There you go
Slowly but surely pal!
Like i mentioned earlier: all the problems i had growing on clay pebbles are gone. It is nice to have them on top of the rock wool to witness how a medium should function.
This is Uruzgan, a land race that i stole from the Taliban. Word in the desert was they supposedly used it as a truth serum for war prisoners.
from the taliban serum
May i add that i have not yet smoked her myself?
The seed plants are also looking good short and thick stems
How are the ones on the slabs doing?
Like i mentioned earlier: all the problems i had growing on clay pebbles are gone. It is nice to have them on top of the rock wool to witness how a medium should function.
Now that’s the way show them clay pebbles what’s going on
The best cuts will easily make it, they caught on within an hour. The bad cuts i have yet to see and today i may replace one or two with my last remaining spare cuts. Will take pictures later.
It feels good to prove them that they were the ones to blame for all the troubles i had this summer!
Here we are with the slab update. I’ve lowered the lamp slightly and increased the wattage to 115 watts.
The one in the top corner to the right obviously caught on, the one left to her likely and the two beneath i have serious doubts about.
So far i’ve replaced one cut but i wish i could replace more.
This cut caught on the minute i planted it. When you have 20 fresh rooted cuts catching on is peanuts long as you go easy on the watts in the beginning.
Since i have to work with some bad cuts all of them may not make it which will mean i will switch to a plan b that i have already designed in my head. I will cut the slabs into parts of 25 cm with the cuts on it. The ones that caught on will go into crates and the medium of those that haven’t will be torn into particles and used to fill up the crates with extra media. If this happens it will have some advantages over the current set up.
Hello!
The seedlings are doing fine. I flooded yesterday (Ec 1.6 and pH 5.5) and 200 watts still seems plenty. I might even have to increase the height of the lamp to get the seedlings to stretch a little.
Looks great brother
I always love your set up
And those clay pebbles do make them look pretty
At least they are of some use lol
Thank you my friend!
The pebbles look pretty indeed, it is like a crypto rock wool grow!
But since the clay pebbles lack capillarity i could never have pulled it off in this setting with these high pots.
I increased the lamp height a bit which now hangs 35 cm from the canopy. I did it because i want the plants to stretch a little.
Furthermore i’ve snapped the main branch of the two cuts yesterday and they both recovered nicely.
Most of the plants on slabs are slowly recuperating. Thus far i replaced four with two Uruzgan clones and two S.O.G. clones. I’ve saved the clones i removed and put them in small pots with rock-wool. You never know if they might come in handy later.
The led hangs high and is dimmed to 110 watts. It is as tho they are in a clone closet.
Nice to be caught up here @Hamme I have never seen anyone have so much trouble with clay pebbles I have never done well with rockwool mine went into pebbles yesterday to discover my pump doesn’t work. So I’m gonna be watering from the top a few days
Be welcome @MCR0161 and indeed i struggled heavily with the clay pebbles. Interesting that you struggled with rock-wool where i never had any issues with other then being late with watering causing some plants to die of drought.
Contrary to rock-wool substrate my local garden center sells clay pebbles and since rock-wool has become very expensive i gave the balls a go. On some Dutch sites i read that the clay pebbles hold water which i came to discover was not the case.
What i’ve discovered by trial and error is the following and i am very curious to your thoughts where i was wrong or right. Let me state at first that i only want to water by ebb and flow and hand water only if needed in the first week. Drip systems are not my cup of tea i am too fainted of heart for all that spaghetti.
Clayballs don’t hold any water, no capillarity. So you need to water and have a big watertank or grow low. I had to water as often as ten times a day to get the plants going. Which resulted in a lot of algae growth which i despise.
And residue is another issue. Even after cleaning the pebbles thoroughly there still comes residue with the water increasing both the Ec and pH drastically.
So clay balls need often watering, big tanks or low growing all of which is not needed when growing with rock wool. The clay balls are pretty but besides that they have only disadvantages compared to rock-wool of you ask me. But please correct me if i am wrong. Since i struggled so much i am very interested to learn what caused the many issues.
For me it was algar growth etc on the cubes. Dodnt give them a fair trial I’ll admit. But I just know they wasnt for me bro.
I’ve used clay pebbles a while and you are correct you need to flood often. The upside to this is you can pull a lot of oxygen into the rhizosphere when you’re feeding. And this gives explosive growth. My system has a big oversight. And that’s that I can only flood a max of 4 times a day with it. So will be swapping out for sonoff basics on the feed pump.
I agree with the dropper spaghetti. I’ve got friends that run continuous drippers on Wilma systems. I prefer to feed from the bottom. To the top of the pebbles and drain away back to the res.
Water retention isn’t great with clay pebbles but you can make the advantage of multiple feeds work for you done right.
Always to each his own. And seeing as though your method makes me feel uneasy about my skills. I’m definitely keen to see what works and what doesn’t for you too
The lack of water retention with clay pebbles causes you to be very dependent of the pump. Also this lack of capillarity makes it a necessity to flood as high as the highest clay pebbles like you mentioned you do. In my setting this means i have to refill the tank soon as the plants start to drink because otherwise the highest clay pebbles will stay dry.
The algae you had on top with rock wool i had on the floor of my table when flooding the clay pebbles so often. Is flooding 4 times a day enough?
For me it would have been very convenient if i had gotten the plants going on clay pebbles, because the local garden center sells them contrary to rock wool. But it is not a rockwool vs clay pebbles thing for me. To each his own indeed and i am just naming pro and cons without shaming. Chances are i will try another grow on clay pebbles because i can’t stand it when i cannot succeed in something that i have tried rather hard.
And in retrospective the whole setting was new, i think it was more the power of the led lamp to blame than the clay pebbles. The lamp cannot be dimmed much and the ebb and flow table cause the lamp to be closer to the clones.
I still have the clay pebbles and may very well choose to prove my point soon.