Experimental Simple Hydro Grow

[dopemine]

Hey yall, first time grower here. I figured being a beginner, I got nothing to lose so I might as well try experimenting and learn mistakes as I go along. The main aim is that I want to develop my own method that isn’t too complicated and easy to maintain.

Grow Method
Rice hulls/husks will be used in place of the traditional expanded clay pellets. I’ll be opting for a hybrid hydro/kratky grow style where I have the air stones at the bottom of the bucket but I won’t be refilling the reservoir until there’s 1/5 water left.

Nutrition
For the nutes, I’ve made my own custom mix using MasterBlend’s Hydro 5-11-26 as the base. This will be the only formula used throughout the grow as to not complicate things. You can check out the formula here. I’ll also be adding hydroguard and pro-tekt silica to the reservoir.

Pest Control
Neem Oil with natural surfactant sprayed once a week.

Strain
Terpgasm by Solfire Gardens, generously gifted to me by my sister.

Germination
I originally started off with popping 3 seeds in rockwool cubes but unfortunately 2 died from over watering them. Lesson learned

Week 2 from Germination

I realized at this point I had to place the light farther away and lessen the nutes.

Week 3

Week 4

Made quite a few changes during this week. I drilled two holes to the side of the bucket and put the tubes through there. The past couple of weeks I noticed some bugs crawling about and some sprouts started to appear so I decided to repot it but this time with the rice hulls boiled for about 5 minutes. Towards the end of week I finally noticed the roots poking out so I filled the reservoir with 1.2 EC (0.2~ EC from tap water)

Week 5

Added foil to make sure no light leak. Water pH was at 6.5, so I squirted some phosphorus-based pH down in there. Didn’t check what was the pH after.

Week 6

pH measured at 5.5, didn’t do anything.

Notes so far
As a first time grower, I’m quite surprised how fast a plant can grow in a week’s time. This particular pheno is quite short so I’m kind of debating what I should do about it. Ultimately I’m thinking of leaving it as is and just do some LST to the best I can.

Another thing is that, against conventional wisdom, I’ve only pH adjusted the reservoir once in the entire grow. Part of the experiment was to be as hands-off as possible so I’ve only checked the reservoir once a week. I thought for sure I’d encounter some nute problems but the plant’s has been relatively healthy as far as I know. My theory is that this is because its a non-recirculating system and I haven’t added any new water.

I made a mistake when I tried to LST in that I think I pulled too hard on the top 2 branches of the main stem. They’re still attached but only barely. I didn’t realize how weak the ‘joints’ are so I’ll be sure to be more careful next time. Tonight I’ll be using some garden ties and hopefully try to even out the bush.

But so far, so good, unless I’m missing something here

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9

[GrouchyOldMan]

NIce work @dopemine,

Doesn’t look like you’ll need that net with such a compact strain.

Watch out for pH problems and be prepared to adjust if you see any brown spots on your leaves. I have found pH and Cal/Mag problems the most common issue in Octopot grows which have some similarities with your bucket.

Cheers and best of luck,
-Grouchy

[sfzombie13]

it makes me wonder what is in the auto ph adjusting grow and bloom nutes i used to use for hydro grows. i never checked my ph either. i just found out recently that it adjusted the ph automatically. you may have figured out the secret.

[dopemine]

More like stumbled upon it A lot of the decisions I made when designing the nutes was from reading/watching science-backed research. As I understand it, nutrition deficiency/toxicity stems from adding too much of one thing so maybe I happened to hit the sweet spot.

It could also be the work of Masterblend but they haven’t advertised any pH adjusting mechanic in any of their marketing materials

[HeadyBearAdventures]

This looks like fun!

I will make one note that the material you’ve chosen for your net it’s going to do a couple things:
First, all those little stray threads are going to come off, and get stuck in the buds around them which imparts quite an unpleasant flavor when burned (ask me how I know ). Second, it’s going to disintegrate because it’s a natural fiber.
Nylon string is the way to go for a trellis/scrog net.

Alright, I’ve said my piece, and now:

I bless this grow with the headiest of Heady Bear vibes!

[pharmerfil]

Great looking first grow, reminds me of exactly how I started out! Watch for ph swings when your plants starts to drink more especially during flower. In my experience it’s better to monitor it before you see a problem with your plant. If your ph drifts out of range then your plant can’t absorb nutrients so it will suck up large amounts of water while increasing the concentration in your reservoir and further throwing the ph out of range.

But I’m sure you’ll learn as you go, I don’t want to ruin all the fun for you! I ran dwc buckets with jacks(very similar to master blend) for years so I’m happy to help whenever you need.

And I’ll let you in on a little secret it took me years and some gallons of hydroguard to learn: ditch the hydroguard and get some Southern Ag Garden Friendly Fungicide. It’s the same thing except it’s 99% Bacillus amyloliquefaciens instead of 99% water and at half the price. Hydroguard is really one of the biggest ripoffs in a bottle.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00VXQG23O?ref_=cm_sw_r_apin_dp_BQEHRJ443Q9FNDDBV5E5

Good luck with your grow, I look forward to seeing how you do!

[LzBoy]

Nice looking 1st go @dopemine
Gonna pull up a seat in the chair.
new to growing myself and always looking to learn and hopefully one day help out others new to this awsome hobby
Good luck gowin dem beans growchacho

[dopemine]

Thanks for the recommendation! But alas, I don’t live in the states so the things I can acquire are quite limited. Its the reason why I used Masterblend instead of Jacks. However, the interesting thing about using Rice hulls is that its organic matter so in theory bacteria should be able to thrive in it. But who knows? Hence the experiment

[Coffin_Dodger]

Good tip, @pharmerfil . Was wondering about the silly range of prices I’ve seen for hydroguard. Will definitely be going Southern AG when this gallon runs out. Do you dilute it, have a ratio you prefer, or go by what it says on the tin and litfa?
Thanks in advance.
Stay up!
Coffin_Dodger

[CosmoNut]

Ahh but what kind of bacteria?

