Good morning you fine brothers and sisters! I have had a question that I just can’t find a solid answer for. AC infinity makes self watering bases, it is a wicking device and I’ve seen folks have good results using living soil in earth boxes etc. , and am curious as to these watering bases would work for living soil grows. I have a few laying around the house and why not use them🤷♂️. I’ve also considered putting holes in the cover to run the wick lines in closer to try using the wick action for 1/2 gallon nursery bags. Any thoughts always welcome!
From what I’ve seen in OG, octopots are one thing to look for as a self watering system, you would find a lot of info and help here …
George thank you!
And, of course, the community DIY version of octopots called octopups
The thought I ran into with the self-watering pots is that I cannot also water to runoff in order to keep any over abundant from building up in the soil over time. I run living soil also. I use our tap water, which is kind of rusty, so at a minimum I’d get a buildup of iron. It wouldn’t matter if I was running short life cycle autoflowers with fresh soil every time, but I’m keeping my soil and some of my plants are photoperiods.
Interested to hear what others think.
I have a adittional in-line device on my gas boiler on the water radiator side that filters rust using magnet tek
Might be something to consider ( diy ) I think car alternators from car scrapyard have powerful magnets in them
In my feed I like 2.5-3ppm iron , so a little is good ( calmag with added iron ) my water is soft with no or very little iron so I must supliment it
Yellowing at new growth tips is iron def
You would need to look at circle antagonist diagram to see what too much iron aggravates so to know what def to look out for ( @George may be able to help you with that )
Do you drink your water ?
: )
The latest series on the Build A Soil youtube channel has a grow in a exactly this style, and they’re also starting to stock self-watering bases and beds made specifically for living soil now.
@CADMAN made a great set of mini octopots out of a dollar store!
Lol! Yes @ifish, I drink our tap water only after filtering. My poor plants don’t have it as good as me because I grow a lot of them, not only cannabis, and with the number of gallons per day for watering filtration seems a cost prohibitive PITA, but I love the DIY iron removal with magnet idea. I’ll look into that - even our sink filter would last a lot longer if the iron load was reduced.
If you think and create a good system , you could sell them in your area : )
Hope you show us on here your creation in action : )
Others on here more technical maybe able to help you tweek it even further : )