Can you use red lava yard-rocks for grow medium ?

[Zandor]

Lava rock is used in KBS growing. Grow rocks do not hold the plant well enough and they tip over in the KBS style. In KBS you use one 5 gallon bucket per plant and fill it with rocks. Lava rock holds great but it is a bitch to clean. Yes the cement mixer does help a lot and a mixture of 5% bleach is easy to mix and use.

Look for a local garden landscape company you can get a whole truck load for about 50 bucks of what they call crushed lava rock.

[skunkydelight]

I heard mixing lava/vermic to 4 to 1 ratio is great to, but I am a first timer, listening to advice. Also, something about using vermic at the top inch or so being it tends to wash down after flushing. HELP !!!!

4/1 ratio in a soilless grow would be good, but in that case you would use regular soil pots...you can't use vermiculite or perlite with net pots...
-sD

[stickygreenlightsabr]

What exactly is KBS growing? Big fookin tree growing?

[skunkydelight]

What exactly is KBS growing? Big fookin tree growing?

It's called "Krusty Bucket System" or Freedom Buckets in some cases. From what I know about them, it's like a recirculating DWC, without all the airpumps because you use a natural waterfall effect [drain return from buckets to control res] to maintain adequate DO levels...Plus the buckets are elevated to force gravity feed back to the control res. Then a pump in the control res recirculates the nutes to each bucket via a stream of water in each bucket. You also use Lava rock as your medium along with a "bio-filter" to maintain beneficial bacteria to take care of things like algea. The system in turn does not "require" lightproofing, even tho it has been said that roots like to grow better in dark conditions. Some also like to raise the DO level in these systems by adding an airstone to the control res. In essence, you are trying to mimmick a pond or stream environment where running water, nutes and beneficial bacteria is all you need to grow healthy plants....hope this helped.

oh and yes, depending on veg time, plants in these kinds of systems that are dialed in will grow faster and get bigger than any other hydro method I have ever seen before...
-sD

[Bender]

I use the crushed red lava rock and l have for years.. I get mine at walmart.. I wouldn't use anything else..:thumbsup:

[Gen]

Thanks for all the info guys.

Very informative thread.

[oldsanclem]

I have grown with both crushed granit 3/8 from home dump and hydrocorn . Bottom line no differance , except money. More than a few decades of growing, so its been tested. HE MAJOR THING IS TO FLUSH THE HELL OUT OF THEM BEFORE USE AND BETWEEN CROPS.
Always clean any mater what ever you choose, A dead Bug is a happy bugs.
Good old bleach , and flush till the water does not smell of bleach.

[MaryjaneMenehune]

It seems hydrogen peroxide works as well to clean lava rocks... seems like it would be less toxic if you didn't rinse thoroughly enough after the initial soak.

Hey Silver, welcome to Hydro...I think you are mis-understanding the concept of the DWC bucket. You want to use lava rock or hydrotone in your netpots as vermiculite and perlite will just fall through into your buckets = no good. If you want to use Vermiculite and Perlite, that would be more of a soillessgrow, which you can do in normal soil pots. Lava rocks can be purchased at Home Depot or Lowes or any other home improvement store, just make sure you wash them off very good with a hydrogen peroxide solution of 1-10 before you use them. Hydrotone can be bought from any growstore. Wash it off before use as well. The good thing about these two mediums is they don't effect the PH at all, which means there is no guess work to get your nutes right. Let me know if you have any other questions. A lot of questions can be answered and should be known before you start on your jouney into DWC. Read my entire threads and you should be good to go....
-sD

I think an over night soak should be plenty sufficient.
good luck:thumbsup: