The Everything SWICK Club: 2023 And Beyond

[g-one-three]

Ok so trial #1, 1 plant read for water placed on top of the perlite bed, no wick just kinda wiggled into place and the soil just sucked up the water. This "reservoir" holds about 1.5cups which is about one watering for these pots. So that'd buy me about 3 days worth of water plus if I top watered as well maybe a 5+ days. I don't have any confirmed long trips until May

Does roots growing into perlite base matter? Does that defeat the purpose of the swick?

 

[InTheShed]

Does roots growing into perlite base matter? Does that defeat the purpose of the swick?

I don't think it defeats the purpose of the SWICK, but @Carmen Ray found that if you're growing in organic soil and your feeder roots are in the perlite, they're not taking up nutrients. If you're feeding synthetic then it's not a problem.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Ok so trial #1, 1 plant read for water placed on top of the perlite bed, no wick just kinda wiggled into place and the soil just sucked up the water. This "reservoir" holds about 1.5cups which is about one watering for these pots. So that'd buy me about 3 days worth of water plus if I top watered as well maybe a 5+ days. I don't have any confirmed long trips until May

Does roots growing into perlite base matter? Does that defeat the purpose of the swick?

Hi,

The dry medium would have acted like a sponge and sucked up all that water. The capillary action will be slower in a moist medium. What's your wicking rate like with the pots wiggled into place. You might need to play with the wicking rate a bit.

Are you constrained by spatial limits? Is that why you are using such small containers for your swick? If you have a look here, I had my swicks on large reservoirs.

 

[g-one-three]

Hi,

The dry medium would have acted like a sponge and sucked up all that water. The capillary action will be slower in a moist medium. What's your wicking rate like with the pots wiggled into place. You might need to play with the wicking rate a bit.

Are you constrained by spatial limits? Is that why you are using such small containers for your swick? If you have a look here, I had my swicks on large reservoirs.

Ya they are in a small space, it's my attempt at a grow out to keep strains that I like as mothers. The box is 20" tall so with the light about 18". I would have went bigger but the wife said no (for now) lol. I travel with work occasionally for 1-7 days at a time so having an extra reservoir of water is a plus. My wife would water for me but she has a black thumb and zero interest in it. So the less she has to worry about the better.

As for the reservoir, it's what I had on hand at the moment. I'm looking for an upgrade but it's hard to find things that fit when you are confined by space.

I don't think it defeats the purpose of the SWICK, but @Carmen Ray found that if you're growing in organic soil and your feeder roots are in the perlite, they're not taking up nutrients. If you're feeding synthetic then it's not a problem.

I think I understand this because in my SIP grow I'm currently running I've had to top water once a week because I am running organic dry amendments, and then just plain water in the reservoir.

 

[g-one-three]

Ok so I found 2 more take out containers of the appropriate size and modified the bonsai pots slightly, cutting out a little of the plastic grate on the bottom, to give better perlite to soil contact. Now it's a waiting game to see if it works lol.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Ok so I found 2 more take out containers of the appropriate size and modified the bonsai pots slightly, cutting out a little of the plastic grate on the bottom, to give better perlite to soil contact. Now it's a waiting game to see if it works lol.

Ya they are in a small space, it's my attempt at a grow out to keep strains that I like as mothers. The box is 20" tall so with the light about 18". I would have went bigger but the wife said no (for now) lol. I travel with work occasionally for 1-7 days at a time so having an extra reservoir of water is a plus. My wife would water for me but she has a black thumb and zero interest in it. So the less she has to worry about the better.

As for the reservoir, it's what I had on hand at the moment. I'm looking for an upgrade but it's hard to find things that fit when you are confined by space.

My bad, I didn't realize you were doing bonsais. That changes the scale of things for sure.

I think I understand this because in my SIP grow I'm currently running I've had to top water once a week because I am running organic dry amendments, and then just plain water in the reservoir.

It sounds like you know what you're doing!

 

[g-one-three]

My bad, I didn't realize you were doing bonsais. That changes the scale of things for sure.

It sounds like you know what you're doing!

Haha flying by the seat of my pants with the bonsais. Thanks for putting all the info in one place.

