Quote Originally Posted by Douglas1
also.. how do you like growing in straight pearlite? my coco pearlite mix is roughly half and half and I love it.. seed I started straight in the mix and fed 250ppm until it had some true leaves, than 500ppm currently.. and crap, it's the fastest I've ever seen for this stage of development.. dwc you have a waiting period until it puts down roots.. this just takes off from the start.

I don't like how much gnats like it though.. you have that problem with pearlite?
I love growing in straight perlite, and I totally agree with you about DWC. My DWC plant was clone from popcorn-bud cutting taken last October, and it took damn near forever to get through the bubble cloner into the final 5-gal DWC tank. My success rate was one in twelve cuttings. Most of the cuttings were lost transplanting into various media including perlite.

Nowadays I clone with Rapid Rooters. As soon as the clones pop roots, the RRs go straight into 100% perlite and the clones get a thorough watering with full strength nutes (SensiGrow AB). Growth rates with this approach are incredibly fast. These two photos are of the same clone taken just shy of 5 days apart.

Attachment 283166Attachment 283167

Veg growth was equally impressive. Incidentally, the 2nd picture was taken while euthanizing the clone, which was a backup. The success rate cloning with RRs is a solid 100% so this backup clone was not needed. The growth rate of the kept clone was even more impressive.

One thing about straight perlite, nutrient uptake is so blazingly fast that daily feedings of full-strength nutes are required. If even a single day is missed, deficiencies start kicking-in immediately. The reward, of course, is blazingly fast growth rates. It still amazes me how heavily and how fast the plants feed in straight perlite. I've never had to flush with water. Doing so would probably severely starve the plant.

One big goal in using straight perlite is to keep organic material in the media as low as possible specifically to prevent infestations, so I've avoided adding coco or any other organic media (the RRs are the one exception). Thus, knock on wood, I've never had any problems with fungus gnats. Occasionally, I'll add about 1 oz. of h2o2 (hydrogen peroxide) per gallon of nutes to knock-down algae, pests, and other accumulated organics in the perlite. If you're using organic nutes, I'm not sure if using h2o2 is good advice because it oxidizes many organic compounds.

I have yet to grow from seeds, but my hunch is the same RR->100% perlite + full strength nute approach will work equally well for seedlings. One thing's for sure, I'm not letting any future seedling of mine anywhere near the 240W Blackstar vegger.

Bottom line, I've tried DWC, aeroponics, and several vermiculite/perlite hempy bucket mixtures, and overall, the 100% perlite hempy bucket has owned all of them.