Apples and oranges my friend. I was referring to the average home grower with a few plants. With 60 plants you definitely will need a lot of automation, and I would be interested to hear the details of how you handle all of this.
My small tent sits next to a floor drain, and I put a drain in drain the bottom of the tent. So if I water by hand or a auto system the run off drains itself, and all need to worry about is getting the water in.
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Trim jail sucks. Luckily with a cannabrush, trim bag, and middle child it went well this year. I wore short sleeves yesterday and my arms were itching horribly.
Watering gives me a chance to relax. I just pull up a lawn chair in front of the tent and use a pump sprayer.
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Trimming bud is my favorite part. I get to get up close to each bud.
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Question with these autopots. Alot of talk about runoff and checking ppm n pph and not collecting salts that you flush through your plants. How does this change the need for that
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Autopots feed through capillary action. Draw the water up - when they do that; the expended nutrients and fertilizer salts get carried to the top of the pot away from the root zone. The only reason you would need to flush in an autopot is because you feed from the top as well as the bottom.
The Autopots also have a float valve, so itâs not constantly sitting in the same amount of water - it still goes through the wet/dry cycle that cannabis prefers, itâs just less obvious.
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Ok. Awesome !
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You mentioned molasses in your OP. The AutoPot would not work well with nutrients that thick, and would be best with synthetic nutrients. Also you will need room for the reservoir, and it will need to be elevated above the AutoPot.
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True - molasses, recharge, or anything else that tends to be sticky or gummy is best added directly to the autopot tray, and not to the reservoir. Otherwise youâll be cleaning out your lines and your valves in a matter of days.
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Awesome. Def gonna get them for next run than. Simple is key. Yes i use mollases to feed my myco and tricoderma fungi.
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After your first grows⌠Its nice to fab some kind of auto-waterâŚ
It amazing how often one has to travel and leave the girls by themselvesâŚ
Maybe these photos will give you some ideasâŚ
But build what works for you
GROW PLATFORM - 10 GALLON EARTH BOXES
10" WATERING RINGS
WATER TANK -NEEDS SOME BASIC COMPONENTS
(To keep things clean)
NOW⌠3 WEEKS INTO FLOWERâŚ
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Reading all these comments Ive concluded I have no idea how to actually water correctly. I didnt even realize that watering to run off was to remove salts. I just figured it was a way to insure proper saturation. I plan to switch over and start doing the jacks. Is watering to runoff still required or recommended with organics? I just want to keep it simple. I may even look into these super soils. A soil that could carry an autoflower thru to harvest would be exactly what im looking for. even if I had to add a few organic bloom booster nutrients toward the end would be ok. seems like the ffof soil im using gets close. maybe it and just use some of the jacks stuff toward the end. Im confused and rambling
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âOrganicâ can mean a lot of things. I wouldnât water to runoff if youâre using a living soil (soil that has an ecosystem of its own and all you need to do is add water). I would water to runoff using âorganicâ fertilizer. All fertilizer has salts that will build up if you donât water to runoff at least periodically.
Let me tag someone who just came back from a long hiatus. He uses living soil, and Iâd trust his guidance over mine any day. @Warkat
If youâre going to go down that road, no nutes should be required nor used, theyâre detrimental to a healthy soil ecosystem.
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After about my 3 grow i knew i would not want to water every day but love growing in coco so immediatly started looking into automation. All tents and rooms now have drain pans with drain bulkhead fittings installed. One is next to a drain so thats was easiest. The others drain into condensate pumps that pump into buckets and they are either dumped or pumped into garden feed resevoir. The feed is done with 30 gallon totes as resevoirs and fish tank pumps on digital timers for feeding. Im an hvac tech for 35 years with background in controls so most of this was easy for me but thats why this forum is here to help zgrowers achieve sucess where they might not otherwise. I think i tagged you on my thread for automation setup ifnot let me know and i will. The automation solved some issues but presented others, all part of the thrill that is growing. Ill say the spare time from not watering has given me time now to dial in the environment temp humidity. That is almost perfect now. More time to sit and observe the growth and manicure or just sit and enjoy the buzz. If i can help in anyway please ask. I always learn something when interacting with people here.
hey all thanks for the tag, Watering is absolutely not required in living soil all your doing there is washing away the nutrients that all those little microbeasties have given there lives for to make available to your plant. Alot is going to depend on your grow pot size. Right now im using 3 gallon cloth grow bags and im in week 4 of flower and I always use a 3 part watering method. I have about a 2 inch layer of medium sized bark chips on top of my soil and ill tell ya the layer between bark and soil is one of the most active places there are in these pots. So first off ill spray the bark pretty well until I see water running out of the side of the bags then i wait half hour or so and gently water surface with 3 cups of reverse osmosis water then wait at least half an hour to 1 hour. then I water surface again with 1 quart of water and i usually end up with just a small amout of water in the tray that is absorbed right back up. then every 2 to 3 weeks ill do the same steps except for the last quart of water on surface i water from the catch tray with that quart of water. hope this makes sense amounts of water just need to be adjusted to pot size and age of plants.
one other thing that to me is real important. get used to the weight of your pots when well watered and when on the dry side. Please get away from using those cheap soil testser all your doing is interupting the pathways you microbes have developed for themselves and creating pathways for your water to run directly out of your pot. and most of them are horribly inaccurate anyway.
oops i meant to say watering to runoff haha its probably a real good idea to water the kids LOL
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@Allinherhead, I too, am an old HVAC tech with 48 years before retiring.
I found and saved your thread, and I will start leaving some posts there instead of high jacking this one. Looks like some great work you have done.
But to continue the drain discussion here, let me add this. When I added the second 2x3 tent it was not close to a drain. Since it is only 65 inches high I was able to put the tent on a platform, put a drain tube through the bottom of it. By sliding a shallow tote for a drain pan under the platform. It made emptying the run off or collecting it to sample easy.
I am presently using this tent for drip hydro set up, and again a reservoir under the platform works great.
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I use this 50 litre rainwater tank to mix up nutes and check pH.
I move the tank onto a dolly to top it up then I can use it directly from the hose. 50 litres does my entire garden.
Very nice, we can talk on the other thread anytime.