Quote Originally Posted by Lbizzy8
Opie I noticed you said the roots need as little water as possible..I'm curious how much that would be..i'm a noob and am doing my first hydro setup..Seeds are germinated and am going to begin tonight..I have a 5 gal bucket with four 3" netpots in the top..i have a small pump/powerhead hooked up to a small sprinkler on top that goes 360 degrees and will hit the bottom of the netpots..How often should i run this sprinkler? And how many times a day?? THANKS SO MUCH!!!!! I appreciate any help offered..


Ah, aeroponics. Wise choice. Not exactly for beginners, but it should be no problem if you have a couple smarts. Done correctly, this set up is one of the highest yielders.

Let me clarify what I meant about little water. In my opinion the best way to superfast growth and healthy plants is to supply the roots with as much oxygen as possible. This means that no matter what your setup, soil, soilless, hydro or whatever, you do not want your roots sitting in water. MJ is not a marsh or pond plant, nor is it a fish. It likes it's roots sitting in air. Of course like all living organisms, weed requires moisture as well as air, but it is much happier in an above-water existance. Like you and I, it likes to be dry and take drinks if it gets thirsty. (We'll discuss humidity some other time.)

Two really nice ways to keep your roots dry and still quench any thirst, is NFT, and RMT (also known as Aeroponics). Of course yours is not true aeroponics, since a sprinkler does not produce a mist, but itā??s the same concept and should produce some damn fine results.

When you said begin tonight, I hope you meant to put them in a small amount of rockwool, sponge, vermiculite or something, that will later go into your net pots. (I recommend not using rockwool. Not for beginners.) That is unless your roots are 3 inches long, and able to reach completely to the bottom of your 3ā? net pots. Especially since you said the water will hit the bottom of the net pots. You canā??t put them into your system until they will get wet when the drinking cycle comes on. One way around this is to completely soak the net pots with the sprayer 24/7, and that will keep the roots wet well enough, until they can be exposed in mid air, in some position that they will get hit with water during feeding/drinking time. Iā??m talking Hydroton here, for rockwool decrease watering frequency dramatically. You can also get some capillary matting to lay your roots on, and have it extend clear to the bottom, and even have it taking up some of the bottom. It will wick moisture up to the roots, but this requires more pump on time.

When the roots are just emerging from the pots, you will want your on times to be more frequent, like 2 minutes on, 10 minutes off, repeat. Once they will get well splashed during the ā??onā? cycle, you can start experimenting with your pump times. When there is a nice root mass, you can decrease the on time. You just start changing a little at a time, maybe once per day, and watch closely for any signs of thirst stress (wilting, droopy). You may find you need as little as 30 seconds on and 2 hours off or something. This depends on a bunch of things, humidity being a big one. Youā??ll need to decide this yourself, but in my system itā??s not real humid, usually around 36 or so. I would expect to end up with an on time of a minute, and an off time of 45-60 minutes. Of course you donā??t have to worry too much about if you have too much on time. The off time is the tricky one; overdoing it could kill the plant if not watched carefully. If you have power failures you may want to consider figuring out some way to keep at least a couple inches of roots in water at all times. I had to build my own thing, but I have what you have, except instead of a sprayer for 3 plants, I have 2 misters for each plant, and a way to change water level so a little bit of roots are in nutes at all times. A lot of damn work to solve the friggen power outage problem. I also have a six inch air stone for each plant, and an air blowing power head in my main reservoir. A whole bunch of aeration, and it seems like once I put them in veg, boom! I cant beat them back with a stick. Iā??m telling you people, oxygen in the roots is the key!

Oh yeah I forgot, not everyone can afford a cyclstat, which is a fancy name for ā??$145 timerā?. The next best thing that I can recommend is a $20 digital timer from Intermac, I think. Theyā??re available everywhere, and they get the job done quite well. You can have 14 on and 14 off times per day. You can even arrange stuff to happen on only certain days. I root my clones with one of these, using 45 off and 20 on, or something like that. Iā??ve purchased about 7 of these over the past 6 years, and so far only one has failed, and I think that was just a case of too much juice for one little timer.

Hope that helps. My high is wearing off. Good luck and please send pictures.
Opie Yutts Reviewed by Opie Yutts on . I HAVE Two A QUESTIONs i am growing hyrdo for the first time and it is looking pretty good, no pictures yet. My problem is its about 2 feet tall and has a good set of leaves but they are kind of drooping (when I grew in soil this did not happen) it kind of looks as if the stems arent strong enoguh to hold the fan leaves on them and also the fan leaves them selves are drooping 1. What could be wrong with my plant? 2. Is it possibe to use dry ice and water to give co2 to plants and can you overdose a plant and Rating: 5