View Single Post
  #11  
Old 01-26-2010, 09:10 PM
GpsFrontier GpsFrontier is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Lake Havasu AZ.
Posts: 1,855
Default

Quote:
I like the "ring" of water hose around the plant. I assume there are multiple pinholes around the circumference to water evenly on all sides.
Yes, exactly. I cut the tube the size I needed to make the right size ring, then made 7 or 8 holes in each where I need them. I actually burned the holes in them by heating one end of a paperclip with a candle, and poking it through the tubing. Because there is no real pressure to speak of in the system from the pump, if I just poked the hole in it, it would tend to close back up. Or I would need to make the hole bigger than I wanted.

I was worried that it might not water evenly with the rings so far away from the base of the plant, but the timer is set for 1, to 1 and a half hours on at a time, and they have been doing just fine in the coco chips with moisture. In fact there has been a few times that the breaker would trip (because of a power strip I was using) and I wouldn't know about it for half a day, I never say any wilting in the plants.
Quote:
I am using 1/4" soaker tube connected to the "T" connector inside each grow bag in my system.
I have not yet used the soaker hose yet, but I am told that it will soak through without pressure. I used the 1/2 inch vinyl tubing because I had it on hand.

I have had these pictures for about a week now but I am just getting around to posting them. We had about 4 days with rain, one day it rained all day. These pictures were taken just before the rain. The plants seemed to do fine in the rain. I was worried that too much rainwater would get into the system and overflow the reservoir. It did fine until the last day with rain all day. Enough water got into the buckets and then drained down into the reservoir to overflow it. I had just changed the nutrients right before the rain. After it overflowed I just added some nutrient concentrate to the reservoir, so I don't really know how strong it is.

I have harvested many more heads sense the one I posted, but so far the first head from each plant was the biggest. I think mainly because that is the biggest steam on the plant. Nothing has grown out of the part that was cut yet, but I am getting many smaller shouts with florets on them. They taste just as good, just smaller. I need to cut them off before they flower so unfortunately they don't have the chance to get big. You can see a flower starting to open in one picture, I should have harvested that one a few days earlier (I harvested it right after taking the picture).

I am really happy with the way this system functions so far. I have done some minor things to the tubing at the bottom to make sure there is no leaks where the tubing connects to the bottom of the buckets. Mostly where the two different size tubing connect, I basically just glued them together with a water proof flexible glue.

Once I changed the nutrients and accidentally knocked off the tubing from one of the buckets and didn't know about it. When I came back to check the pH level 3 gallons of my fresh nutrients was on the ground. I zip tied them on to make sure that wont happen again (so far so good).
Attached Images
      
__________________
Website Owner
Home Hydroponic Systems

Last edited by GpsFrontier; 01-26-2010 at 09:15 PM.
Reply With Quote