anyone has done with before? How did it turn out?
Gonna be using some TLO soil only adding water.

Heres a shot of my plants now. I've got 3 sour stars, 1 black cherry punch, 1 watermelon jaridos and 1 gorilla glue 4 all started from clone.

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

Hey all just getting back into home growing and have a couple of earthbox sip containers laying around I'm gonna be using. Was planning to put two plants in one EB container and was wondering if anyone has done with before? How did it turn out?
Gonna be using some TLO soil only adding water.

Heres a shot of my plants now. I've got 3 sour stars, 1 black cherry punch, 1 watermelon jaridos and 1 gorilla glue 4 all started from clone.
View attachment 4271867
View attachment 4271874

oh yeah lots of folks on here growing GREAT things with the earthbox! I think @Tim Fox I am pretty sure uses those. I just made Inntainers using rubbermaids and the PDF earlier in the thread. welcome to the easiest growing ever!

 

[GentleCaveman]

I'm planing to build something like this to grow 4 autos in 2x2. Aiming for atleast 120lt of total soil.

 

[Tim Fox]

oh yeah lots of folks on here growing GREAT things with the earthbox! I think @Tim Fox I am pretty sure uses those. I just made Inntainers using rubbermaids and the PDF earlier in the thread. welcome to the easiest growing ever!

right on, those intainers are massive and so so good,, so much soil too,, those are going to rock for you

Yes i did several grows in my Earthbox with 2 plants in it, works Fatastic, make sure to set the whole thing in a tray so when the water over flows from the air gap it has something to catch it, or it will run onto the floor, depending on where your grow room is you may not want free flowing water , i put a small cookie sheet type thing under mine and caught the run off , and just dumped it in the sink when it was finished dripping,, grew some really good bud in that thing

 

[budLIFE60]

right on, those intainers are massive and so so good,, so much soil too,, those are going to rock for you

Yes i did several grows in my Earthbox with 2 plants in it, works Fatastic, make sure to set the whole thing in a tray so when the water over flows from the air gap it has something to catch it, or it will run onto the floor, depending on where your grow room is you may not want free flowing water , i put a small cookie sheet type thing under mine and caught the run off , and just dumped it in the sink when it was finished dripping,, grew some really good bud in that thing

Awesome thanks for the reassurance @Tim Fox, cant wait to give these a try. I've made a couple of sips in the past with great results so I'm excited to get these EB going. Even more excited to be growing at home again!
I'll post some pics here when I've got them transplanted.

You still growing in sips?

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

gonna be vegging out some new sprouts in SIPS into (hopefully) moms, take some clones add to some more sips in flower room and see which are females... I had been using leaves as cover but was thinking about a cover crop.... what does everyone use?

 

[Tim Fox]

Awesome thanks for the reassurance @Tim Fox, cant wait to give these a try. I've made a couple of sips in the past with great results so I'm excited to get these EB going. Even more excited to be growing at home again!
I'll post some pics here when I've got them transplanted.

You still growing in sips?

Not this grow ,I am in 4 gallon plastic pots this grow it's been kinda nice for me to be able to lift the plants out of the box for various reasons,

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

so I have not used my sips in a while but left all the soil and top dressing... I went and started cleaning to ensure the res was ok... they had basically turned to worm farms and the bottoms covered in casting lol.. well move all that back to the top wash re ammend and repeat!

 

[Greenthumbs256]

hate to see this thread die! been over week, since the last post!

heres my probiotic sip, gg4, 1 plant 4x4 scrog. Lil less than 3 weeks till chop

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

hate to see this thread die! been over week, since the last post!

heres my probiotic sip, gg4, 1 plant 4x4 scrog. Lil less than 3 weeks till chopView attachment 4281680 View attachment 4281681 View attachment 4281682

Gorgeous gals you have there! My current round is still small but will be moved to sips soon and made into moms then their clones move to SIPs for sexing! Hope to get the rest of the Sips cleaned out tonight and the little ladies moved in!

 

[Greenthumbs256]

Gorgeous gals you have there! My current round is still small but will be moved to sips soon and made into moms then their clones move to SIPs for sexing! Hope to get the rest of the Sips cleaned out tonight and the little ladies moved in!

I'm actually finishing up the gg4 in 3 weeks, and I've just started another journal on the wedding cake, running her the same way! should be a beauty!

 

[Greenthumbs256]

Gorgeous gals you have there! My current round is still small but will be moved to sips soon and made into moms then their clones move to SIPs for sexing! Hope to get the rest of the Sips cleaned out tonight and the little ladies moved in!

I also guess I should mention that's only one lady, lol no gals! 64 day veg 64 day flower!

much older pic, but it shows what u need to see at least, stalk much be at least 3 times thicker now!



I believe this video is about 2 weeks old, but does more justice than a pic, but still nothing compared to on person!

 

[meangreengrowinmachine]

I also guess I should mention that's only one lady, lol no gals! 64 day veg 64 day flower!

much older pic, but it shows what u need to see at least, stalk much be at least 3 times thicker now!

View attachment 4281859

I believe this video is about 2 weeks old, but does more justice than a pic, but still nothing compared to on person!

nice! that is a very even canopy also! props to you my man!

 

[Humanrob]

hate to see this thread die! been over week, since the last post!

heres my probiotic sip, gg4, 1 plant 4x4 scrog. Lil less than 3 weeks till chopView attachment 4281680 View attachment 4281681 View attachment 4281682

Last year I did a GG4 in a SIP/SCROG combo. I think it was 5 gallons of soil over 10 gallons of water in a 3x3 tent. I look forward to hearing how much bud you get from that one.