The capabilities of a simple soil (and a 1000w DE bulb with SIPs)

kratos015 said:

Hacked up the tops of the Strawberries in the 25g pots on day 59, they were done. Being so close to the light source, not too surprised.

I'm genuinely surprised the damage of the buds, nor the leaves wasn't significantly worse. I feel like a 1000w DE (sometimes cranked up to 1150w) would have bleached and scorched the shit out of them. Some of the buds were even as close as 1ft to the light. If I didn't have photos, there is absolutely no way anyone would believe me if I said that.

I mean, even seeing it in person I still didn't believe it. I will never run >50% RH ever again if I can control it, it is truly remarkable to me how much I've been able to push these plants because of the RH. I've harvested a decent chunk of the tent so far.

The Strawberry on the left was pulled on day 59.
Strawberry in the middle on day 60.
Green Crack: Day 61.

I've completely filled 2 6ft drying racks with the tops of the Strawberries and the Green Crack, so I'm excited to soon finally get an idea of what this light is truly capable of.

Here's how things look now.

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Hoping to find out about weight by Friday-Saturday, once everything dries and goes into jars.



Having seen the SIPs in action, and perform so incredibly, I've a theory I was wondering if anyone might be able to disprove before I go through the trouble of finding out myself. If one grows with SIPs, does one need an aeration/drainage input in one's soil?

The SIPs make the need for drainage in a soil superfluous, and since the water is never stagnant it should ensure sufficient aeration as well, no? The only somewhat conclusive answer I could find was some people recommending a 45% peat/45% compost/10% perlite mix for their SIPs. I'll likely opt for 75% peat/25% compost in an effort to stall compaction.

Imagine if you could grow in a medium without perlite/etc. in it. If the average soil has 1/3 perlite in it, that's an entire 1/3 of soil mass that roots cannot grow in. For perspective, that's 10g out of a 30g pot that roots cannot grow in! You have 30g of soil mass, but only the capacity for 20g of root mass!

I'd appreciate if someone is able to comment on any experience or sources about reducing/eliminating perlite in a soil for SIPs. Otherwise, I'll just have to find out for myself ;p



Next tent grow is already in the works. Seeds are here, and are soaking in a water+FulPower mixture. They'll go into paper towels in 24 hours, then into solo cups once they pop. They'll remain in solo cups until I harvest this first batch, then sanitize the tent/equipment. By then, they should be ready to go into their final 5g pots which will then go into the tent.

This will require me to go the ROLS route with the 25g pots, instead of no-till. Will suck to break apart the soil web, but a ROLS is better than making an entirely new soil. Gonna dump the pots and mix with enough peat to fill 24 5g pots. My goal is to a create a more even canopy with smaller plants, as opposed to larger trained plants. Became a caregiver for someone else, so I'm able to do this while staying at my plant count.

Very excited to see what happens.

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I’m excited too man!
That’s crazy that you could get that close to your plants with that 1k DE, but it does confirm something I learned recently. On a podcast with Bruce Bugby ( lighting expert super man) he mentioned that in their lab studies they found that cannabis does have the ability to process crazy high light intensity, like up to 1500 ppfd and higher. (Current thinking says 1200 is max) The one thing that made that possible? ENVIRONMENT.
As you witnessed, keeping you VPD in line makes a huge difference with that much lighting. C02 plays a big role too, and I’ll bet with all of that plant matter transpiring you had high levels of it, contributing to your success. I agree, a light mover would be sweet for your set up!
I’m using the DE 600 HPS combined with DE 630 CMH and it’s pretty bad ass.
And those SIPS... damn! I’ve been struggling a bit to keep my fabric pots hydrated properly and this looks like just the ticket! I have 30 24” trays ordered so I’ll try that out this run.
I’m also on the fence with true “ no till” gardening. I’ve done it for years but anymore I’ll at least do a 4-6 “ till just to incorporate my amendments a bit deeper down into the rhizosphere so they get processed asap. And on the last few runs in the fabric pots I actually emptied out a bunch of them altogether , added my amendments and remixed them all before putting the refreshed soil back in the pots for a new run. Plants thrived.

