OldMedUser
Formerly Known as LabRat
Well here we grow I guess. After a few false starts and general screw ups on my part I am going to try to get my DWC grow technique out for your perusal.
A little history here. I am a plant killer. Every time I tried to grow a house plant or pot plant it died. Every freakin' time. Pissed me off to no end. I read an article about growing plants in tubs of nutrient water and thought that that sounded like the way to go. It was about the Mayan floating gardens. It utilized chemistry (I have a diploma in that), and common sense (I seem to have been blessed in that dep't as well).
In 2001 I started on my own procedure to grow some really good cannabis using the information I had found. I had previously grown lots of pot under lights since 1977. My first foray into DWC was under 6 - 4' fluorescents with incredible results. Veg wise. Didn't flower worth a crap until I got a 400W HPS and a flower room then yahoo it worked like a hot damn!
My latest excursion like the last 20 or so is another experiment to see how far I can push this puppy to see if she calls bullshit. So far, so good.
I took fourty seeds, all sprouted and ended up with fourty plants for transplant in the two tubs. Thirty three survived for transplant. Sixteen in the 12 hole tub and seventeen in the four hole tub. It's kinda crowded but I'm looking for a SOG kind of thing and they are a week or so from 12/12. My previous grow got one male out of nine seeds so I'm hoping for the same thing.
I got a bunch of seeds from a grower who swore they were Kush. The last batch sure had all the markers for Kush even up to big purple leaves and the stink! Oh my god, the STINK! The babies are only 6" tall now and not into flowering and are stinking the house up just fine.
They're sitting under a 400W EYE Hortilux at the moment and will be joined with a 400W HPS a week or so after they go 12/12. I might put a little 150W HPS on them now just to warm them up to the idea of flowering ASAP.
Grow info:
2 - RubberMaid Roughneck tubs. 50L each at 1" below pots. 12 - 3" pots in one, 4 - 5" pots in the other.
2 - 12" Airstones run off of one Maxima-R aquarium pump.
I set up to transfer the babies to the tubs. I put the lid I'm using on an empty tub so I can wash any loose dirt out of the transplanted babies. Once the lid is full I just put it on the tub full of nutes.
First row is done. Two each. One each in the next eight pots.
Empty 12 - holer on my new roll-away platform. duh!? I should have done this years ago. Each tub holds 50L/50Kg of water.
That's 110 lbs. or almost 14USG for my American friends. Plus a lb or 2 for the plastic, plus the weight of the plants. Not much now but it won't be long before they add their weight to the mix. Holy hernias Batman! The rollers will sure help my old spine for sure.
Another plus IMHO is that there are no holes below the water line = no leaks. I have a sump pump in the floor about six feet from the tubs and both could spill at once with no negative effect except for me trying to fill them up and keep the babies growing! Twenty grows and never a spill so far, cross my heart and hope to die! The air line goes in just under the handle and a smaller hole is made in the lid for access to the nutes for testing, adjusting etc.
In my educated opinion there just isn't any easier or faster way to grow huge buds indoors for the small farmer. No sprayers to plug up. No submersible pumps to f**k up or add heat to your nutes. $10 tubs can be replaced every couple of years if your paranoid about leaks. I'm using one that's six and a new one. My nute temps got a little high (73F), so I put a couple of half gallon pop bottles of frozen salt water into a cooler, put the air pump in the cooler and went down to 65F in six hours. Lasted for twenty-four hours without a bottle change. Cheap and easy. What's not to like?
I'm using AN nutes that are nine years old and I'm sure that I could do better with some of their new nute line. But I'm Scottish and I'd beat down a Jewish feller for the last nickle. lol
I don't believe in flushing, tho I do reduce PPM after cropping the big colas then let the lower buds ripen for cropping in a couple of weeks. I believe that proper curing is the secret to great tasting buds and all my friends are copacetic with this simple philosophy. We're all over 40 and way past getting off our heads. The two hit buzz eases the pain and the choice of bud, honey-oil, honey-hash with a vape makes life much easier to take. My fave is a small bud in a simple pipe, three or four times a day. But if friends come over to play pool I love loading the vape up with kief or honey-oil and letting the good times roll! :0)
I consider myself blessed to know this plant as well as I have for the last fourty years. I pray it blesses me for another fourty or more.
