Dutch buckets

I've been looking at a reliable outdoor Hydro system that I can have 12 or more plants all connected to the same recirculating system so that I could have 1 reservoir for all the plants so that I could monitor water usage/evaporation. Everything I looked at was either really expensive, used insane amounts of neuts (DWC), or would clog the drain lines with the roots.

This Dutch Bucket system seems pretty promising and isn't very expensive. The pipes are pretty large and even if they do clog with roots, they can be cleaned out easy enough.

this might be the answer to a maintenance free (for a week or so) outdoor hydro system for a bunch of plants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXy32Dr4Z4A

Looks really interesting! Seems to be an automated hempy bucket system, and hempy buckets have proved their greatness lots of times.

I have done outdoor hydro. I have tried various methods:
1. drip
2. flood and drain
3. recirculating DWC.

The easiest, with the most growth was flood and drain in felt pots with 50/50 coco perlite

frosty said:

I have done outdoor hydro. I have tried various methods:
1. drip
2. flood and drain
3. recirculating DWC.

The easiest, with the most growth was flood and drain in felt pots with 50/50 coco perlite

Click to expand...

Interesting. How big of a set up did you have? Any details?

If you do a search for last year's glog you can find it. But let me save you the time.

The deal with outdoors hydro in the summer is heat. It will reduce the oygen in the water and build an ideal condition for pythium. Some will tell you that a chiller is required. It is not!
I ran two DWC, 6 drip and 4 ebb and flow.

I was dealing with 110+ temperatures so this was extreme testing. The recirculating DWC was actually the highest maintanence and the buckets became this super hot steamy place for roots. They grew. The ebb and flow watered the the plants and then the roots had air. The only challenge with ebb and flow is you need to flood as little space as possible. I used a concrete mixing tub. Something long and closer to the size of my pots would have been better.

Drip on a timer worked well but not as good as the e and f.

here is the inspiration for the e and f
http://thehotpepper....-aeration-pots/

My plants grew huge but the water consumption became too much to handle. First I had to add a gallon a day. Then 5 then 7. The plants in e and f were the easiest to transplant. Just pull off the pot shake it a little and put in ground.

So go buy coco pith. Rinse it in your pot. By volume mix it 50/50 with perlite. Voila'.

If you do a search for TONLY you will find a guy running DWC very successfully.
Let me assure you if you are careful, outdoor hydro will grow plants significantly faster than any other system. Keep it simple and clean. Do not try something fancy like aeroponics or organics. My problem was I didn't plan for the level of success I had and didn't plan on the water consumption.

Very cool info Frosty. I went back and read through your glog as well. As far as the water consumption is concerned, I was planning on having a reservoir connected to a float switch. The float switch would add fresh water when it got low and therefore be self sustaining for about a week at a time between nute changes.

My only requirement is that all the hydro containers be linked together so there was just one reservoir. That is why I thought this dutch bucket system would work well, but you have some interesting experiments to think about as well. An ebb and flow system for 15 plants might work but I might have to keep them in buckets. I think GH has an E and f in buckets, of course, that is way to expensive for me.

For a minute thought this was a Dutch oven thread...carry on.

Jeff H said:

Very cool info Frosty. I went back and read through your glog as well. As far as the water consumption is concerned, I was planning on having a reservoir connected to a float switch. The float switch would add fresh water when it got low and therefore be self sustaining for about a week at a time between nute changes.

My only requirement is that all the hydro containers be linked together so there was just one reservoir. That is why I thought this dutch bucket system would work well, but you have some interesting experiments to think about as well. An ebb and flow system for 15 plants might work but I might have to keep them in buckets. I think GH has an E and f in buckets, of course, that is way to expensive for me.

Click to expand...

Start small. I can make a much better system now then when I ran my experiment. If I had built a huge system then I would not be able to institute what i learned. Now I can build a better AND CHEAPER system than i did before.

Let me tell you my whole process:
take rapid rooters slice a side and drop seed in. Put rooters in humidity tray with labels on lid. Using thermostat and heating wire for lizards keep at 85f. Once sprouted put in small styro foam cup with a little coco and perlite. label cup and put in flood table that has dilute nutrients and floods 4 times a day for one minute which means about 1 inch deep. After everything sprouts and is in cups slowly raise nutes to 25%. Now my table is packed with cups when it comes time to plant up I sell some of the plants. When I plant up i run my table 4 times a day with 50% nutes for 3 minutes. Then I start planting out, and selling plants as I run out of space.

Think about this. Aside from changing pots the only work I do is changing nutes and pushing buttons. No manual watering ever. I can go on vacation and everything takes care of itself at every phase except sprouting. The plants transplant very smoothly into any other system (pots, ground, more hydro).

I started growing 3-4 years ago. I had fungus gnats, leggy plants and killed about 70% of my plants. Everyday I would have to take care of my plants. I made a mess everyday watering the cups.