 

[Carmen Ray]

Haha flying by the seat of my pants with the bonsais. Thanks for putting all the info in one place.

With your SIP experience you have the knowledge of how to grow in a sub-irrigated medium. You understand how wet the medium should be and also that you need to top feed calcium during flower.

The roots do populate the perlite, and as Shed said, that doesn't seem to be a problem with synthetic nutes but it does seem to be a problem with plants that should be getting their nutes from the los.

I just popped over to visit your journal G. I see you've had covid! How awful, sorry and I hope you are starting to feel a lot better! I also see you've had a deficiency show in sugar leaves. Have you managed to correct that?

You have some awesome plants in your tent!

 

[g-one-three]

With your SIP experience you have the knowledge of how to grow in a sub-irrigated medium. You understand how wet the medium should be and also that you need to top feed calcium during flower.

The roots do populate the perlite, and as Shed said, that doesn't seem to be a problem with synthetic nutes but it does seem to be a problem with plants that should be getting their nutes from the los.

I just popped over to visit your journal G. I see you've had covid! How awful, sorry and I hope you are starting to feel a lot better! I also see you've had a deficiency show in sugar leaves. Have you managed to correct that?

You have some awesome plants in your tent!

Thanks for the well wishes! I'm finally getting better and my smells coming back. These bonsais should never see flower in this tent. I do have calMag that can be supplemented if needed. Thank you for the compliment on the girls, it wouldn't be possible without 420Mag members.

 

[chinchillin]

Apologies but, oddly enough I couldn't find the answer after some searching. How high can the medium section of the swick be and still have some moisture? I'm planning to have a raised bed with a 10-15cm reservoir area and was told that 30cm is the absolute limit. What if we were talking about 40-50 cm deep?

 

[Carmen Ray]

Apologies but, oddly enough I couldn't find the answer after some searching. How high can the medium section of the swick be and still have some moisture?

High Chinchillin,

When you say the medium section, do you mean the pot of soil / coco / perlite whatever the plant is growing in? Do you mean how tall can the reservoir be?

I'm planning to have a raised bed with a 10-15cm reservoir area and was told that 30cm is the absolute limit. What if we were talking about 40-50 cm deep?

I can't quite imagine this. What size is your raised bed? What is your medium? I can't see why a deeper rather than a wider reservoir won't work, as long as the capillary action is happening and the swick is wicking. I balanced a cake cooling rack over a tall Bato pot and attached wicks to a fabric layer so I can't see why a deep res shouldn't work. The diameter 10 to 15 cm is small though. I don't know how big your raised bed is in relation to the proposed res.

There is only one way to find out, and that is to set a similarly sized raised bed on that reservoir and test it. Either that, or someone else will know the answer and save you an experiment

 

[Hash Hound]

Apologies but, oddly enough I couldn't find the answer after some searching. How high can the medium section of the swick be and still have some moisture? I'm planning to have a raised bed with a 10-15cm reservoir area and was told that 30cm is the absolute limit. What if we were talking about 40-50 cm deep?

@chinchillin I think you're referring to moisture in the media not the wick in the reservoir right?

I don't think I can attach it as a file, but I have a PDF called
"Evaluating the Efficiency of Wicking Bed Irrigation Systems for Small-Scale Urban Agriculture"
I can't remember the site I found it on but I'm sure if you google it it will show, it's 18 pages and being the poor reader I am I skipped to the end and here's the conclusion

5. Conclusions
Wicking beds (WBs) have been widely promoted and adopted as an efficient irrigation system for
urban agriculture. However, there has been little published research to support popular claims about
the effectiveness of WBs. This study rigorously tested the performance of WBs relative to best-practice,
precision surface irrigation systems in terms of total water use, marketable yield, fruit quality,
water use efficiency (WUE) and irrigation frequency. The suitability of WBs for growing tomatoes
was compared using two soil bed depths (300 vs. 600 mm), two reservoir depths (150 vs. 300 mm),
and introduced a soil column in the reservoir to improve wicking. The WB with a 150 mm reservoir
and 300 mm soil bed was the most effective of all treatments tested, as it was cost-effective (requiring
minimal material) with a high WUE.

