Join the 2L DWC-H Experiment

2L = 2L Soda Bottle
DWC = Deep Water Culture
H = Hempy

The 2L DWC-H setup has evolved in my grow room during the time I was running the 2L SOG (inspired by 420fied) back in Feb 2012. At the time I had some plants 1/2 way through and had to shut down the operation in haste (long story). I could not gather the final data to see if this setup is worth keeping.

This is where I need your help. If you have extra space in your flowering room, give a 2L DWC-H a try to see how effective it is.

Illustrations on how they come together.

CocoCoir1.jpg


Items needed:
- 1L or 2L bottle
- Scissors
- A drill for making holes. If you don't have a drill then a stake knife or a nail will do (heat up the knife/nail).
- Grow medium; works best with Perlite & Vermiculite, Coco Coir. Not sure about hydroton or soil. Feel free to test them out.

Steps:
•Take the bottle and cut in 1/3 off the top (5in down from the cap). You'll be using both pieces. The top to hold the plant above the reservoir, and the bottom is the reservoir.
• Put holes all around the top piece with a hot knife or nail for roots to grow into the reservoir. Remember to save the cap, add some holes in it too.
• Sit the top piece inside the bottom piece upside down like a cone. No need to secure it the weight of the medium & plant will push it down with the help from gravity.
• Make a hole for hempy on the bottom piece (3-4in down from the top). This acts as a "flood control" device, like those in hempy. I wanted the hole to be high enough so the reservoir holds more water, and low enough that the water line does not touch the top piece, to prevent flood and over watering.


At minimal your clone should be cut at 5-6in and root for 2 weeks to allow abundance root mass to develop before going into the 2L DWC-H. The grow medium I've used was 100% coco coir, but you can use anything that suits you.

This is what it looks like.

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Best to place these in a tray to catch the run offs. Try not to lift the top piece too often it can dry out the roots. Flush/feed accordingly.

Become the pioneer in this growing method! To sign up let me know what grow medium you will be using and the strain you'll be growing along with a link to your journal, and you're all set. The adventure awaits.

Question/concern? Post them on this blog.

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2L DWC-H testers: :welcome:

JuicySoil - [Perlite & Vermiculite] 2 L DWC-H Test Grow OneLove
SpiriTHC - [Coco & Perlite] - 2L Hempy vs DWC-H
Astonr420 - [Soil] - Afgoo 2L DWC-H
SurfBuddy - [Coco] - 2L DWC-H Lowryder, Big Bud, BubbleGum, Northern Lights
Pierce89 - [Perlite & Vermiculite] - Adventure starting soon
teSmp - [Perlite & Vermiculite] - Hydro/Hybrid Experiments - BPN
seagem - [
Perlite & Vermiculite] - Adventure starting soon
Mrgivemethat - [Prelite & Vermiculite] - Adventure starting soon
ilikebike - [Prelite & Vermiculite] - Bagseed 2L DWC-H
bigirishdoode - Bid 2.0 Grow

Thank you testers. It really means great deal to me that you guys are putting time and effort in testing this grow method out on my behalf. May the Bud God provide you with high yield, potency, and density. :love:

Comments

ilikebike - Sounds good, glad you found something that works for you.

seagem - Ask the online store for a refund. You can always order on ebay search for

BOTANICARE COCOGRO 5 KG BLOCK BALE MEDIA COCO GRO COIR FIBER GROWING MEDIA

And you should get some results. Order from someone with 99-100% feedback and has lots of sales. Driving 63 miles will take up lots of gas.
 
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Twelve12- The place I ordered from is in Washington state. they will not refund. Said it was not their fault and to see the post Office. Luckly I used a money order, I can get refunded and plan to do so. Will post when I get the Coir. Thank you
 
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Sorry to hear that seagem. Never buy from that place again. It does not matter if the shipment is lost, they have to be responsible for it. Hope you get your coir and looking forward to you using it.
 
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hmm yea i think i will toy around with this on a few plants my next run. Still dialing in on the hempys so don't want to change to much yet.....how are the roots not drowining when in the reservoir? I understand it with the standard hempy as there is some matter in there to displaces a lot of water and the roots drink it fast enough ...but this is just the water/nutes they are sitting in with no airstone...just trying to gain some wisdom here so I don't screw up so bad when I try it in my new Fun with Hempys journal
 
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I don't See a Co2 bottle. Were is it and does it work good for you? I like how clean that 2lt idea is I'm gonna try that. Thank you for the info:)
 
