meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
Hey you would be surprised how far those things can make it up the inside of my worm bins! But yeah that would be something to see.. worms crawling up the outside to get in hahaha
SIP thread -- (Sub-Irrigated Planter)
- Thread starter Humanrob
- Start date
Adrosmokin
Well-Known Member
Gonna try making my own SIP. Is there a standard ratio for the size of the wick container to the overall container? Don't want it too big.
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
check out the inntainer seems like a great place to start to me .... plans are on page 21 of this thread i think
Can anyone tell me how waterpulse vortex mats are better than the usual cheap capillary mats anyone can use with something like blumat surface? I have a terraponic be and a blumat surface I have many net pots (the kind used in DWC) and fabric pots (smart pots), I figure if I get capillary mat then all I need is nutrients which I have and I should be all set right?
PDX Joe
Well-Known Member
So, I found out a couple things with this modification. The two layers of weed fabric prevented proper wicking of moisture up into the pot. My outdoor SIPs don't seem to have a problem with the weed fabric, but this setup didn't like it. I also noticed the Inntainer doesn't have a weed fabric in it either, so I will try it without the weed fabric. The other thing is this mod definitely needs the plastic cover on top to keep the coco moist. I left the plastic cover off for a week and it got bone dry, but part of this was due to the poor wicking of the water.
Also, has anyone used Jack's 321 in a bottom wicking system? I worry about the high K in this fertilizer and it building up in the coco. It just seemed the further I got into the grow the more the plants seem to be calcium and mag deficient and I believe this can be due to high K issues in coco. Any thoughts?
I'm really tempted to go with peat, dolomite and dry organic fertilizer in this system on my next grow. It's what I am comfortable with when growing in my outdoors SIPs.
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
I just got the base needs to make up some 14 gallon intainers and yeah no weed fabric in the parts list so it should be interesting to see how it goes... ugh i forgot my damn grommets for the water level indicator..back to the dam store for a little $0.52 part lol gonna be making at least 5 of these for my new seedlings and sending the older clones into flower tonight... 2 months of veg in the inntainer and these things might be monsters... im going to have to do some major lst and scrogging i think lol
Tim Fox
Well-Known Member
monsters for sure,, really looking forward to watching your grow!
Humanrob
Well-Known Member
I'll be interested to see how this goes. What strains are you going to run -- specifically, what I'm interested in is flower time? If you run a 10 week sativa after vegging for 8 weeks, that would be a really long stretch to go on the dry nutes that are part of the initial set up. I am not saying it wouldn't work, I really have no idea -- but I would definitely like to see the results. There is no science yet to how much dry nutes to put in initially and whether to try and add more (whether to the soil or the res) during the run.
PDX Joe
Well-Known Member
What nutrients are you going to use? I was looking at EB Stone and Espoma, but I'm not totally sure about which NPK mix. I've read some growers using one mix in veg and then top dressing with another mix more suited to flowering after the flip.
PDX Joe
Well-Known Member
I was wondering if maybe top dress with a flowering dry nutes might work after the flip? Scratch it in a bit and maybe water it in a little... or try and open up the original dry nute troughs and add the flower nutes? You could maybe top dress and then cover it with a thin layer of compost/ worm castings to get the micros to start breaking it down?
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
Im going to be running Female Seeds C99 (worried as i have grown this in the past and she is stretchy lol) and Iced grapefruit and Money Maker by Strain Hunters (it was cheap and wanted to see what the strain hunter hype was about)... maybe I will have to start up a journal lol.. all my nutes are in the soil i dont know that i will be adding anything to the rez ... i dont even know if i will add teas to the rez i might just top water with them as to not have contamination in it ... we will see.
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
i have a pre cooked soil that i will be using hopefully i have enough for all to fill all of these lol if not i guess i might be using this old fox farms on a few and seeing what happens...
