[OMH]

Well, I finally got my new grow sorted out.

Each time I rebuild my room, I try and get it smaller and more efficient.

This is about as small as its going to get

The grow cupboard is an argos pine double wardrobe - roughly 50cm x 75cm x 180 cm

Lighting is a 400w HPS in an aircooled supernova shade. I have had to remove the heat shield due to airflow restrictions, and because it takes up the entire cupboard, I have had to get a bit creative with regards airflow and circulation. More on that in a bit.

I have 6 plants in the cupboard - all identical C99 clones, all roughly the same size and root mass when they went in.

3 of these are in perlite only, being fed Biobizz nutrients at 2ml grow, 2ml vizmix and 4ml root juice per litre of water.

There are another 3 in Allmix, currently being fed water and rootjuice only as a control group - I want to see how the passive hydro works against the mud - what I am hoping for is organic taste with something approaching hydro yield.

I have a 6" LTI extracting, and will probably add a carbon filter come payday.

a 4" LTI is hooked up to the supernova, but is acting as an air in, blowing fresh air on to the plants.

Due to the size of the shade, I can't actually fit a circulation fan beneath it to blow directly onto the plants. I have one hanging on a bungee above, but its not really enough.

How I got around this was to make a network of 1.5" pipes around the base of the pots that will act as air in. I then drilled small holes in the pipes, pointing up towards the plants. The negative pressure in the chamber sucks the air through the pipes, blowing jets of fresh air at the plants - keeping them moving and letting them have loads of fresh air right where they need it.

Apologies for the crap pics. My digicam died so am having to use the rubbish one on my phone for the time being

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This post has been edited by OMH: 13 October 2004 - 06:30 PM

[OMH]

Here is a closer look at the air in system and the plants themselves

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This post has been edited by OMH: 13 October 2004 - 05:17 PM

[Sal]

Will keep my eye on this one fella

good thinking them pipes ..um..very good thinking indeed

[chip]

Interesting grow room OMH.

I will look forward to seeing what happens.

I like the air inlet idea. I might try and get my brother to try something similar with his new wardrobe grow.

I grew for many years with perlite in pots but i was adding hydro solutions rather than organic type nutes. In fact i had my best results to date (for yield per square foot) growing NL5 x H in 4'' pots using Growth Technology optimum bloom with extra P added (made up the solution myself from superphosphate).

So, if you are taking bets, i reckon the passive hydro perlite ladies are going to come in at a higher yield

Laters

Chip

[mickle]

me 2 looks interesting and good luck.

[OMH]

cheers Nigs - if things start looking iffy I may consider looking at that.

At the moment though, they seem to be doing pretty well with the current system

The temp is steady at 77 degrees when the lights are on - 50% humidity

The 4" is connected to the supernova as if it was going to be aircooled, but its on blow instead of suck, so thats giving them quite a bit of fresh air as well

Just gotta get a decent fecking camera now

This post has been edited by OMH: 13 October 2004 - 06:42 PM

[binary]

Will be following this with great interest.

What size pots are the Perlite ones in? Will you be using these through flowering, if not how do you repot the Perlite ones?

[Queijo]

Excellant thread and experiemnt, look forward to seeing how this one develops..

[EnigmaticOne]

OMH;

Great idea, very interesting to see the outcome of this. I will watch with interest, cos we liked the taste of the biobizz fed buds, but RD is just itching to have a go at hydro growing again.

Good question binary asked there too....how do you pot on plants in perlite? (I suspect they are in big pots to start with )

Good luck with it!

EO

[chip]

Repotting with perlite can be an absolute nightmare......so i always used to do it as little as possible, preferably just once - from the small 2'' ish sized pots to what ever sized pot i was finishing them in.

If you do need to repot with perlite, just do it similar to how you do it with soil. Give them a good soaking and leave them to drain for a couple of minutes and then turn them upside down and gently slide them out. More often than not (especially if you are doing it before the plant has totally rooted out the whole pot) it will collapse. So i used to just gently place the blob of prelite and roots in the new pot (disturbing them as little as possible) and fill in with fresh perlite - give it a water/feed and off you go. Never seemed to negatively effect them.

Or, as i usually did, i would just pop the clones straight into the pot i intended to finish them in. Seemed to work fine. I used to kind of treat pots of perlite the same as rockwool slabs - just chuck it on and off you go.

Best wishes

Chip

PS. Hurry up with that camera - i want to understand what you are doing as regards the ventilation better.

[Bish]

Excellent experiment mate - looking forward to your results

[Giz]

Hello buddy

Quote

Excellent experiment mate - looking forward to your results wink.gif

deffinatly agree with u on that one bish m8, hope it all goes well for u m8 as its a cracking little setup uve got urself

all the best m8

Giz

[OMH]

ah, sorry forgot to say about the pots.

They are 2 Litre square pots, blagged from my local hydro shop as they are supposed to go with an autopot system. They are nice and deep, so should do fairly well

Chip is spot on about the repotting. They were grown in the 2" pots until the roots were coming out of the bottom in John Innes potting compost, then straight into the big pots with the perlite. Because of the masses of air spaces between the lumps of perlite, the roots go a bit mental anyway, so I am not that concerned that roots are not going to grow properly - I know what this medium is like

So far, the perlite plants are a little bit taller and bushier than the ones sat in the allmix, because I imagine they are getting their roots down that bit quicker.

Also, after 4 days in veg, I am getting quite a bad mg deficiency. Its happening in all of the plants (yes, even the allmix), but is worse in the perlite ones. The top leaves are almost completely bloody yellow. After 4 days!!

They got a load of epsom salts in their feed yesterday and got a heavy foliar feeding as well, and are starting to perk up a bit.

Either that Cindy is a magnesium hungry bitch the likes of which I have never seen before, or I need to start to ph balance the feed (despite being sworn blind to by various people at the hemp fair that biobizz in a passive hydro would'nt need it)

I don't want to be dumping a load of ph down in there, cos that kind of defeats the object a bit, so next feed I am going to try and bring the ph down on the perlite feeds with some lemon juice and see if that does the trick.

I will try and borrow a camera over the weekend to show you the ventilation a bit better chip, but will try and explain it a bit more now.

I got a 3m length of 1.5 " waste pipe, two elbow bends and 2 t-pieces.

The pipe was cut up, so that I have 4 lengths running in between the pots, ontop of the large propagator base I am using to stand the pots in. These go out of the back of the cupboard, and I airsealed around where they left the cupboard, so that the only passive air intake was through the waste pipes.

At the ends, I used the elbow bends and t-pieces to make a sort of ¦_¦_¦_¦ shape at the ends, and drilled holes in the pipe pointing at the plants. The fan I have for extraction is WAY more than is needed for the area I have (even with the 4" blowing air in), so the negative pressure makes little air jets for the plants.

If I get the balance right with the passive hydro, the next step is to bang an NFT205 in there and try an active system for my next crop

This post has been edited by OMH: 14 October 2004 - 05:23 PM

[EnigmaticOne]

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Either that Cindy is a magnesium hungry bitch the likes of which I have never seen before,

I have it on good authority (from utopiate) that cindy is indeed a mg loving monster

EO