Are you doing water changes or just topping off?

Great looking grow so far, I haven’t seen anyone use rice hauls before.

Just a thought but if you want to get more bang for your buck with your beneficial bacteria brew them for 2 days in some warm 70ish f dechlorinated water with a tablespoon of honey, molasses etc. I do mine in 5 gallon buckets and it only takes drops to half scoop of starting bacteria. Another bonus is the bacteria is activated and thriving when you put it in the system.

[pharmerfil]

I’ve heard of using rice hulls in dwc systems but I was always worried about it clogging pumps and such. I would think it would work well if you can keep it contained because it drains very well and doesn’t provide a good home for bacteria in my experience. I use it for aeration and mulch in coco coir so I’m interested to see what you find.

@Coffin_Dodger I usually dilute it about 100:1 making it about 3x the strength of hydroguard. Then I just squirt a few ml in the reservoir every time I add nutrients. The directions on the bottle I think call for using it as a foliar spray which I’ve never done.

[dopemine]

Thanks for tip! Thinking of changing out the water once it hits around 1/5 to minimize potential issues with pH. So far the plant’s looking good and the water is about half way through.

[dopemine]

Yeah I probably wouldn’t be using rice hulls in dwc with pumps. There are some that gets through the net pot and goes around in the reservoir. It only works here because its just a simple hydro.

[Pannonian]

Maybe you find this interesting @dopemine Combining river sand and rice husks

The best hydroponic medium you have never heard of – Science in Hydroponics

[dopemine]

Haha yes, this was actually where I got the idea from Originally, I was debating between rice hull/sand, kratky and hydro for my grow. It was then I was struck with an epiphany that I could just attempt all of them at once

Ultimately, I didn’t add sand because it would just slip through the net pot and its a bit redundant as its main purpose is for water retention.

[dopemine]

Week 7

EC@1.45 pH@5.6

Notes:
Those of you with a keen eye may notice some burnt/yellowing leaves from the top view. I’m not too worried about it since that’s probably because I accidentally snapped some stems a couple weeks back and they seem to have healed back now.

During this week anxiety got the best of me and I did some heavy defoliating because it was just becoming a monster of a bush, so much that I had some difficulty doing some LST on it. I was expecting to have it recover in a couple of days but in just mere hours it covered the canopy again… amazing. In hindsight, I really should’ve taken some before and after pictures. Not entirely sure if I did the right thing by defoliating in the first place.

Besides that, its stems and branches are starting to grow thick and strong. pH seems to be rock stable as well. Wish I could check the roots but because the gardening twine is attached to the bucket itself I can’t lift the lid off so I’m just gonna take a leap of faith and pray that everything is going A-OK down there.

In other news, just got informed that my girlfriend’s family is coming to visit on Christmas which is a bummer. That means I have to finish the grow a lot sooner than I expected, so as much I’d like to veg so it can fill out the tent, I’d have to start flowering now. It is what it is

[Shadey]

They look healthy to me I would suggest raising your light a bit in future if growing this type of strain pheno type, that way they will stretch a little more and the leaf nodes will not be as tight together, saving you doing the defoliation. I would have defoliated them a bit as well, so I think you did the ritht thing, even now they are not going to get much airflow through those leaves, but if your going to flip them shortly they will stretch out more anyway so you should be ok.

[HolyAngel]

If it’s not the light, it could be the low amount of P in your feed as to why your internode spacing is really short and the plant isn’t getting very tall. That feed mix looks to be a 5-1-5 NPK mix. I usually run closer to 2-1-3 in veg. 1-2-3 to 1-3-4 in flower… Regardless, she’s lookin pretty over there

[dopemine]

Yep, the low phosphorous was a theory I’ve been thinking of but I’ve seen pictures of deficient plants and their node intervals were longer. Though its very possible its a combination of both the lack of the nutrient and genetics at play here.

Using hydrobuddy, the calculated feed ratio for the mix is actually 1:0.48(P2O5):1.3(K2O). When I was designing the mix, I wanted to get as close to 2-1-2 as possible. Mainly because I believe that you don’t really need as much P, even in flowering. Another plus is that I can use pH down without worry since they’re usually phosphorus acid.

[dopemine]

Week 8

Look how tight those nodes are

Notes:
I messed up during the beginning of this week. I was supposed to change out the water but I noticed my pre-made nutrient A/B concentrate were contaminated. Admittedly I mixed those ghetto style without any instruments so I ordered some stuff online to properly mix a new batch. In the meantime I thought it would be ok to just add more water, some left over solution and pH it.

Well, lo and behold, I ran into nutrient problems. Judging from the symptoms it was probably a combination of magnesium deficiency and nutrient burn. Decided to pH correct and wait a couple more days but the problem kept getting worse until finally I decided to just make the mix again and swap out the reservoir @1.6 EC. Since then it seems to have rectified all my previous issues and I’m happy to say the plant seems to be recovering.

Throughout the week I did some light defoliating, removing small leaves at the lower branches that I knew would never see the light of day. I’m starting to understand how the branches grow and which parts to cut.

What’s interesting to me is that I only started having problems once I started messing with the reservoir. In hindsight, adding that extra spare solution I had was probably the issue since it increased EC when I shouldn’t have. Lesson learned.

I’m debating whether to flip to flower now or not. Or should I wait another week?