I’m going to try coco hempy buckets & would like a simple , economical , easy to use & tunable base . So far it seems that Dynagro , Megacrop , Jack’s , CNS17 , GH trio & Maxigro/Bloom could all work . What would be your choice & why ?
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What’s your source water like? I recommend cutting coco with 50%+ perlite for handwater hempy. Trust me on that one handwatered pure coco does weird shit with pH and nutrients.
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Tap runs between 30 - 40ppm on TDS 500 scale . Glad you came by as I’ve been reading your Grow Journals plus you do hempys too . I was planning on using Grodon courtons in the res & 50/50 coarse perlite / Coco up top .
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Can’t recommend the cubes as the reservoir layer. Very soft, they’ll get squished down. I recommend perlite or clay balls or rocks for the base layer. They work great for the up top media, blended or pure. I do recommend a blend since it is so expensive. Like 5-10x the price of coco and perlite by volume.
30-40 ppm is very soft…pick a nutrient with higher calcium, 5% (or more). Maxi is 5-6%. Megacrop or Jack’s also a fine choice. Nutrients doesn’t matter too much, as long as it is complete. I recommend Maxi Series because I know it works very well, cheap, is an easy 1 part, and available everywhere.
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Got a big bag of cubes & huge bag of coarse perlite & pretty good bit of Coco too . I’ll just use perlite on the bottom & use the cube / coco for top . Won’t the cubes hold water & not drain as well ?
With Maxi do you just use Bloom or both ?
You can use just the MaxiBloom start to finish, but you get better growth rates in veg and early flower with MaxiGro. They’re both cheap, might as well use both.
I used 1 tsp/gallon Maxi from seed-finish with good results, slightly better results using 1.5tsp/gallon in heavy bloom stage, weeks 3-6 or so. I usually used MaxiGro all through seed-veg and first two weeks of flower, switch to MaxiBloom after.
But I can also tell you I’ve used 1tsp/gallon Maxi the entire way and it still grew plenty of good bud, just talking optimization.
Sounds like a winner mix. Mini cubes are almost a perfect media, they hold tons of water and tons of air. They drain faster than anything, water can run right through it.
If I didn’t go through 50+ gallons of mix per cycle, I’d be using minicubes right now. If you have just a couple pots it’s unbeatable. Actually neutral pH, no CEC, free draining, great water retention, holds air, clean.
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Can I PH mini-cubes same as coco say 5.8 or like rockwool 5.0 ? Save time if I could mix pre rinsed coco & cubes & ph / preload all in one go . I see you like 5gal buckets but looks like only 3gals of media is this for stability ?
Dyna Gro has a feed chart on their website for soil, coco and hydroponics and self regulates ph in neutral water.
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how much experience do you have, how easy are you wanting it, and how much are you looking to spend? As @vernal said, do a 50:50 of coco to perlite. I feed 5x a day and have a 25:75 of coco to perlite. Another think to keep in mind, coco holds onto salts like a mother… so make sure about every 2ish weeks, you’re flushing your coco so you don’t get excess salt build-up. Maxi series is easy, jacks is easy if you have a good scale, and dyna is even easier as you just measure volumes. Cost, id say either the maxi or jacks.
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Just a PhD water feed or 2? Or actual flush, like double the volume of Coco?
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Doctorate of Philosophy water feed? I mean if his water is that soft, I figure he can just run water from his tap and it’ll soak up any excess salts in his system through diffusion. But if not, just use drip clean or florakleen and that should do the trick. If he’s doing a hand watering DTW system, then yeah, just do 2-3x the amount of coco. If its a recirculating one, just let your pump run for 30min.
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Never heard the flushing of coco. I m new to coco so tell me more
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Not an expert, just going off my empirical evidence. But coco holds onto salts. So if you’re running a line with moderate to high EC/PPM, you’ll eventually get a build up an more than likely, an eventual lock out. To avoid these issues, I recommend biweekly flushes to remove any and all excess salts. What I do is, every-time I change my res (every 2 weeks), I flush my system with water + florakleen for 30min. Drain the “cleaning solution” and run regular water through it again for 30min. If you have an establish root system, its damn near impossible to overwater coco (a lot of people are afraid of doing it, but I run probably 3 gals 5x a day through a single plant). After that, I add in my nutes, let em mix, and usually water the plants right afterwards to replenish fresh nutrients in the media. I assume you could do it weekly, but that seems a touch excessive to me. Right now im switching to a 80:10:10 of hydroton:perlite:coco as I want to feed more and not worry about salts that much. All of those medias hold water with coco beings the longest, but the coco is small enough to “fill in the gaps” of everything else allowing for a better root system. But yeah, I love running my 75:25 perlite to coco, great root balls and buds at the end of the day.
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A couple coco techno bookmarks.
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Thank you. I have run across numerous posters in forums who treat coco like dirt & they let it dry between watering’s. Coco is hydro dammit!
Sorry for the thread interrupt . . . btw I run Canna Coco nutes very successfully but I’m just small scale home grower.
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Maxibloom. Start to finish. Stuff is cheap And I get great results
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this is as simple as possible and with great results I would just add some calmag to every feed. Is the famous KISS method
But for sure doing that will also improve the results and cost more $$
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I don’t really “pH” rockwool I just give it a good flush with nutrient solution after I fill a pot. Unless you’re growing a really really big plant there’s no need to actually fill the bucket to the brim. I usually fill them up to about 4-4.5 gallons. If I’m flowering a smaller plant I try not to waste more media than I need.
That will be less work for sure . I planned on rinsing all 3 to remove dust , salt , check EC / PH . Precharge it all with nutes / calmag ph’d solution . 3.5gal buckets .
If I understand the trick is to keep ph / ec in balance , root out ASAP , up pot as needed . Once roots are established then either the multiple automated fertigation or a hempy . Being pragmatic & old I don’t want to have to spend more than I can afford timewise or dollarwise .
Fact of the matter is legal med here = no grow ,$50 an 1/8 , not to mention being on a list that could be used to take whatever . I figure stay low & slow , follow the no tell , smell , sell . I live alone & get along with neighbors . I doubt they’d come after an old vet with a personal grow , but aint gonna push it .
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You’ll be fine. Most people get busted with either a big ass grow, or they’re young and dumb and have a bunch of people over for parties or they pissed off their girlfriend. Keep it small and manageable and you’ll never have an issue.
Go easy on the calmag. You may not need it, sometimes it causes more problems than it fixes, but you have soft water so it’ll probably be helpful.
Biggest advice I can offer in hempies is runoff pH is king. Let the plants sit a day and test the water in the reservoir. This will give you an idea of what the pH is at the root zone. It’s the only thing that can go wrong but it’s also easy to fix. You may need to adjust input pH for a while until it normalizes. I also recommend 6.0-6.3 pH in hempies, standard hydro pH of 5.5-6 is too low.
FWIW I never check EC. Just pH occasionally, with the drops. You’ll get to a point where you can read the plants.
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