Whew, been a busy few weeks guys.

Trying to juggle this grow/harvest school, work, and looking for a new home, so things have been hectic. I've only been in the tent maybe 4-5 times in the last 2 weeks since I posted, just keeping the SIP reservoirs full pretty much. Haven't had time for photos, but I'll take some in a few days when I don't have work.

So, last I posted about harvesting the tops of the two 25g Strawberry Cough and the 5g Green Crack plants. Dry weight of all that is showing roughly 14.5oz, so definitely not too bad but also definitely room for improvement too.

As for the remainder of the 25g Strawberry Cough plants, the one on the left was completely harvested a couple days ago (day 71) and I also harvested the 5g Strawberry Cough. They are on drying racks in my drying room as I type this. I'll know the weight on those in another week or two once the dry finishes.

Still left to harvest are the 3 Banana Kush, 1 Critical Blue, and the rest of the 2nd 25g Strawberry Cough.

Not really that exciting of an update I suppose, still a ways to go. But I'm still here

Definitely a lot for me to reflect on and correct, in hindsight. I'm very pleased with how this turned out, but there is so much more room for potential with this light and the SIPs.

El Verdugo said:

Great grow @kratos015 ! This was the inspiration for my swick grow! Have 5 girls mainlined in swicks, gathering pics for journal! Many Thanks brother...

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My pleasure man. Saw your post on your SIPs too, they looked great! In hindsight, the pots did in fact sag into the perlite. While it didn't seem to affect my plants too bad, it still had an effect nonetheless. I'll be placing bricks, or something equivalent underneath each pot in a SIP reservoir from now on to hold the pots up. This will still allow for the wicking action to take place, but will also prevent the pots from sagging into the water itself.

I didn't notice the sagging was an issue until I was in late flower, by which point the roots had hit the bottoms of the pots (which were saggy, not moist). Even still, SIPs gave me better results than normal hand watering ever has. Hiccups and all.

Imbald said:

Nice grow Kratos. Well done!
I've always questioned the aeration percentage recommendations myself. Could I do better with more or less? I've been using sips or swicks the last three or four grows myself. When I switched to them, I upped the aeration percentage. Mainly going by a few respected members on this forum at the time (Hyroot, Wetdog) recommending more aeration when using sips. Wetdog saying he starts at 40% and gets close to 50% with other aeration amendments. Reasoning being the soil in sips is always wet, or at least moist, and they do better with extra aeration. Whether that's true I can't say, but the logic seemed to make sense, and being these guys had way more experience then me, thats what I've been going by. It has worked out. But is it needed and could my plants do better with less aeration and replaced with rich humus/good compost in its place? I'm sure there's a fine line there somewhere. And it probably would be a little different going from sips to hand watering containers.
I don't care so much about quantity, but quality is where it's at for me. I'm between 40 - 45% on perlite/pumice on this run. And then there's also rice hulls with the benefit of extra silica. But they do break down over time and are lost.
I guess the best way to figure it out would be to experiment with runs of clones and different percentages of areaation. Everything else being the same.

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I fully agree with the focus on quality over quantity! I'm a bit at a loss with the percentages now too. Hyroot and Wetdog definitely know what's up, and I've actually seen other people in gardening forums echo their sentiments about upping the percentage of perlite. But, I've seen some people claim they get away with only using 10% perlite.

Sounds like something I'll have to test out. Should be able to fill a couple solo cups and do the test that way, now that I think about it.

Thanks for stopping in, and appreciate the kind words.