I pray it blesses you all for the rest of your lives, no matter the duration.
A little history here. I am a plant killer. Every time I tried to grow a house plant or pot plant it died. Every freakin' time. Pissed me off to no end. I read an article about growing plants in tubs of nutrient water and thought that that sounded like the way to go. It was about the Mayan floating gardens. It utilized chemistry (I have a diploma in that), and common sense (I seem to have been blessed in that dep't as well).
In 2001 I started on my own procedure to grow some really good cannabis using the information I had found. I had previously grown lots of pot under lights since 1977. My first foray into DWC was under 6 - 4' fluorescents with incredible results. Veg wise. Didn't flower worth a crap until I got a 400W HPS and a flower room then yahoo it worked like a hot damn!
My latest excursion like the last 20 or so is another experiment to see how far I can push this puppy to see if she calls bullshit. So far, so good.
I took fourty seeds, all sprouted and ended up with fourty plants for transplant in the two tubs. Thirty three survived for transplant. Sixteen in the 12 hole tub and seventeen in the four hole tub. It's kinda crowded but I'm looking for a SOG kind of thing and they are a week or so from 12/12. My previous grow got one male out of nine seeds so I'm hoping for the same thing.
I got a bunch of seeds from a grower who swore they were Kush. The last batch sure had all the markers for Kush even up to big purple leaves and the stink! Oh my god, the STINK! The babies are only 6" tall now and not into flowering and are stinking the house up just fine.
They're sitting under a 400W EYE Hortilux at the moment and will be joined with a 400W HPS a week or so after they go 12/12. I might put a little 150W HPS on them now just to warm them up to the idea of flowering ASAP.
Grow info:
2 - RubberMaid Roughneck tubs. 50L each at 1" below pots. 12 - 3" pots in one, 4 - 5" pots in the other.
2 - 12" Airstones run off of one Maxima-R aquarium pump.
I set up to transfer the babies to the tubs. I put the lid I'm using on an empty tub so I can wash any loose dirt out of the transplanted babies. Once the lid is full I just put it on the tub full of nutes.
First row is done. Two each. One each in the next eight pots.
Empty 12 - holer on my new roll-away platform. duh!? I should have done this years ago. Each tub holds 50L/50Kg of water.
That's 110 lbs. or almost 14USG for my American friends. Plus a lb or 2 for the plastic, plus the weight of the plants. Not much now but it won't be long before they add their weight to the mix. Holy hernias Batman! The rollers will sure help my old spine for sure.
Another plus IMHO is that there are no holes below the water line = no leaks. I have a sump pump in the floor about six feet from the tubs and both could spill at once with no negative effect except for me trying to fill them up and keep the babies growing! Twenty grows and never a spill so far, cross my heart and hope to die! The air line goes in just under the handle and a smaller hole is made in the lid for access to the nutes for testing, adjusting etc.
In my educated opinion there just isn't any easier or faster way to grow huge buds indoors for the small farmer. No sprayers to plug up. No submersible pumps to f**k up or add heat to your nutes. $10 tubs can be replaced every couple of years if your paranoid about leaks. I'm using one that's six and a new one. My nute temps got a little high (73F), so I put a couple of half gallon pop bottles of frozen salt water into a cooler, put the air pump in the cooler and went down to 65F in six hours. Lasted for twenty-four hours without a bottle change. Cheap and easy. What's not to like?
I'm using AN nutes that are nine years old and I'm sure that I could do better with some of their new nute line. But I'm Scottish and I'd beat down a Jewish feller for the last nickle. lol
I don't believe in flushing, tho I do reduce PPM after cropping the big colas then let the lower buds ripen for cropping in a couple of weeks. I believe that proper curing is the secret to great tasting buds and all my friends are copacetic with this simple philosophy. We're all over 40 and way past getting off our heads. The two hit buzz eases the pain and the choice of bud, honey-oil, honey-hash with a vape makes life much easier to take. My fave is a small bud in a simple pipe, three or four times a day. But if friends come over to play pool I love loading the vape up with kief or honey-oil and letting the good times roll! :0)
I consider myself blessed to know this plant as well as I have for the last fourty years. I pray it blesses me for another fourty or more.
I pray it blesses you all for the rest of your lives, no matter the duration.
Update tomorrow sounds good to me. 
