The Everything SWICK Club: 2023 And Beyond

[Azimuth]

A long crachet hook or a piece of stiff wire with a hook bent on one end, pushed thru a bottom hole, but not up and in, push it across the bottom and out another hole, then hook your wick in and pull it back, in one hole and out the other, giving you 2 wicks across from each other.

Depending on how much your plant drinks, you'll get more water delivery by "dead-ending" the wick in the medium. The water travels along the wick making some available to the plant, but by dead-ending into the mix, the medium is where the flow gets dumped.

 

[013]

Hey Azi I’ve got 2 SIP buckets going so wanted to spread the love on the swick side as I learn.

Carmen it’s just perlite loaded in bottom of grow bag type swick with internal dedicated air gap or root aeration chamber. For now it’s just sitting in pan of water but when I empty the tent and/or move them to flower room those smart pots will each be sitting on seperate perlite swick bed.

 

[Gee64]

Depending on how much your plant drinks, you'll get more water delivery by "dead-ending" the wick in the medium. The water travels along the wick making some available to the plant, but by dead-ending into the mix, the medium is where the flow gets dumped.

Thats good info to know Thank You!

 

[Gee64]

I put together a perlite bed and a 10gal full of soil, awaiting a clone.

The top line is the pot bottom. The bottom line is the water level. 9 litres in there right now.

I'm hoping to pull that 12" tube tomorrow or thursday,

And drop this in.

It would be nice if capillary action fully saturates the pot.

 

[Azimuth]

Good luck pushing that in. Like pushing on a string.

 

[Gee64]

Good luck pushing that in. Like pushing on a string.

lol As long as I don't break it off.

What could go wrong?

 

[Carmen Ray]

Are you getting better results from using your swick/sip? CL

Wasn’t it @Krissi Carbone who named it swick? CL

Hi Cap,
It was in the early stages of Swick trials with @SweetSue and others were experimenting using perlite as a swick bed. Here is a reference to that which will also give you suggestions of which journals you can look at in this regard.
In conversation somewhere in this thread it was considered that SWICK could possibly stand for SELF wicking.

Depending on how much your plant drinks, you'll get more water delivery by "dead-ending" the wick in the medium. The water travels along the wick making some available to the plant, but by dead-ending into the mix, the medium is where the flow gets dumped.

Good day Azimuth, please could you explain the terms "dead-ending" and "flow dump" as some of us, myself included, may not be familiar.

Hey Azi I’ve got 2 SIP buckets going so wanted to spread the love on the swick side as I learn.

Carmen it’s just perlite loaded in bottom of grow bag type swick with internal dedicated air gap or root aeration chamber. For now it’s just sitting in pan of water but when I empty the tent and/or move them to flower room those smart pots will each be sitting on seperate perlite swick bed.

Hey 013, Here is a references to my personal grow, showing the perlite beds that I used. I personally found the swicky pad delivered optimal water to my plants. Bear in mind that I am not attempting to get roots through the pot and pad into the water. I am not going for a Kratzky approach. I am relying on the capillary action to wick water from the res to the soil and the plant does the rest as and when it needs. All you need do is fill up the res.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Personally, I have not experienced any droop or adjustment time. I started the babies in SWICKS and up potted them to the 5 Gal / 20 L SWICKS with no ill effects or delay. I'd like to see a comparative grow of two clones, one on a SWICK and one on a SIP, to determine whether the SIP method is superior to the SWICK, because at present nothing seems to be going wrong with my SWICKS. The Swick method of sub-irrigation is working perfectly for me. I'd like to see why I should bother with the complexities of the SIP unless it proves superior. If the SIP method of sub-irrigation is superior we'd surely see that in a couple of clones.

Anyway, here are two pics of the original perlite bed swicks

Immediately after up potting (normal little droopy from the small amount of stress they took in the up pot).

Some hours later

My res went rotten due to using some organic nutes that shouldn't have gone in the rest. When I saw what Gee was doing with his swicky pads I changed over. This is my basic set up. Those are the wicks cut from an absorbent dish cloth. I have covered the wicks with a square sheet cut from a pre-used grow bag that was sacrificed for the cause. That wicks beautifully. You've seen how much my plants have loved this system.

These were taken about a week ago.

I hope that answers some of your questions.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Hi Carmen!

Kratky uses the roots to transport the water rather then a wick. You fill the res up and let it go. When the plant drinks the res up, you add just about 2-3 inches worth of liquid till harvest. You cant fill totally up, or the plant will drown because it needs air. Its the most passive "hyrdo" system possible. its pretty much the same folks are doing with the solo and mason jar. I perfer to change out the res weekly, to freshin it up and make sure PH is ok. This method is used mostly for faster growing plants, like lettuce. But i also use a strainer to build a bigger rootbase. Next time im going to use a 5gallon i think. So this is a tester run.

Thank you for explaining and nice to see you here. Thank you.

 

[CaptainLucky]

Thanks for the invite!

I am always strapped for time, but I will try to follow! What is @Hashhound 's comparison thread?

@cbdhemp808 , @InTheShed , @bluter , @CaptainLucky , @Bill284 , @Buds Buddy ,

Apologize for doing that again. SmhCL

 

[Carmen Ray]

Apologize for doing that again. SmhCL

Hey Cap, thank you for doing that. No need to apologize for anything. This is a community thread. It shouldn't have my name as the thread starter, as I am neither the originator of the Swick, nor have I had enough experience with Swick to be able to give advice. All I can do is revive a method that got lost in the archives and show you what I am doing with it. Please feel free to contribute in any way at all. That is how ideas get spread around.
Have a great day, Carmen

 

[Azimuth]

Good day Azimuth, please could you explain the terms "dead-ending" and "flow dump" as some of us, myself included, may not be familiar.