JMcG said:

I’m excited too man!
That’s crazy that you could get that close to your plants with that 1k DE, but it does confirm something I learned recently. On a podcast with Bruce Bugby ( lighting expert super man) he mentioned that in their lab studies they found that cannabis does have the ability to process crazy high light intensity, like up to 1500 ppfd and higher. (Current thinking says 1200 is max) The one thing that made that possible? ENVIRONMENT.
As you witnessed, keeping you VPD in line makes a huge difference with that much lighting. C02 plays a big role too, and I’ll bet with all of that plant matter transpiring you had high levels of it, contributing to your success. I agree, a light mover would be sweet for your set up!
I’m using the DE 600 HPS combined with DE 630 CMH and it’s pretty bad ass.
And those SIPS... damn! I’ve been struggling a bit to keep my fabric pots hydrated properly and this looks like just the ticket! I have 30 24” trays ordered so I’ll try that out this run.
I’m also on the fence with true “ no till” gardening. I’ve done it for years but anymore I’ll at least do a 4-6 “ till just to incorporate my amendments a bit deeper down into the rhizosphere so they get processed asap. And on the last few runs in the fabric pots I actually emptied out a bunch of them altogether , added my amendments and remixed them all before putting the refreshed soil back in the pots for a new run. Plants thrived.

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That definitely makes a lot of sense. With this grow, it got to the point that I only needed to look at the plants to gauge humidity and the hygrometer only confirmed what I saw.

Anytime my RH% fell below 60%, the plants made sure to show me. Below 60%, they looked like shit. Between 60-70% seemed to be the sweet spot for them for sure.

Something else worth mentioning/consideration is the natural outdoor light cycle of the sun, and why I should have dimmed the light 3-4 weeks ago.

Outdoors during flower, the light isn't nearly as intense as it is during veg. During veg, the plants have access to the spring and summer sunlight. Then, come flower the sunlight in fall isn't nearly as bright and intense. My plants certainly reflected this. Before week 6 of flower, I could crank the DE to 1150w and have zero issues. Once week 6 happened though, I had to dim it to 1000 and eventually 750 during week 7.

I've seen a few others propose dimming their lights during the final stages of flowering too. It does seem counterintuitive, giving the plants less light during the time where they are budding. But, if you think about it, this is how it is done outdoors in nature. The light gets dimmer, and less frequent. Photos don't do things justice, the plants definitely suffered because of how intense that light was. And they only seemed to suffer past week 6.

No-till gardening is definitely amazing, and capable of producing a better microbiology web than a soil that gets dumped and re-used.

That being said, the benefits of no-till gardening are often null and void with how quickly soil compaction can creep up on you. No-till gardening is amazing, but living soil is living soil.

Sure, no-till is definitely better for a variety of reasons. But, getting a no-till dialed in takes quite a bit of work. One will end up making a ton of ROLS soil before they're able to make a No-Till work. The improvement you get from No-Till vs ROLS isn't enough to justify stressing over whether your soil is "No-Till or ROLS" in my opinion.

This soil in this grow wasn't even a ROLS, I made this batch of soil fresh just for this grow and the source I compost I used was quite mediocre. Soil doesn't need to be a designer brand, or have a laundry list full of ingredients. The soil just needs to be alive.

My 2 cents

Seems like your head is in the right space. I’m planning on pulling some of the highlights together of No till, ROLS and KNF. To me it seems like each of them has strengths, but also weaknesses.
To quote Rogers and Gilmore...
“ it could be made into a monster if we all pull together as a team!”

I have 8x 32gal SIPs with 4x 1000w Gavita's. After several years I finally got my soil right lol... Week 1 of flower here, a little mix of Bodhi and Dynasty seeds.

Dynasty Seed's "StarDuster" is the big yielding plant(Right) and Bodhi seed's "Purple Wookie" is the small yielding plant(left). Oklahoma is flooded with midgrade, so I'm trying to get my foot in the door with good quality top shelf(Purple Wookie).

Bodhi gear will show them what’s up!

kratos015 said:

Hey, thanks man! I actually don't have a PAR meter, so unfortunately I can't really comment much on that.

I've also no experience with CMH, but I can definitely imagine them being like candles next to a DE for sure. It is unbelievable how bright this fucking light is, like wow! I have heard amazing things about CMH when compared to SE HPS, but the DE lights are just out of this world. $200 to fill a 5.5x8 sqft area simply cannot be beat. The bulbs on them last for multiple years, so that's not an expense factor. And they light up so much space, the electric cost isn't so bad.





