I need to figure out how to steer this soiless recipe:
ProMixHP+, with extra 10% of coarse pumice, and 10% zeolite, for a 50/50 looking to improve o2 im rootzone.
I’ll be working with 5Gal round fabric pots, with only 2 gallons of substrate, wider rootball, for quicker evaporation…
I won’t use AC, currently working with COB LEDs, quantum boards and SMD bars, but I’m about to switch for MH for flower, due to its pretty nice spectrum…
So the air will be refreshing the room 24/7, hopefully assisted with geothermal heat exchanger…
I’ll add some Solacure bulbs to the setup in order to push expression development.
My AIM is to farm for resin, and NOT big flowers…
I understand coco/rw are the most suitable for this practices, but I can’t automate to dial in everything, and most of all…
I want to put out a low-tech fertigation SOP for the masses…
Hopefully we all can build this together, and left enough knowledge gathered to achieve this purpose.
Thanks a lot in advanced for the time and energy invested through this post.
Welcome and good luck on your project. It sounds ambitious and worthwhile.
The lack of automation is going to make steering tough. As far as drybacks, there are so many variables involved - size of plant, size of pot, substrate, environment, health of plant, etc. you just gotta do it and track.
But just so this post isn’t just a bunch of babble, I use Grodan Unislabs with a 4” block on top. Plants are usually 3’-4’ tall.
Lights on, in flower, well rooted in, drying back about 2% of vwc per hour, and a little less than 1% per hour lights off.
A minor point on cloth pots…
if you find you are drying out too fast, especially on the sides, there is an option.
Grassroots has a “living soil liner” an impermeable liner that stops a couple inches of the bottom. (I’m sure you could do the same thing with a modified plastic bag).
I found these helped in a Canadian winter (low RH environment)
Right now, I’m looking in google for pumps and sprinklers, at least lighting and water cycles will be managed through digital timers…
I decided to invest in a template from some brother, let me paste a part of it…
A friend passed me these fabric pots, but surely I’m gonna do the next run with the grasroots, thanks for the hint on the plastic liner, because indeed those fuckers are gonna dry fast on the edges, plus, I might put them above a screen so they loose humidity at the bottom too… I’m looking to have faster drybacks than with only the promixHP, but I’m reading carefully how the pumice and the zeolite works to see if it really matches the purpose.
I’m even more confused now, the PDF expose a case at the opposite of what you’re describing. And i still don’t understand the advantage with canna to hunt max evaporation of the water of your solutions.
Brother I’m broken in pieces, there is so mich for me to learn about this topic, I’m aware that I have some misconceptions that need a little bit more reading…
Perhaps should I just work with the average promixHP left alone??
Maybe starting by the begin, resin production is quite permissive in term of choice of techs. At least you got well advised on best spectrums for this.
What are you actually mastering the most in term of style of grow ?
Yeah, not real clear on the goal I guess, but if you want to “actively steer”, here’s some things to consider-
Let’s assume lights on at 8am, off at 8pm.
If you want to “steer” for quality, start feeding at 9am. Feed several times until you reach field capacity (get it full within 2 hours, no later than 11am and not all at once …)
Don’t feed/water again until the next day at 9am. Repeat until harvest.
Simple as that. But, what if it hasn’t dried back enough?
Now the hard part is getting your pot size/substrate/plant size/drybacks dialed in so all of this happens every 24 hours. Maximum water content soon after lights on. Appropriate minimal water content immediately prior to feeding. And not letting it get so low overnight that your plant crashes.
I think takeaway #1 with steering is that you’ve got to get your plants to the point where your entire wet/dry cycle is occurring every 24 hours. Soil growers in big pots might have a 7 day wet/dry cycle. You can’t steer under those circumstances.
You’ve got to get your room under a pretty predictable 24 hour cycle of maximum/minimum moisture. I personally wouldn’t add anything in to your mix to increase moisture holding, but I’m comfortable on the edge.
If you get the ProMix MP it already has extra perlite to make it more O2 friendly. I like the idea of using less and using the coarse pumice and zeolite instead. I use these in my complete soil mix.
