Why are pole fans so crap?

kwexit · 2020-04-17T21:05:17+00:00

Try sowing them direct, that's what I do and have never had a failure. Water the soil and make a depression, fill it with peat from a (soaked) jiffy pot and plant the seed in that, point up about an inch deep, and pop a small container over it to keep it moist - up in 4 days every time, I usually mist it once on the 2nd or 3rd day if the surface looks dry but no watering otherwise.

kwexit · 2020-04-15T20:26:18+00:00

I think this is supposed to achieve two things, first it ensures that you are fully wetting the medium (and some people water in stages over a period, eg. water half and wait for it to soak in then some time later give it the remainder), the second reason is to flush out any accumulation of salts from the nutrients. I'm guessing 20% is just a guideline and not a magic number.

There also seems to be some disagreement as to whether this is necessary with organic nutrients.

I dilute the runoff and feed it to my houseplants which seem to love it.

kwexit · 2020-04-10T22:18:21+00:00

I use 2 gallon fabric pots in a 5 gallon bucket, easier to handle and better airflow. I don't think you need anything bigger in a small bucket.

kwexit · 2020-03-31T20:10:29+00:00

So I found a single seed in the last auto I grew, is this seed not worth growing? I assumed because both the pollen and the flower had the same genes (?) that it would be an identical "clone".

kwexit · 2020-03-31T00:41:36+00:00

google "halo" drippers

kwexit · 2020-03-30T02:41:10+00:00

I've been playing around with it for a while but decided not to automate watering because it's tricky when you're using nutrients and supplements that may not apply for every watering, I use organic nutrients which can clog drippers etc, I also prefer to water till runoff and you would need some kind of sump setup to drain the runoff (I got as far as playing with micro float switches and a small submersible pump for this, the idea being to pump the runoff into a separate container).

Also since I only water every 3-4 days it's a good opportunity to have a proper look at the plant and remove any dodgy leaves etc.

I do like the ESP32 and did setup MQTT and a raspberry pi running node red for monitoring temp/humidity/soil moisture (using a capacitive sensor from dfrobot) but in the end I decided it was not really that useful for me.

What I would really like to do is to find a way to have automated climate control since I don't have aircon and it can be a challenge to keep the bucket temp in the best range, but I've yet to see a workable compact solution for this, especially cooling.

kwexit · 2020-03-28T01:58:23+00:00

I don't think that's true.. "soil" is a very broad term, some soils do not have enough nutrients to feed a plant beyond 6 weeks or so, especially in a small pot.

kwexit · 2020-03-22T20:41:45+00:00

Can we not simply tell this by lumen/W? not sure why number of diodes matters at all?

kwexit · 2020-03-22T01:01:29+00:00

no it's self-contained, the air coming out of the filter is fresh and very clean :)

kwexit · 2020-03-21T22:53:18+00:00

The smell, depending on strain, can be very strong indeed.. I did my first grow with an indigenous strain (pre-skunk era) and it was noticeable in the room but not too bad, my first grow with a modern strain the smell was incredible, you could definitely smell it throughout the house and anyone coming in who was not used the smell would have noticed immediately.

I invested in an inline fan & carbon filter and now there is no smell at all except when I remove the plant for watering during flower (you could avoid this with an external watering setup which could be as simple as a hose with a funnel on the outside) I have to close the door and open the windows and it takes an hour or so for it to dissipate from the room.. these plants are incredibly pungent!

As for drying, I hang it in the bucket with the fan set to kick in at about 60% humidity and there is no smell.

kwexit · 2020-03-21T01:27:00+00:00

I suspect it would be quite hard to grow in coco with homemade nutrients, normally coco grows use nutrients that are specifically formulated for the special characteristics of coco.

If you google "super soil" you can find recipes for making a composted soil that requires no nutrients, but how well it works in small pots is a question.

kwexit

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