Its funny, I started this journal out to put a simple living soil's results on display, but its definitely looking like the DE in a tent is the thing to display here. The mantra concerning DE's has always been "DE needs 3-4ft distance from the canopy" or "10ft ceilings minimum", but I'm in a 6.6ft tall tent with some buds that got close to 1ft away from the light.

Though, I feel like I must emphasize for anyone else that may read this at a later time. The DE in my tent working this successfully was the result of a lot of outside variables.

- If my RH% dipped below 50%, the plants would show it. Got to the point where I didn't have to look at the hygrometer to know. The plants looked the most happy and robust when RH was about 60%, they looked sad and struggled when it was below 50%.

- The SIPs. Combined with a RH of above 50%, the SIPs will ensure that your plants (and soil, even more important than the plants) are constantly moist in a consistent and perfect fashion. These plants were never over, nor underwatered in all of flower (when I implemented the SIPs). The soil always had the perfect amount of moisture in it. Combine this with the plants having tons of moisture in the air? They were never stressed concerning water. The SIPs kept them perfectly watered.

- The soil. The simplicity of the soil's recipe, as well as what it provided for the plants definitely deserves credit. Even with SIPs and RH, without a well balanced soil (in terms of both nutritional value and texture) you can only do so much.

Don't want people just arbitrarily throwing DEs into a tent lol. That'd be a disaster. There were multiple variables involved that allowed for the DE to perform so well.

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You can download an app called galactica luxmeter - it will give you lux then you convert it online to ppfd

Back, but only briefly due to life getting crazy and not having as much time as I used to. Work, school, processing the harvest, family, trying to buy a house, and getting back into WoW haha.

This will be my last grow until I move into my new place, unfortunately.

Anyway, final weight of everything is 32.5oz, tad bit over 2lbs.

Not too bad, but it definitely could have been much better. I'd be stoked with those results for a SE 1000w light, but the DE 1000w definitely has the potential for 3lbs+. Sounds crazy, but 16 5g pots under a 1000w DE should be able to pull 3-4 lbs if dialed in properly from what I was seeing.

Since hindsight is 20/20, there are definitely a few things I could have done differently that I'd like to list for anyone curious.

Light was too intense during the final weeks of flower, SIPs can use improvements, my canopy coverage was severely lacking, I could have top dressed a lot more, etc. Even when I fix all of those factors, one needs a consistent strain to truly dial up a room. All of these strains were new for me. Anyway

SIP issue: Should have been obvious, but the pots sank quite a bit into the reservoirs. Easy enough fix with the 5g pots, just lift them every few days when they start sagging. 25g pots though, couldn't do shit about that. In the future, I will be putting a brick underneath the pots. This will still allow the wicking to take place, but prevent sagging. Nugs weren't as tight and dense as they looked in the pictures after they dried.

Light: The DE was absolutely incredible during veg and the flower stretch. The plants enjoyed every last bit of the light and couldn't get enough. After week 6 is when the light intensity finally became an issue. My dumbass should have dimmed the light, but again, hindsight is 20/20. They seemed perfectly fine with the full 1100w up until week 6, so I didn't notice any issues until it was too late. It was nearly week 8 before I finally dimmed the light down to 600w. I believe I brought this up before, but it actually makes sense to dim the lights after week 6 of flower if you consider how the plants grow outdoors in natural sunlight. The sunlight is more intense during spring and summer, when the plants are vegging. Then, during the months the plants flower, the sunlight is less intense and also less frequent. It seems counterintuitive indoors, but this is what happens outdoors and the size/weight of the buds does not suffer when the sunlight's intensity drops. This will be something I test within the year when I get my 4 light grow running at my new place.

Canopy: Self explanatory. There is WAY too much light being wasted on the floor if you look at the pictures I posted. To be fair, plant count screwed me here. Vegging longer could have been possible, but space was the issue with that. I got approved for my caregiver license, so I can grow more than 12 plants now. The 1000w DE lights up a 5x6 sqft area easy, next time every inch of that 30 sqft will be full.