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Hi all,
ok i would like to try this method out, i have a 12 plant max so maybe its not the best setup but I love the idea of straight to 12-12 and harvesting every month instead of one harvest and start over. What would be the best setup for me? I am getting a 5x5 tent. I have 2 diamond 200's but they don't seem to be doing anything with the 5 plants i have now in 5g coco smartpots. So you water until you see it coming out of the hole, the roots just sit in the water with not air or anything? Just new to this setup and after reading a couple journals I get it but still need some guidance. I am thinking of just using 1 1000w hps with proper air flow
 
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tictactoke;bt3839 said:
Hi all,
ok i would like to try this method out, i have a 12 plant max so maybe its not the best setup but I love the idea of straight to 12-12 and harvesting every month instead of one harvest and start over. What would be the best setup for me? I am getting a 5x5 tent. I have 2 diamond 200's but they don't seem to be doing anything with the 5 plants i have now in 5g coco smartpots. So you water until you see it coming out of the hole, the roots just sit in the water with not air or anything? Just new to this setup and after reading a couple journals I get it but still need some guidance. I am thinking of just using 1 1000w hps with proper air flow

Hello,
Yeah this method is great but with 1000w HPS and 12 plants your could certainly yield more with another method. Anyways back to this method, harvesting every four weeks with an 8 week strain I'm guessing you could pull 4-6 ounces every month. With my 400w HPS I had larger plant going next to it but I had one of these going and one regular hempy 2L. I yielded almost an ounce of this method and a half on the hempy. That was with zero veg there was only one root sticking out and it went straight to flower..

I used small 1" air stones in mine and so have a few others, I would highly reccomend it.. What you'll do for the first week or so will be water from the top until it comes out your little hole in the side of your 2L. After you have a good amount of roots in the res you can stop top feeding completely or water say 1/4 through the top and fill the rest up just lifting the top up. Every week I dumped out the res, ran one 2L of water through the top and dumped that out and then filled the res up with nutrients. Use hydro pH so keep it between 5.5-6.0 but shoot for 5.8. You actually could let it wander further from that if you want but I keep mine at 5.8.

Good luck
 
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Well im looking for something that is used with coco but I really don't want to water everyother day, something that is semi automatic you know. You mentioned other better ways, what would those be? I have always used soil/coco organics and never tried any type of hydro. I have chem4/OG vortex, pre bubba going and the growth has been ver y slow. I am using cs-17 grow with bioweed right now
 
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tictactoke;bt3841 said:
Well im looking for something that is used with coco but I really don't want to water everyother day, something that is semi automatic you know. You mentioned other better ways, what would those be? I have always used soil/coco organics and never tried any type of hydro. I have chem4/OG vortex, pre bubba going and the growth has been ver y slow. I am using cs-17 grow with bioweed right now

Yes in my opinion there are better ways to utilize your space unless you had a hundred of these in that big of a tent.. I would strongly reccomend giving hydro a try, it's super easy and the growth is ridiculous.

Before this last grow and the 2Ls I never tried hydro only soil. After the 2L I was convinced it was the way to go. I am seriously shocked at the rate of growth so far check out my top journal in my signature if you would like.. The one below that has my 2L experiments. If you don't want to go with a SOG which requires a good amount of plants maybe consider a scrog.. I'm filling my 6 sq/ft tent with one plant in a 5 gallon DWC. I am switching to flower tomorrow prObably. I'm expecting 5-8 zips from the one plant. 50-55 day strain. 35 days from seed and I'll be flowering. Also depending on how you set up your screen you could have say four plants and put a new plant in every two weeks and harvest one plant under the screen every two weeks.. That also leaves you with four plants to veg on the side and four clones you can take, again every two weeks. Just a thought :)
 
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well i did finish the experiment with the hbd,sas,and 2 tt's, 2 were autos and the tt's are hybrids, in my opinion this method is not something i will do with my meds any more, i do have some basil going in my veg tent, to see if results are different,
heres my take on it so far, it could possibly work with some fine tuning, but what was bad for me was that roots getting out of the top half was hit or miss, the tt's had the most,the sas had none, and the 2 autos stayed very small, the hbd was much smaller than the other 3 i grew in reg hempys,, the sas was more or less a total bust final weight on it was 4 grams hbd was 17, the tt's did much better but still less than normal, tt(trailor trash) is a strain i have been working on for several years and i know it very well i grew 4 in this test the 2 in hempy-dwc had a 2 week head start i realized i should have a control subject for comparison,
unfortunately the result was similar to the autos yield was less by9 and 13 g, and the regular hempys caught up to and passed the others , there were other problems also
the dwc-h had problem with drying out to fast they wuld be almost totaly dry in 24 hrs, while the regular hempys were still damp, and due to the drying out there were several time i found the dwc-h's had tipped over due to being top heavy (this was later in flower) also there were problems with ph and deficiencies with coco if it dries out the ph will spike up.i also had lots of algae growth ,i did not black them out
so for me it was interesting, but needs much improvement before i do any more high value plants again, perhaps a larger container, im my opinion the original 2L hempy is near perfect for this type of grow style(i actually prefer the 3 liter bottles)
so for me the dwc-h did not work and is a non-starter, but for those of you still experimenting and those that are going to try it i wish you good luck and who knows maybe for someone else it will be the best ever, again this was just me and my opinion.
 
