Watering Frequency with an Automated System

Basic Growing Info
#1

I’ve read tons of conflicting information about this and never had any straightforward answers. I found lots of great information if you run an Aroya or TrolMaster, but i don’t want to dish out the $400 for a small grow. Lots of questions still.
Questions like:

Do you water multiple times a day from the time you transplant or do you build a root system with drybacks first?

Is there a benefit to watering 6x (or more) to saturation vs. 2-3 shots to saturation in the same time period?

How do you figure out the shot times/durations throughout the day if feeding multiple times? (Granted you aren’t using sensors)

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#2

Can’t speak much on the matter but I got blumats for 3 plants in my flower tent a week ago and I absolutely love them! They were preset but I’m still tweaking it to be perfect since I’m doing a gravity system, not hooked up to a water line.
They seem to be going off a slight bit daily, I can’t fully tell but I look at the water level in the reservoir often and it’s frequently down a tiny pinch more, just keeping them in that optimal soil moisture range

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#3

There’s way too many variables for someone to give you a “right answer”. It’s depends on your media, nutrients, and even strain. The biggest variable is going to be your environment, you can have the same strain and same set up as 10 other people but your grow room or space will be different then everyone else’s.
When I run coco and mid flower it waters 3 times a day but when I’m using an organic soil same point in the grow it’s once a day.
My system is diy, no fancy sensors or any of that. I could make it more efficient with sensors but it’s not something that I need.
What’s your set up? Are you trying to make something for your grow or just trying to get the set up figured?

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#4

If you wanted to do an automated watering setup with a soil sensor, it’s not hard to do with my software.

Basically, you’d need a cheap raspberry pi ($15), a Govee bluetooth power outlet ($20), a Xiaomi Flower-Care bluetooth soil sensor ($25), and a genereic aquarium pump ($15). Cheap and easy.

Here’s a post over at my potnanny info in another thread.
Basically, you’d:

  1. Put the soil sensor into one of the pots.
  2. Put the aquarium pump into your nutrient/water bucket, and plug it into the govee bluetooth power outlet.
  3. install and set up the software
  4. discover the bluetooth devices
  5. set up a “smart control” for the power outlet (controlling the aquarium pump), that says “when the soil-moisture reading from Xiaomi Flower-Care is below 10%, turn the pump on for 30 seconds” Then, anytime the moisture is low, it will run the irrigation. whether that is once per week, or several times per day.
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#5

As KushKing says there are lots of variables…

Here’s what’s working for me:

2 x 3 min. waterings per light cycle. That’s about 166 ml. per watering per plant.
They were in .75G but are up-potted to 3G.
Soil mix with supplementary Kelp/Alfalfa teas etc.
That is slightly on the thirsty side, not enough to hurt if I’m away.

Cheers
G

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#6

I don’t have issues building a system just getting it dialed in. What do your shot sizes look like at 12x a day? I know there’s a vegetative and generative cycle. Vegetative is what’s giving me trouble. Im not sure what needs to be done to accommodate for a P2 considering I don’t have sensors to keep that full saturation within 5% till lights off. Where as with generative its 4% shots and dryback till tomorrow.
Im guessing just 2% shots every two hours for vegatative?

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#7

So are you running coco and have a system made?

#8

I have the floraflex quickfill 1gal bags. Im only gonna run 4 in the 4x4.
No I haven’t built the system yet but shouldn’t be too hard

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#9

They are super simple to make yourself, but the first grow you will really have to watch things and check on constantly to make sure it’s set up well for your grow space. The second and third grow you will have to do less and less fiddling until your comfortable with it’s performance. After that it should be dialed in pretty decent for your space :grin:

#10

Ill probably handwater until its rooted fairly well and drys daily then start with 2 waterings and work up from there

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