I saw a couple of old posts and an entry by @LemonadeJoe
I have five one month old clones, eleven seedlings five of which are pineapple thai six are Dancehall plants, (indica type cbd,) three mom’s that are almost done flowering and some fresh cut clones
I’m planning on a week long trip toward the end of june and another trip later this summer. I don’t trust anyone with my plants and have no family close by.
This for me looking at the BluMats
I have enough recycled soil to fill about twenty three gallon buckets. Would it be a good idea to move all my plants to the green house now and transplant them and run BluMats?
I understood you can still ad hand watering with nutrients if needed. Would you recommend more than one carrot per bucket?
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Blumats are sort of the Gold Standard (I use something different)
Set them up and run them for a week before you take your trip. There is sometimes a few ‘surprises’ to sort out 
Cheers
G
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I second getting it dialed in a week or so before hand. They can run dry over a day or two and flood you out!
I love my Blumats, even if I don’t use them right now. I like them for larger pots, the 1 and 3 g I have are a bit small. But I have the XLs.
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I literally just PM’ed lemonade asking him about his blumats or if he got them.
And I just posted in my thread asking peoples opinions on them lol.
I’m gonna chill here and watch
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Gravity feed Jacks321 only in them here. Running just (tap?) water through Blumats into soil would be ideal in my opinion, but I haven’t done it…yet. Prob a few months out there. They work great at keeping a good moisture level, so do sprayers on a timer; been doing both side by side multiple rounds. Here’s what it works like:
The Blumats keep the plants on a steady feed and a good moisture level if tuned in right, plants love that.
The sprayers on timers need less direct monitoring day to day than the Blumats. Blumats will start to clog and slow/stop their output once microbial life invades the irrigation system so keep the res somewhere cool…but it may still need treatments or regular line replacement. It seems like the slow steady drip allows life to setup shop in the irrigation lines that are in warm rooms/tents easier than the pump powered flushes of the sprayers (cheap red 360 mini screw in sprayers). About a year before needing a rebuild of all lines+res, your mileage may vary wildly.
Also the Blumats emitters/sensors seem to slow/clog all at once whereas the sprayers seem to only clog 1-2 sprayers out of 5-6 in the diy halo and don’t suffer from partial bacterial clogs/slowing so they can be left for weeks and the bad ones replaced all at once. Blumats running only tap water or on a system with a Blumat pump might do better.
It’s also easier to “program”/setup the sprayer system to give everything more or less feed/drybacks but more difficult to adjust it for individual plants. The Blumats can be made to produce runoff but they don’t flush fresh feed through the entirety of the medium as well as the sprayers.
I feel like I am ripping on the Blumats a bit, but don’t get me wrong I like them, and they grow fine plants. Just have to watch them a bit closer if you’re running nutritive feed. …Or if there’s some tips for keeping my lines dead I’d like to hear them?! Tried Sanidate (~6% peroxide mix) and SA-20 (chlorides), they only slowed down the process. Pool shock and GFF (garden friendly fungicide) are on the list to try too but haven’t gotten there yet…
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That sounds about perfect for me I top dress amendments and occasionally use a tea.
Just need to be sure my soil doesn’t dry out in between waterings.
Have you been using the little carrots or the larger dripper ones?
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The larger ones are better (there’s the maxi and an 8" or 5"?), the smaller ones work but sense the humidity higher up in the pot making them a bit more finicky to tune in IMO.
I need to learn a bit more and try organic soil soon. What’s the Jacks321 version of soil?
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The standard is generally FoxFarms if you want premixed,depending where you live there’s probably better super soils from local companies too.
Most people start somewhere around there and slowly buy amendments and keep reusing it run after run.
After you slowly stockpile different amendments it’s cheaper to build your own soil with the stuff you own, buy the cheapest‘organic black dirt and coir/spaghnum perilite/rice hulls you can and mix in all your stuff.
Always good to start composting or a worm bin if you can
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@XtraGood
Thanks for that answer! You have answered many of my question
I’m not sure about switching since every time I changed something in the grow I wind up regretting it and have to start afresh to get plants back to where they were. It’s tough enough with light, and watering and one part nutrients.
I use mega crop but heard jacks ,321 is better.
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Have been using happy frog for indoor then reusing with amendment outside. Just started a worm bin last year and have some ewc. Also got rabbit manure from a friend. I have been composting my horse manure and my leaves etc. I can get local compost but is more like mulch and I usually let it sit for a year for safety
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Not impressed at all. They constantly need dialed in, flood, etc. They were a ton of maintenance because we had to pull them out after every round to transplant and put them back in. If you snag the blusoak tape on anything it tears and you have to splice it. Went back to netafim and drip emitters. And if you have hard water, it will clog the carrots and blusopak tape. The tensiometers are horrible low quality. I had dozens of them, and they often read differently from one meter to the next. Quality is terrible.
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I was really worried about the hard water. I figured BluMats would be clogged❓in a few months!
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Yes this is a year old thread, but, its better to continue this one that opening another one right?
So I have this huge plant in a 3gal pot, its the thing tht should not be… and right now its taking a watering prottey much everyday, so well into flower i think I can expect twice a day waterings… which I dont want to do…
Is salt build-up not an issue with drippers like the blumats? Im used to doing runoff to avoid build-up, but not sure if they can be adjusted for runoff, or if it isnt an issue with this
type of continuous system.
The plant has been turned to flowering schedule 5 days ago, so I dont want to transplant to a bigger pot (dont feel confident in my transplant ability to not stunt it for a couple days).
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Ive sold them for a while. Sustainable village is a good website to get them in bulk from.
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I don’t think you would want to adjust the blumats for runoff as they would always keep the soil to wet. If your worried, you could dial them in for the normal soil moisture levels and just hand water to runoff every couple of days.
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mmmmm that is smart, thank you!
I’ve never ran nutrients through my blumat stakes. The main reason I use them is for times when I’m away from the garden more than three or four days. I haven’t had any issues when using them in this capacity. I could see them possibly plugging up with a heavy nutrient solution if not cleaned on a regular basis.
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Im not sure Blu-mats would work as a run-off type feed. In my experience, if your getting run-off w the blumats, then the soil is much too wet (and/or is already in the process of flooding out). I find that they work great for super soil mixes that don’t require constant intermittent feeding.
Edit: As was already suggested, you could try to flush every few days by hand. I wonder how that would do? Salt build up would prob depend on a bunch of additional factors…i use amendments tho so I’ll hush on that:)
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I don’t know if there’s a product available like this, but here’s an idea…
You could probably DIY it if you could figure out the parameters…
Use some sort of level control switches (and integrate it to the pump using relays or via plc) on the secondary pot which stays separate from the microbes…