Been loving coco in hempy buckets a while now. Time for a little razzle dazzle. Or glorious failure!
This is a bottom feed zero runoff recirc coco hempy bucket. What a mouthful. Water drains in to a small res, which I manually dump in to the container holding hempy bucket.
Adding a couple ml of hypochlorous each day has kept the little mini res clean so far, though it is due for a dumping as particulates (coco mostly) are accumulating.
Sound crazy? It probably is, but wait, there’s more!
Dankemshunter puts 4: cubes on to 3 gallon containers of coco for his moms. Well… why not try putting it on a coco hempy bucket instead?
One thing I have noticed with coco hempy is that the hempy res runs dry long before the media when starting out and only fertigating once or twice per day. When it gets to a few times per day, not as much an issue. The shortcoming of this shows itself in how few roots actually populate the hempy res, its only a handful.
Just did a run with 10 Lemon MacMelon and 5 Motor Breath in coco hempy, and kept the coco way more wet than it should be, in order to keep the hempy res wet. Result was greatly increased root mass in the hempy res, but more importantly the growth rate increased a good bit.
So cool thing here with the rockwool girl is that when I add drippers, it will be super easy to just drop a dripper right down on that perlite, which will go straight to the hempy res!
Both are looking great so far. The bottom feed coco hempy got the smallest of the 10 Jungle Boys Grape Cake Head that are going. She is now probably number 3 or 4 on size, and has by far the thickest stalk. Super encouraging! Next run might pull out a 4x4 deep flood tray and do flood and drain bottom feed coco hempy on a full light.
I used to make the reservoir part at least 1/3 or 1/2 of the pot/bucket. I would leave a small air gap between the bottom of the media (coco, soil ect) and the rest would be nutrients. The whole reservoir would fill with roots, it would be packed out. Grow fast and constantly feed as the reservoir would need regular filling.
Please keep us all updated with the outcome as this is a very interesting concept and I do need to research it to fully understand, but I get the basic mechanics of this one!
Guess there is no reason for getting nervous if the hole is more than around 2 inches from the bottom. A third or half way sounds very interesting. Hmmm, more experiments probably incoming.
I find the reservoir is just a stopgap. It doesn’t matter if it’s “dry” or “full” as long as the media has enough water. Been doing hempies forever, every which way.
Hello. I am still in buckets. I should take a picture of one plant in hempy under a 630. Needs watering everyday but it’s working just fine. All I learned it was from that icmag hempy thread plus a small amount of observations over the last 10 years.
I am on 100% fine perlite, like #4. #3 works great too. I find the larger grades are more expensive and less water for no reason.
For nutes, I use Dyna Gro because I generally work in hard water, but I actually moved to a place with softer water so I’m moving back to MaxiGro/MaxiBloom.
It has the lowest Ca/Mg of any complete fertilizer, this is because it is a liquid and in solution it wouldn’t work with the higher Ca/Mg concentrations of other complete ferts. This is why people add Epsom to jacks or calmag with other ferts or why calnit is always separate with dry ferts. 2% Ca vs like 5% for Maxi or 7% for cropsalt.
Dyna is great for hard water, though, or Ca sensitive plants like orchids. Which until recently was all I’d ever grown in. In soft/medium water, I’d use Maxi series. Cannabis uses a ton of Ca/Mg and until now, my water had plenty. Municipality I live in now uses surface water, not well. Tastes like mud, too.
That’s a fine plan, any and all will work just fine.
However…I find it doesn’t matter the grade of what you use for the sump/reservoir. Just use whatever grade perlite is available. Super coarse vs fine makes no noticeable functional difference. I should honestly use actual rocks instead of wasting extra media but habits and all that.
Coco is a nice medium especially mixed but I generally found no benefit. It can do weird things with pH and nutrients, though it does hold more water and is very very cheap and comes in bricks vs giant bags. Also susceptible to fungus gnats. I just have less to worry about in fine perlite overall. It really comes down to how large your plants are vs how much you want to water. Something to think about.
I’ve used maxibloom seedling-finish 1tsp/gallon with great results (often bumped up to 1.5tsp/gallon for mid flower). Saw somewhat faster growth using maxigrow in veg and early flower, but either works beautifully. No experience with Canna Nutes or Mega Crop, wish I could help ya there.
Thanks for that info mate, so do you recommend I use cal/mag as well as Dyna Gro, I get heavy yellowing about week 5 of flower usually, but was under the impression cal/mag was not needed with Dyna Gro( because they say so lol)
Well, maybe. I for the first time in my life had to add epsom with soft water and Dyna. Ca was ok just 0.5% Mg wasn’t cutting it in Dyna. Threw me for a loop, sure. Most nutrients have more so it’s just never been an issue. Oddly Dyna doesn’t make a full CalMag product, just Magpro which IMO is just too much P on top of their P heavy line.
I’d start with some Calnit and Magnit and see where it takes you. 1lb of each is probably cheaper than off the shelf. Say…1/2 tsp of each per 5gallons.
Yeah their magpro is supposed to negate the use of cal/mag but like you say to much P.
I’ve been wanting to try Hempies with coco/perlite but this yellowing thing has kept me away. I use white vinegar to lower the ph if it goes above 6.6 after mixing.
I used to run coco. When I tried coco in a hempy, did an A/B test with the plant I knew the best, comparing straight coco to coco hempy.
It seemed like the hempy just turned everything up a notch. After a few days, when the roots hit that hempy res, the hempy plant took off. It was like everything was turn up half a notch. Not like super huge massive, but more than a little noticeable.
I like it quite a bit. Still seems like there is more to figure out.
