I know what they say about watering and have read many articles on the coco for cannabis site. And the info is solid. No arguments at all.
But I have not watered to run off for a couple years now. Have not had a failure. Like another mentioned. If you see burn starting then plain water for a bit. I did that grow before last, and not once during this last grow did I see any issues.
I would imagine if I watered to run off each day and then removed the run off as they say to, then I may not have ever have any issues all the way through. But its a matter of work. Adding 10 to 20 minutes extra work and a gallon more of water/nutes per day to get the run off only to throw it out, every day, seems far worse to me than watching for the beginning of nute burn and then doing less work by giving them plain water for a couple days and then doing that a couple times a week till the endā¦ I take that over 10 minutes X 100 days which is 16 hours. And for me, its way more than 10 minutes to deal with removing and dumping water.
Its no different then a autopot setup bc there also no runoff. Only difference is your top feeding. With a auto water setup it takes a matter of 2 min to wet vac and dump. Giving a water only day in coco is never a good thing. You will mess with the cation exchange rate. Water only for the flush/fade. Runoff is always better. To each there own. Salt does not magically disappear.
You would set it up to be all automated. If you use plain water you wonāt have āissuesā but you would be making the plant work harder to adjust for the change in root zone EC, the theory is the root zone always stays the same so the plant doesnāt have to adjust. Itās all about efficiency not so much issues.
The auto pots are pushing the excess salts up to the top of the substrate. If you were to top feed an autopot system you would have issues.
There are lots of ways to do it, but in theory multiple small waterings to run off would be best for efficient maximum growth.
If your nutrients are so dialed in the plant gets exactly what it needs no more or less you wouldnāt need run off
Hereās an ideaā¦
Dutch bucket system.
Look it up. It grows in coco but has an auto feed and return to a reservoir. I really liked mine. I used it as a transition from coco to RDWC.
Again, I do agree with you. In a perfect world I could and would do it that way. But for many reasons I cannot deal with the extra cost and work so I do what I can within the limits of what the plant will allow. I get the all the way through to harvest, get a pound or more dry each grow and throw away all the trim and stuff people make hash from.
My greater point is that coco is not as picky about the perfect watering feeding routines as some believe. It will tolerate less than perfect treatment. If you can do it the way recommended then all the better.
I bet your results would still be better, even already being good. As far as being more work, how? The time it takes to wet vac feed?. Literally takes me 2 min. I can walk you through a auto water system for 75$ for one plant. Then 10$ more per each extra plant (per halo). Sure hope your not hand watering because that is the most work lol. If you just dont want toā¦thats fine too but in my opinion autopots sounds perfect for you. This is main reason i dont use autopotsā¦i want the advantage of top feeding so the coco is always balanced. The extra cost is so minimal for you because if memory serves you use jacks as well, maybe a extra 5 cents for runoff. Sorry if i seem naive, the pennies more for nutes and 2 min of time for optimal just sounds crazy to skip.