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bigirishdoode;bt3863 said:
well i did finish the experiment with the hbd,sas,and 2 tt's, 2 were autos and the tt's are hybrids, in my opinion this method is not something i will do with my meds any more, i do have some basil going in my veg tent, to see if results are different,
heres my take on it so far, it could possibly work with some fine tuning, but what was bad for me was that roots getting out of the top half was hit or miss, the tt's had the most,the sas had none, and the 2 autos stayed very small, the hbd was much smaller than the other 3 i grew in reg hempys,, the sas was more or less a total bust final weight on it was 4 grams hbd was 17, the tt's did much better but still less than normal, tt(trailor trash) is a strain i have been working on for several years and i know it very well i grew 4 in this test the 2 in hempy-dwc had a 2 week head start i realized i should have a control subject for comparison,
unfortunately the result was similar to the autos yield was less by9 and 13 g, and the regular hempys caught up to and passed the others , there were other problems also
the dwc-h had problem with drying out to fast they wuld be almost totaly dry in 24 hrs, while the regular hempys were still damp, and due to the drying out there were several time i found the dwc-h's had tipped over due to being top heavy (this was later in flower) also there were problems with ph and deficiencies with coco if it dries out the ph will spike up.i also had lots of algae growth ,i did not black them out
so for me it was interesting, but needs much improvement before i do any more high value plants again, perhaps a larger container, im my opinion the original 2L hempy is near perfect for this type of grow style(i actually prefer the 3 liter bottles)
so for me the dwc-h did not work and is a non-starter, but for those of you still experimenting and those that are going to try it i wish you good luck and who knows maybe for someone else it will be the best ever, again this was just me and my opinion.

That is odd it worked wonderfully for me and my hempy was garbage compared to this.. I yielded 1/2 ounce with the hempy and i got nearly an ounce with this method.. Roots were not a problem either not algae.. I never had to adjust pH.. I did use a 1" airstone and ran 29% h202 at 3ml/gallon.

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I used perlite/vermiculite as well so maybe it was more pH stable. I agree with you about not using it again only because I like larger plants and a SOG or small plants don't do it for me. :)
 
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i also got great results with the 2ltr dwc hempie, the only things i did different was this, i left the lid off the bottle instead of drilling holes through it, as long as the grow medium dont fall out then leave the lid off as it stops the roots getting jammed in the drilled holes, you may get a small amount of soil or what ever you use in the res after watering from the top but this will stop after a couple of days, i lost hardly any grow medium, the next thing i did different was leave a gap between the lid where the roots grow out of and the liquid in the res, so my roots had about an inch of roots out of the liquid and in the air, im not sure if this helped or not but i was happy with the results, the roots never died or rotted in the open, their was about an inch of root growth coming out the top of the bottle before it hit the nutrient liquid, it caused me no problems, if it helped or not i cant say, i got some seeds soaking for round 2 of 2ltr dwc hempie
 
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hi everyone! im relatively new to growing, totally new to hydro. i plan on making one of these using mini rockwool cubes instead of perlite/soil and i was wondering how often you watered and if you drained the run off in the 2 liter and if so how often?
 
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Excellent guide! I really want to try this, as I have clones rooted and ready. I don't have Vermiculite, or Perlite, or nutrients, other than some 10-10-10 by Vigaro (Vigaro All Purpose Plant Food [liquid]). I've got Vigaro Organics Potting Mix, though. Wondering, and may just try it, if soil up top in this will work. I've got a shit-ton of 2L bottles been saving for this. :) Just ain't got proper hydro stuff yet. However, KISS, right? I hope. Might begin another journal just for my proposed DWC/Soil/2L Hempy Bagseed Clones. Coming days will tell. *(and call me stupid, but haven't even proper sexed the clones yet, lol) So it could go any which way: Fem-success, Fem-fail, Male-success, Male-fail. We shall see, I think.
 
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Can't believe I never got back to here. The way I tried it was to put soil in top, instead of soil-less mix. So, essentially, had a hybrid soil/3L DWC. Yeah, I used a 3L instead of 2L. I'd recommend 3L if you can get and use them. Bagseed gal gave me around a quarter ounce using that, but had to harvest early due to cats, lol. Used Orchid Better-Bloom (11-35-15)
 
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Oh, and, I didn't water through the top, I lifted it off when I watered. Also, I drained and rinsed every two weeks.
 
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