I always got buckets of water bubbling. It can be a simple just a handful of earthworm castings and a little bit of molasses didn’t have to be anything fancy just some nice aerated microlight to get the population booming
Always keep a churn going with some earthworm castings bubbling it can literally be as simple as that
This thread is actually become a very useful area for opinions and methods on super soil and just general organic discussion I think I should change the name of this to something else so it’s not overlooked as just a infirmary post. The moderators want to maybe move this into the organic section? I’ll retitle it to something more appropriate like temperature humidity when growing under LED organically?
Do you ever wash out the bucket or do you just keep it going constantly?
I take it you’re doing much better?
Well that’s the thing in the past I used to be really OCD about washing out buckets having everything sterile when I start something fresh.
But the reverend’s new book The 4th edition of the TLO he says to never rinse your main churn buckets let that shit build up like a little micro Life Coral reef.
The small 2 gallon bucket that I have is the mineralization bucket I’m going to let that thing ride I’m not going to wash it out just keep adding to it topping it up.
The airlift bucket I would like to have enough peace of mind to not wash that out either because it’s got a lot of parts but I definitely am going to wash that out just until I get everything dialed in.
Because I don’t want to not wash it out and then have something go south before I get dialed in and start blaming it on something possibly from the bucket being dirty or some kind of anaerobic bacteria you know so once I get a good crop under my belt with this led then I’ll start implementing other things like that but for now the airlift bucket will get washed.
Fo sho, thanks to you, boogie, fish and a few others letting us all bounce ideas and methods off each other.
One thing I’ve realized i possibly have been doing wrong the entire time was dry backs. I always subscribed to the Idea of dry backs, but based on what boogie and a few others have said, it’s not the Best Idea to do. So implementing a constantly properly moist soil rhizosphere is going to take a little bit of trial and error. If anybody has any tips on that that would be great I’m kind of just going to go off a a weight thing buckets weight completely dry fuck it’s weight completely saturated and try to shoot for a middle ground which I found was about 13.8 lb according to my refrigeration scale which is very highly accurate as you don’t want to overcharge a refrigeration system.
Maybe getting one of those blue mat soil moisture meters that way I can read it and you know it would kind of give me an idea when the blue mat would water it but let me do it by hand?
Definitely try to keep the soil moist if you can. MULCH helps a ton. I have my pots on risers and water until there is a tiny bit of runoff. I don’t want much runoff but it won’t hurt much. Keeping the soil fed and moist keeps the microbes happy so there’s really no need for teas in my opinion. At least that’s my justification so I can be lazy.
So say typically in 5 gallon pots. Im looking at every other day? I used to only eater when top dried out Good down to about an inch before I watered.
It would typically take a good 7 gallons water to get any amount dripping from bottom with 9 5 gallon pot’s
So now i guess i should water maybe when pots are dry to where a quart given to each pot Will produce a lil runoff? Maybe 2 quarts?
Normally it will take about 1.25 gallons to get runoff in my past Way, which seems Way against the right Way as found out now.
I prep my containers to Have drainage going up the side’s about 5 inches
These are plant warrior pots, i bought em on sale for $1 each, 3 gallon. I thought they were 3 gallon tall, not squat. Ive used these in the past for moms.
But being squat with the warrior cone shape doesn’t leave much room for a root Ball from a 1 gallon being transplanted to these.
I’ve also back in the day had deep catch trays and 7 gallons warrior pots where I’d keep an amount of standing water in the catch trays and each tray had a small pencil bubble Stone. Kinds like a hybrid Dutch bucket setup using soil pot’s.
We don’t really want a ton of runoff. I just like to know I’ve saturated the whole pot. Plus I think a little bit of runoff helps keep salt levels lower too.
Shit. Stumbled on this post at work today - really hit home. Had been struggling with new LED’s for a while and had to take the evolution from HPS and MH lights.
Ive grown indoor under HPS and Metal Halide with little to no issues over decades… the switch to LED’s was extremely humbling. As my gardens and plants outdoors thrived I was fairly dumb founded. Still dialing in - but added some hotter lights and been working my soil with more focused efforts and I’ve seen my indoor runs increase with quality* going to spend a bit more time reading here as I’m sure I can pickup more good info on here.
OG is truely the gift that keeps giving - so much great info here.
I mean to use input water volume and the possible run off it produces as a guage of proper saturation.
Like if the pot starts running off with only a quart given, like say a few ounce come out. watered too soon and its too wet as opposed to if you could give it 2.5 quarts and only get a few ounces of runoff, that indicating it was a proper time to water?
Yeah me too brother.
Grew under hps mh and CMH from 2000-2014, no issues after My first few runs.
Took a short break, started up this past July, felt like the year 2000 all over again. Am i under feeding, over feed, too wet, too dry, not enough This or that.
But being im using a well known commonly used soil mix, I knew it couldn’t be too much of the issue. But i was running 75 degrees lights on temps. Saying to myself these led are awesome, no heat, should be smooth sailing. Lol.
As soon as i bumped up temps to mid 80s problems started fixing themselves overnight, 6 days later, you’d never know the problems existed.
BUT i really don’t like running that hot, and assume its not going to be The Best environment to keep terps and Bud structure right. So im working on adding infrared energy to the tents. The 2x3 and 2x4’s are getting 4 2 foot t5 ho’s each.
Flower tent getting ir and uv and far Red supplement added to it
Feel free to use this thread as your question and answer area as you please.