If you place a wick in a glass of water and just hang the end of it on the outside of the glass, water will move up the wick through capillary action and drip out and deliver water onto your table. I use this method in my outdoor veggie garden to make sure water drains from some of my saucers after a rain so those plants aren't sitting in a pool of water.

For your pots, rather than make a loop with the wick from the reservoir through the soil and back to the reservoir, if you end the wick in the soil, that water flow will drip into the soil, rather than simply move along the wick giving extra water wherever the end of the wick lands.

For my outdoor plants I make sure the drip end of the wick is lower than the saucer as the weight of the water will also help push things along.

 

[Carmen Ray]

These are the roots that have infested my grow bag and swicky pad. You can see the roots and the mycos as below.

 

[013]

Hi Cap,
It was in the early stages of Swick trials with @SweetSue and others were experimenting using perlite as a swick bed. Here is a reference to that which will also give you suggestions of which journals you can look at in this regard.
In conversation somewhere in this thread it was considered that SWICK could possibly stand for SELF wicking.


Good day Azimuth, please could you explain the terms "dead-ending" and "flow dump" as some of us, myself included, may not be familiar.


Hey 013, Here is a references to my personal grow, showing the perlite beds that I used. I personally found the swicky pad delivered optimal water to my plants. Bear in mind that I am not attempting to get roots through the pot and pad into the water. I am not going for a Kratzky approach. I am relying on the capillary action to wick water from the res to the soil and the plant does the rest as and when it needs. All you need do is fill up the res.

Hi Carmen,

Yes ma’am I was all caught up reading your swick journal before ever posting here and will be reviewing your journal again plus more correlated info too. Love me some Sweet Sue and I’ve read a crap ton of her work here.

I’m using 2 WC clones that were struck in hempy style and upcanned into 7 gallon swicks. For now my tent is kinda crowded so opted to use a washing machine drain pan to initially soak in my swick grow bags, that first soak was heavy duty with every form of mycos & azos I could muster.

My big round drain pans are too large to fit side by side so I’m going to find a tub or something else to fill with perlite for smart pots to sit on. Who knows cuz I’ve been eyeing those nifty swick pads too

Thanks very much!! Yup will defs read up on Kratky method too… hopefully my gear will appear more swick-ish next time around!

also quick shout to Gee64, finally saw Sharpie water marks on side of tub and it all made sense!!!

Thanks - you guys and gals rock!!!

 

[Carmen Ray]

I’m using 2 WC clones that were struck in hempy style and upcanned into 7 gallon swicks. For now my tent is kinda crowded so opted to use a washing machine drain pan to initially soak in my swick grow bags, that first soak was heavy duty with every form of mycos & azos I could muster.

I've seen your washing machine drainage pans. I remember thinking that it was a great idea. Your plants are doing well on them as I recall.

I'm interested in how you do with the perlite. My main objection to the perlite was that it was messy. I had the res go bad due to the wrong organic food being in there. My babies loved their perlite. The difference between the baby perlite swicks and the swicky pad, is that I threaded the wicks into the actual pots that the babies were in, and I didn't do that with the 20 L / 5 gal cloth pots because they were cloth and I saw what others were doing with cloth pots on swicky pads. It's much cleaner now.

Gosh, that's a lotta reading you do. I haven't read up on hempy or kratzki. I must.

 

[013]

Hempy is also know as bato buckets or Dutch buckets…. easy peasy, how to grow without the hydro store… perlite is the grow media… all that’s required are nutes and ph pen, if you can adjust ph to 5.8 - the world is your oyster… can get fairly large plants out of a 2 liter trash can. It also requires an overflow hole in container similar to SIPs

sweet sue did a hempy journal and Bluter is always killing it with hempy, he flowered a plant in 750 mil shampoo bottle.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Thank you 013! If I weren't so keen on continuing the LOS I would potentially try this!

Bluter is always killing it with hempy, he flowered a plant in 750 mil shampoo bottle.

::gobsmacked:: That sounds like fun. Do you have an approximation of his yield from the shampoo bottle in your head by any chance?

 

[013]

No idea of how much yield came from his 750 mil shampoo bottle experiment … I think it was done just to prove you can flower in a tiny container using hempy format. But it’s also important to note after couple decades of growing Bluter can read plants like nobody’s business.

Soil and LOS are my go to but for this round I chose hempy since hydro grows are faster and my stash pile was depleted.

 

[CaptainLucky]

If you place a wick in a glass of water and just hang the end of it on the outside of the glass, water will move up the wick through capillary action and drip out and deliver water onto your table. I use this method in my outdoor veggie garden to make sure water drains from some of my saucers after a rain so those plants aren't sitting in a pool of water.

For your pots, rather than make a loop with the wick from the reservoir through the soil and back to the reservoir, if you end the wick in the soil, that water flow will drip into the soil, rather than simply move along the wick giving extra water wherever the end of the wick lands.

For my outdoor plants I make sure the drip end of the wick is lower than the saucer as the weight of the water will also help push things along.

How does it keep from overwatering? CL

 

[Azimuth]

You have to try to match the wicking rate with the drinking rate. To increase the water flow you can add more wicks, larger wicks, or do something like that.