150mm = 5.9 in
300 mm = 11.8 in
600 mm = 23.6 in

 

[chinchillin]

High Chinchillin,

When you say the medium section, do you mean the pot of soil / coco / perlite whatever the plant is growing in? Do you mean how tall can the reservoir be?

I can't quite imagine this. What size is your raised bed? What is your medium? I can't see why a deeper rather than a wider reservoir won't work, as long as the capillary action is happening and the swick is wicking. I balanced a cake cooling rack over a tall Bato pot and attached wicks to a fabric layer so I can't see why a deep res shouldn't work. The diameter 10 to 15 cm is small though. I don't know how big your raised bed is in relation to the proposed res.

There is only one way to find out, and that is to set a similarly sized raised bed on that reservoir and test it. Either that, or someone else will know the answer and save you an experiment

Looking back at it, my post was a bit confusing. The setup will be exactly like this. Will try to get slightly bigger gaps for geotextile, vermiculite, stones and course sand to go in between and on top.

Thanks to the thread I tried a 25L cloth pot sitting on top of a perlite 10 cm deep reservoir. The bag was 30cm tall and still moist till the bottom of the 2cm mulch layer. Thanks to hash hound's post it will have 16cm large tubes with geotextile, course sand and rocks/grit in between and slightly on top. Will try up to 40cm of soil/peat on top of that with sporadic top watering. The rest of the bed will be somewhere around 200 x 80 cm.

5. Conclusions
Wicking beds (WBs) have been widely promoted and adopted as an efficient irrigation system for
urban agriculture. However, there has been little published research to support popular claims about
the effectiveness of WBs. This study rigorously tested the performance of WBs relative to best-practice,
precision surface irrigation systems in terms of total water use, marketable yield, fruit quality,
water use efficiency (WUE) and irrigation frequency. The suitability of WBs for growing tomatoes
was compared using two soil bed depths (300 vs. 600 mm), two reservoir depths (150 vs. 300 mm),
and introduced a soil column in the reservoir to improve wicking. The WB with a 150 mm reservoir
and 300 mm soil bed was the most effective of all treatments tested, as it was cost-effective (requiring
minimal material) with a high WUE.

150mm = 5.9 in
300 mm = 11.8 in
600 mm = 23.6 in

Thank you very much for posting the conclusion there. Was looking for some test results of the sort. I wonder the range of effectiveness. Will try to add my own findings for you guys this season just to add to the data.

 

[InTheShed]

The setup will be exactly like this. Will try to get slightly bigger gaps for geotextile, vermiculite, stones and course sand to go in between and on top.

Just to clarify, the pipes are the res for the wicking media and plants will sit in pots on top of the sand?

 

[chinchillin]

Just to clarify, the pipes are the res for the wicking media and plants will sit in pots on top of the sand?

yes but, this will be a raised bed with geotextile, and some hay, separating the reservoir and the soil. With a 16cm corrugated pipes, you can put a drain pipe positioned inside to provide that 2-4cm (1") air gap. The wicking would start from the bed floor via the sand/rock/peat being nudged between (and on top of) the gaps of the corrugated pipes. 25-35cm is what that sweet spot it looks but, I'm going to do this first with tomatoes and strawberries. With some reading tomatoes you can get away with 30cm depth but ideal is closer to 50cm.

So it goes back to how dry it will be after 30cm. Maybe like with nature some sort of wet and dry cycle will be implemented. These will be outside so it will rain time to time. Excess rain will drain out of the bottom drain pipe. Without rain, the water in full reservoir could stay for a month or two since there could be more than a hundred liters of water to start with depending on the size of the bed.

I'm going to try this bed idea for my outside garden this season. I'll measure the moisture levels from the bottom, mid to top and let you guys know in a journal. Unfortunately it will be a journal for growing tomatoes and strawberries The soil itself will be black soil, peat, coco and vermicompost, basalt, gypsum and with buildasoil's 3.0 ingredients as the nutrients. Alfalfa and soybean meal being put in place of the neem. If you want neem in central Europe, you'll have to get it straight from India. The shipping is enormous so it'll only make sense to buy at wholesale. Perhaps that's a business opportunity in the future

Btw, these aussies do a great job with explaining wicking beds and experimenting the reservoir "mediums". Sand vs. Gravel at least. I know sand isn't ideal for indoor pot grows. The experiment starts after 10 minutes.

