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My top drip setup...


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  #1  
Old 01-28-2012, 10:10 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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Default My top drip setup...

Well it's that time of year for me again. Going to try my hand at doing this Hydroponic Tomato thing again and see if i can't have better luck. This year tho i plan on asking 10x's the ?'s as i did last year. And i figure by starting out and asking ahead instead of after the fact i should have much better luck.

As the weeks come i'll take some picture's of my set up and what i'm doing.

This year since they no longer make Floramato i'm going with the Maxi series and giving that a shot. Figure the less i have to mix atm the better off i'm going to be.

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Old 01-29-2012, 06:55 PM
Pineywoods Pineywoods is offline
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Looking forward to seeing your set up
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Old 02-05-2012, 04:21 PM
fintuckyfarms fintuckyfarms is offline
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Tis' the season I'm looking forward to following your experience.
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Old 02-05-2012, 06:45 PM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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I haven't used them myself but I cant say I have ever herd anything bad about the Maxi series nuts, and I would trust anything made by General Hydroponics. Just a little tip I forgot to mention in the other thread, I always start about twice as many seeds as I want plants. I'll grow them all as if I were going to put them all in the hydroponic system. But I'll just take the quickest growing, and strongest looking seedlings to put in the system. The rest I just stick in the ground somewhere, or give away.

Ya, by all means ask all the questions you can/want. You never get a reply if you don't post your thoughts. Don't worry about if it was already covered in some other thread somewhere, the forum wont run out of space to post new threads. I'm sure you'll have a lot more success this time around, simply because you've learned so much from last time. That's the way it is for everybody. My first year didn't yield much produce at all, but I learned a ton of problems to fix. Then I learned how to fix the problems I had for the next go around (both in my system designs, as well as growing the plants). Even though some solutions weren't easy for me to do (dealing with our extreme summer heat), it was a learning experience (I'm still learning things). Look forward to seeing your progress, and glad to hear your growing again.
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Old 02-06-2012, 03:00 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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Ya i've learned a lot from last season. This year i've started 20 seeds so i can pick what i believe is the best 12. If they all end up looking good i might actually expand my set up to handle all 20 plant's. Atm 4 have already came up and are looking good.

Atm i'm set up to grow 12 plant's. About how many gallons should my nute tank be?

I think this was another of many first year problems i was having. Not knowing what size of a tank i actually needed. Another was i def. wasn't following direction's on how much nutes should be in the water. This year i'm attempting to stick to a solid game plan as possible.

Will have some pic's of the seedling set up soon.
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Old 02-07-2012, 06:56 AM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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12 large plants, 12 plants x 2.5 gallons (minimum each)= 30 gallons is the minimum reservoir size you should consider. Me personalty I would want to double the minimum recommendations. A 50 to 60 gallon reservoir is what I would use. It dosen't need to be filled all the way while the plants are young, probably even less than 1/2 the way, but it will need the full water volume when they get to be full size.

P.S.
This may or may not help visualize things. Let me ask this question. If you had two children the same age, would they eat less food if they had separate rooms, or shared a single room? The room size wouldn't make a difference in their individual nutritional needs. The same holds true for plants, regardless of how many plants are in each bucket/container, or even the size of a central reservoir they all draw their nutritional needs from. Accommodating them all the same is important, unless you want them to suffer.
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Last edited by GpsFrontier; 02-07-2012 at 07:17 AM.
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Old 02-15-2012, 09:02 PM
fintuckyfarms fintuckyfarms is offline
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I would go for the biggest nute tank you can afford/find because I learned the hard way that the more nutes you have the more stable everything is like PH and most importantly the temps of the nutes. When we finally got heat last summer, it packed a punch and I think the only reason most of my plants survived was due to the nutes heating up slower then the outside temp. I was able to throw some frozen 2 liter bottles in there mid-day and that kept the nutes below 85 when it was over 100*. I used a plastic 50 gal barrel and 2 water stocktanks that were 50 and 55 gals that were shadded all day. I am currently looking for a 275 gal tote but they are hard to find in my area.
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Old 03-26-2012, 09:20 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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Sorry i haven't posted in awhile, been busy and now my 13yr old has Chicken Pox......


We've moved so my set up is a bit here and there. I moved my plants into my drip system and temp. put them in the garage. I take them outside every day so they can suck up that natural sunlight. Once it goes down i put them under the light in the garage. I know it's not the best but what i have going on....
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Old 03-26-2012, 09:24 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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While i'm here i'm having some symptoms that i had last year. I'll get the pic's posted. The plant's get like spot's on them. I literally just put them in the sun 2 day's ago and this is what i got....
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Old 03-29-2012, 03:30 AM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
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T'Mater
It's really hard to tell much from the pictures because the details are quite blurry. Though I have a few questions.

1. Are the symptoms only on a few leaves, or quite a lot of them?
2. Is there anything powdery or unusual on the leaves, especially underneath.
3. Are you sure you don't have any pests like leaf-miners, thrips, spider mites, aphids etc.?
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Old 03-29-2012, 02:11 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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Well it's the first few leaves, pretty sure i don't have any bugs. I think tho. it's a sign of leaf rot. Just like last year i didn't pay much attention to the humidity. And after i posted i really searched the web to see if i could find out why this is doing it for the 2nd year in a row.

Thinking i was doing good i let them get big in a 6" dome. Basically my plant's were in a mini green house. But like i mentioned i didn't pay attention to the humidity. Going to spray them with an anti fungal spray i have and see if that helps.

What i noticed is the ends of the leave's were getting a blue/blackish color then starting to die. I"ll keep you all informed. Worse case scenario i might redo my seeds. This time paying special attention and see how it works out. Right now i'm moving them outside so they can get as much natural sunlight as they can.
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Old 05-16-2012, 05:08 PM
T'Mater T'Mater is offline
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Sorry i haven't posted in awhile. School being just about out we've been having to deal with my son on his last quarter in the 7th grade, and him missing a bunch of day's due to the chicken pox. Now that school is all but out i've got more time to mess with the forumn's and post pic's and such.

Atm i've been hand feeding my plants, surprisingly they're doing awesome!!! Getting flower's already and i'm really enjoying the Maxi serious stuff. Instead of it being a recirculating system i guess it's a run off. That's getting ready to change tho.

I know i've asked this before, but for the fricken likes of me i can't find out where everyone answered my ? so i'll just ask it again.

I got a new timer for my pump and i can't remember how often to really feed my mater plants??

Trust me the hand feeding like i've been doing prolly is truly not correct.....i feed as i remember....

Other then that i'm having a serious Aphid problem, but got some stuff that's supposed to fix that. Really wanted to do it the natural lady bug way, but they done got 2 of my plant's luckily i had 2 on back up just in case i messed things up. For now i'll just have to spray them.

Welp hope everyone's garden is doing good. Off to finish putting my pump and lines back together.
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Old 09-17-2012, 01:07 AM
fintuckyfarms fintuckyfarms is offline
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So hows those maters doing?

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