@Oderus how did the wicks stop working? You mean the rope itself wouldn’t transfer water? Did you use nutes in your water?
Yes after a while the wicks stopped working, yes i used nutes in the water. I’m not trying to say i know what im doing, just relaying my experience.
Still a nice product, I actually assume i did something wrong. Someone said nutes clog the wicks but it actually seemed more related to the size of the plant, when it got big, wicks seemed to stop working properly. They would just stay dry.
They say that yes, and that one should use only the cleanest running liquid nutes to not clog them wicks. Also I hear it’s possible for the roots to wrap themselves around the wicks after pushing through the pots.
So my tactic is not to put any nutes in the reservoir(I top dress) and lift the pots every once in a while so the roots stay in the pots. Time will tell of course.
Oh and I’ll order more wick rope from Temu to change them out.
I used the fox farm trio and hand watered the tea because there is so much sediment in the tea. It did occur to me that may be a problem.
This is my 3rd grow ever and I decided drip system for plain water, hand watering nutes (which is a pain) because I dont have an agitator.
The salts would build up on the side of the reservoir as they settled. I agitate the entire time I hand water. Also I only grow 2 plants in separate tents so anything more needs a better solution.
If I do SOG next time watering is gonna suck
And yes, the roots wrapped around the wicks and had to be replaced, that was when the problems began. Replacing the wicks did not work.
The wicks are just standard garden rope, get them any home improvement store. There very well may be a better style of wick, worth looking into maybe, i would love to fully automate the watering process without switching over to hydro
Ok some update. I got the system about 3 weeks ago and put on some autoflowers which were just starting to flower.
The droopiness was gone in only 16 hours, I definitely see a difference in the plants, they seem happy. I have given them top dressing and a couple of compost teas in between, but mostly hands off, just keep filling the reservoir.
I will probably get one more set or two Tray2Grows, I so like the hours saved on watering.
How does top dressing work with bottom feeding water?
Probably someone does it differently but I just take them off the wick(I put a grill onder the pot) a day before, topdress and give a good topside watering to get the nutes deeper.
That’s about it I think. Sometimes I also give some top water to them to keep the top soil moist.