here is my soil mix... approx... it has been used once or twice and re amended
pete moss 7.5 gal
worm castings 3.75 gal
compost (sadly i had to use organic promix here as i had moved and lost my established pile) 3.75 gal
perlite 7.5 gal
lime 3 cups
glacial rock dust 12 cups
thats my base
then i mix my amendments together as below
kelp meal 6 cups
epsoma tomato tone 3 cups
alfalfa meal 3 cups
neem meal 3 cups
crab meal 3 cups
finely ground egg shells about 3 cups
azomite about a cup
I then take a total of 7.5 cups of the amendment mix and add it and all of this is let to sit for at least 4 weeks... really thinking on it now i dont think i have enough to fill 5 14 gallon SIPs so i may be doing some comparison growing ... by force lol
here is my soil mix... approx... it has been used once or twice and re amended
pete moss 7.5 gal
worm castings 3.75 gal
compost (sadly i had to use organic promix here as i had moved and lost my established pile) 3.75 gal
perlite 7.5 gal
lime 3 cups
glacial rock dust 12 cups
thats my base
then i mix my amendments together as below
kelp meal 6 cups
epsoma tomato tone 3 cups
alfalfa meal 3 cups
neem meal 3 cups
crab meal 3 cups
finely ground egg shells about 3 cups
azomite about a cup
I then take a total of 7.5 cups of the amendment mix and add it and all of this is let to sit for at least 4 weeks... really thinking on it now i dont think i have enough to fill 5 14 gallon SIPs so i may be doing some comparison growing ... by force lol
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
I even have 2 strains that i have 2 seedlings each so can get a decent comparison... obviously there will be phenotype differences but still should be interesting!
Tim Fox
Well-Known Member
very nice soil mix,, top notch
PDX Joe
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I guess I didn't really explain my rationale. I'm only happy if I'm constantly tinkering with stuff.
Well, that's only half the reason. Actually, what interested me in the Autopot system was the automated gravity fed sub-irrigation system and not so much the idea of moving to a full hydro system. I like that I can keep my reservoir outside the closet in a cool location and aerate the water as well. I also don't lose any height in my closet because there isn't a big reservoir at the bottom of the pot.
But, I have to say I am not very happy so far with how the Jack's 321 with Canna coco worked in this system. The plants grew relatively fast, but from day one I had consistent deficiencies that never went away and in the end got very bad. Now... a lot of it is probably my fault. However, from reading a lot of other posts of growers using Autopots with salt nutes and my experience too... I'm not sure if salt nutes are the best fertilizer in a sub-irrigation system. What I saw and read was the salt nutes built up in the pot over time and really spiked and it caused lockout that I couldn't overcome. I kept my EC relatively low at 1.4 max and usually more around 1.2 and still had problems. I tried to do an emergency flush, even though Autopot doesn't recommend flushing. The runoff was up around EC 3.0!
In defense of Jack's 321 + coco, I know a lot of people are having great success. But, it seems like growers using top feed drain to waste and even hempy's are having the best success with this combo. And so I wonder if it is because the new solution introduced at the top of the pot helps leach out any old salt buildup. But, with Autopots being a closed system you just don't get this leaching happening. Even with hempy's you top water first until the res. at the bottom is full and this would provide some leaching of old salts from the medium.
The other thing I read on other posts and I also experienced was some of the Autopots bottoms went anaerobic and got some root rot. I think there is a reason why the Autopot company introduced those air domes in order to pump more air into the bottom of the pot. My thought is why not introduce an air gap and wicks to the Autopot similar to an Earthbox, Earthtainer or Octopot design in order to solve this issue.
And, I also thought... why am I changing the way I grow? I am most comfortable with growing in peat and using organic fertilizers and plain non-PH'd tap water. Shouldn't I be sticking with what I'm good at instead of reinventing my grow process? In order to do that I wanted to modify the Autopot to be as close as possible to a typical SIP design with the air gap, wick, plastic moisture cover and top dressed organic fertilizer. So, here I am. Woo...man that was long winded.
Tim Fox
Well-Known Member
Very well said, I went on a long reading journey this morning seeing if peat or coco would work in the auto pots and I did find some threads on Coco in the earthbox. But I did not dig deep enough in to see how the salt nutes worked so you saved me big time , I did a short hempy grow and stopped because turkey baster emptying the run off was like pulling teeth. But today I found a guy who put the rubber grommet in the hempy buckets overflow hole with a drain hose into a catch tray. I still can't bring myself to the place where I have to mix nutes and pH bucket loads of water , just the idea of growing bigger colas is like the Tim Allen tool time effect where we growl like men and growncolas that are as big as water bottles
meangreengrowinmachine
Well-Known Member
First 14 gallon intainer made!.... I doubt this thing will hold even 7 gallons of soil though, after cutting it apart I will still try this round with these though. Not to bad for construction... but need to find my jigsaw for the rest lol