 

[InTheShed]

yes but, this will be a raised bed with geotextile, and some hay, separating the reservoir and the soil. With a 16cm corrugated pipes, you can put a drain pipe positioned inside to provide that 2-4cm (1") air gap. The wicking would start from the bed floor via the sand/rock/peat being nudged between (and on top of) the gaps of the corrugated pipes. 25-35cm is what that sweet spot it looks but, I'm going to do this first with tomatoes and strawberries. With some reading tomatoes you can get away with 30cm depth but ideal is closer to 50cm.

So it goes back to how dry it will be after 30cm. Maybe like with nature some sort of wet and dry cycle will be implemented. These will be outside so it will rain time to time. Excess rain will drain out of the bottom drain pipe. Without rain, the water in full reservoir could stay for a month or two since there could be more than a hundred liters of water to start with depending on the size of the bed.

I'm going to try this bed idea for my outside garden this season. I'll measure the moisture levels from the bottom, mid to top and let you guys know in a journal. Unfortunately it will be a journal for growing tomatoes and strawberries The soil itself will be black soil, peat, coco and vermicompost, basalt, gypsum and with buildasoil's 3.0 ingredients as the nutrients. Alfalfa and soybean meal being put in place of the neem. If you want neem in central Europe, you'll have to get it straight from India. The shipping is enormous so it'll only make sense to buy at wholesale. Perhaps that's a business opportunity in the future

Btw, these aussies do a great job with explaining wicking beds and experimenting the reservoir "mediums". Sand vs. Gravel at least. I know sand isn't ideal for indoor pot grows. The experiment starts after 10 minutes.

Thanks chinchillin! Great video and it was great he showed off the advantage of sand over gravel in his fish tank for speed of wicking.

with the tomatoes and strawberries and here's to a ripe red harvest!

 

[chinchillin]

Thanks chinchillin! Great video and it was great he showed off the advantage of sand over gravel in his fish tank for speed of wicking.

with the tomatoes and strawberries and here's to a ripe red harvest!

Right on man and thank you!

 

[Azimuth]

this will be a raised bed with geotextile, and some hay, separating the reservoir and the soil.

Careful with the textile. It's really nort needed and the roots will grow thru it and it will be a pain to separate if you ever want to.

With a 16cm corrugated pipes, you can put a drain pipe positioned inside to provide that 2-4cm (1") air gap.

Not sure I follow the pipe in a pipe thing. I just used corregated drain pipe (the kind with holes all along the side) as the reservoir in my bigger SIPS. Covered that with my media making sure some of it went all the way to the bottom.

 

[chinchillin]

Careful with the textile. It's really nort needed and the roots will grow thru it and it will be a pain to separate if you ever want to.


Not sure I follow the pipe in a pipe thing. I just used corregated drain pipe (the kind with holes all along the side) as the reservoir in my bigger SIPS. Covered that with my media making sure some of it went all the way to the bottom.

I've been hearing that too with geotextile. Perhaps it's a piece of mind thing in thinking that it will block the rest of the stuff falling in.

Here is the general idea. In mine, the bulkhead drain will have a pipe that goes into one of those corrugated pipes. Hopefully that will ensure that there won't be any roots/sand/etc disturbing the drain process

 

[Hash Hound]

surprisingly not much action in here, especially since it doesn't get much easier than swicks.

This is my own cross of Colombian Gold x Widow. I vegged her for 8 weeks topping 3x for 8 cola.
In used Promix Organic and Coast of Maine 50/50 amended with some Geoflora and Dr Earth.
The only thing besides bottom water has been Recharge two weeks ago and today.

P212 Gr3 w1a.JPG

• Hash Hound
• Mar 23, 2024

Gringo

P212 Gr3 w1b.JPG

• Hash Hound
• Mar 23, 2024

P212 Gr3 w1c.JPG

• Hash Hound
• Mar 23, 2024

she got a heavy trim today

P212 Gr3 w1d.JPG

• Hash Hound
• Mar 23, 2024