Top dress: I heavily underestimated the plants nutrient needs with the DE light, I could have easily top dressed twice as much during flower in conjunction with the Fish Hydrolysate.

Anyway, sorry to have been so silent lately. You can tell how busy I am because this post isn't a book like usual lol.

As always, thanks for stopping by and joining me in this journal.

While my results weren't as good as they could have been, it is my hope that this thread was able to at least display what you can do with a very simple soil. One does not need a laundry list of ingredients to produce a quality living soil.

All the best everyone.

kratos015 said:

Back, but only briefly due to life getting crazy and not having as much time as I used to. Work, school, processing the harvest, family, trying to buy a house, and getting back into WoW haha.

This will be my last grow until I move into my new place, unfortunately.

Anyway, final weight of everything is 32.5oz, tad bit over 2lbs.

Not too bad, but it definitely could have been much better. I'd be stoked with those results for a SE 1000w light, but the DE 1000w definitely has the potential for 3lbs+. Sounds crazy, but 16 5g pots under a 1000w DE should be able to pull 3-4 lbs if dialed in properly from what I was seeing.

Since hindsight is 20/20, there are definitely a few things I could have done differently that I'd like to list for anyone curious.

Light was too intense during the final weeks of flower, SIPs can use improvements, my canopy coverage was severely lacking, I could have top dressed a lot more, etc. Even when I fix all of those factors, one needs a consistent strain to truly dial up a room. All of these strains were new for me. Anyway

SIP issue: Should have been obvious, but the pots sank quite a bit into the reservoirs. Easy enough fix with the 5g pots, just lift them every few days when they start sagging. 25g pots though, couldn't do shit about that. In the future, I will be putting a brick underneath the pots. This will still allow the wicking to take place, but prevent sagging. Nugs weren't as tight and dense as they looked in the pictures after they dried.

Light: The DE was absolutely incredible during veg and the flower stretch. The plants enjoyed every last bit of the light and couldn't get enough. After week 6 is when the light intensity finally became an issue. My dumbass should have dimmed the light, but again, hindsight is 20/20. They seemed perfectly fine with the full 1100w up until week 6, so I didn't notice any issues until it was too late. It was nearly week 8 before I finally dimmed the light down to 600w. I believe I brought this up before, but it actually makes sense to dim the lights after week 6 of flower if you consider how the plants grow outdoors in natural sunlight. The sunlight is more intense during spring and summer, when the plants are vegging. Then, during the months the plants flower, the sunlight is less intense and also less frequent. It seems counterintuitive indoors, but this is what happens outdoors and the size/weight of the buds does not suffer when the sunlight's intensity drops. This will be something I test within the year when I get my 4 light grow running at my new place.

Canopy: Self explanatory. There is WAY too much light being wasted on the floor if you look at the pictures I posted. To be fair, plant count screwed me here. Vegging longer could have been possible, but space was the issue with that. I got approved for my caregiver license, so I can grow more than 12 plants now. The 1000w DE lights up a 5x6 sqft area easy, next time every inch of that 30 sqft will be full.

Top dress: I heavily underestimated the plants nutrient needs with the DE light, I could have easily top dressed twice as much during flower in conjunction with the Fish Hydrolysate.

Anyway, sorry to have been so silent lately. You can tell how busy I am because this post isn't a book like usual lol.

As always, thanks for stopping by and joining me in this journal.

While my results weren't as good as they could have been, it is my hope that this thread was able to at least display what you can do with a very simple soil. One does not need a laundry list of ingredients to produce a quality living soil.

All the best everyone.

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Enjoyed the ride @kratos015 ! Learned a lot ,great thread... Thank you!

MustangStudFarm said:

I have 8x 32gal SIPs with 4x 1000w Gavita's. After several years I finally got my soil right lol... Week 1 of flower here, a little mix of Bodhi and Dynasty seeds.

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That is good news about your soil. Like many others, I am looking to get mine right too.

Can you share your soil recipe with us or it a secret?