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hydroponic Hydroponic virgin

rudeboy2010

rudeboy2010

Hey guys i am thinking of having a go at hydroponic growing over here in England ....Would appreciate any help on what to do , easiest system to start with for a hydro virgin ,etc,etc .It looks amazing way to grow chillies , there is so much info on the net that it gets confusing ...so i have turned to my HOT PEPPER family for help . Thanks guys and gals :)
 
I just spent a bunch of time researching the same thing because I got in to the whole pepper growing thing really late this year so I am not ready to give up for the year. What I decided on for my first try at hydro is a DWC bucket. It looks like it will cost me about $40 to build it and give it a try before I really invest into a bigger system for more plants. There are a few posts about DWC's here and tons of how to's on youtube.
 
the DWC is very easy and pretty much fool proof if you do enough reading on here! i have 2 DWC with little seedling in them and i have a choc bell that i transplanted into a WAY too big pot and it sat in soggy soil so it never grew. i dug as much of the roots up as i could and rinsed them VERY good and put them into another DWC as i have 10 more sitting under a table on my balcony(a buddy sold them to my for 10 dollars each with stones and pumps! so once the wife and I get a house i will make a flowing DWC set up with all 13 buckets and a huge resavoir!
 
I recently decided to give it a go, DWC on the cheap, 15$ or< give it a try, only been 4 days, but a plant was stripped of its soil and hasn't died yet...
 
well, all you have to do is go to our search mechanism and do a dwc search and there will be hundreds of non confusing posts come up. give that a try.
 
S.S.Tupperware said:
I recently decided to give it a go, DWC on the cheap, 15$ or< give it a try, only been 4 days, but a plant was stripped of its soil and hasn't died yet...
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How did you get it down to $15? I've got $11 in the pump and $5 in the bucket and lid alone. Now the stone, black hoses, slotted basket, and hydroton and I'm up to more like $40. Plus nutes, ph up and down, ph meter, and ppm meter.
 
Well I had buckets form wifes work,had some net pots, I got 1 bottle of nutes, hydro guy was kind enought to give me a lil hrdroton. I ain't spending for a meter and all that other stuff, this is an experiment. I am going to take a sample of my water ( hard from a well) and lake water and since it's spring fed... let them test it for me, and help me figure out how much nutes per bucket. Chance every week or so, and go from there. When i was in there 2 guys dropped 5k for 2 complete setups with all kinds of stuff. Lotta money if ya don't know what your doin. i guess they have a cash crop a lil more valuable than a hot pepper.
 
This was my first year using hydro DWC buckets. I bought the buckets from a doughnut shop 2 gal for $1.00, 5gal for $2.00 cut my holes and spray painted them black. They were very easy to make and super cheap too. I started growing since May and this is what I observed.
Indoors
* Do not use the agressive nutrient phase if you are tight on space especially indoors. This works great if you want to bush the plant out and cut lots of clones.
* You very much need adaquate light indoors, and one sunny window will not cut it.
- I had a Fatalii, White Habanero, and Jamaican Hot Chocolate growing in doors with the Fatalii in its own bucket. The Fatalii as of today 10/11/11 is about 4ft high and about 3ft wide. It finally started to flower and I so far have 2 pods mainly because the aphid attack and lack of light due to the plant being so huge.

Outdoors.
I moved the White Hab, and Jamaican HC out side as they didnt stop growing even as I totally cut out the Grow nutes. I have them in a 10gal tote with some other chili, tomato, and basil plants. The plants growing in Hydro outside are huge and are flowering profusely. Only problen is it is starting to get cold here in the evenings, so I may have to bring them inside.

Over all they did good and you can achieve huge yields especially outdoors. Also, I believe the aggresive feeding phase would be best if used on outdoor growing as space is not an issue. I find it hard to trigger plants to flower on Hydro unlike soil, but if I keep up with it I feel I can master it and produce healthy plants with huge yields, just takes practice.

PS.. build a cloning machine. It is very simple, just use a long 1/2gal. Tupperware container. You can clone to your hearts content and not hassle with waiting for seeds to sprout. You will also wind up with more plants than you can handle and thus sell or give em away as newly-rooted clones will accept soil alot easier than a large plant that has been growing in hydro.
 
Check your local eateries for 5 gal buckets. The fast food place I worked in high school went through 2-3 5 gallon buckets of pickles a week. There's also a Chinese place in town that I've frequented since I was but a wee lad, and the owner just gave me a stack of 10 5gal. buckets. :cool: Evidently, they go though quite a bit of soy sauce...
 
S.S.Tupperware said:
Well I had buckets form wifes work,had some net pots, I got 1 bottle of nutes, hydro guy was kind enought to give me a lil hrdroton. I ain't spending for a meter and all that other stuff, this is an experiment. I am going to take a sample of my water ( hard from a well) and lake water and since it's spring fed... let them test it for me, and help me figure out how much nutes per bucket. Chance every week or so, and go from there. When i was in there 2 guys dropped 5k for 2 complete setups with all kinds of stuff. Lotta money if ya don't know what your doin. i guess they have a cash crop a lil more valuable than a hot pepper.
Click to expand...
my hydro shop let me borrow a PPM as i gave them a bunch of seeds and a few pods i had, so i wrote down how much to add to get a certan change.
for me for 3 gallons of water 1ml/gallon of Ph down gets me to the right PH range. and 1 tsp/gal GH Flora nova "Bloom" and 2 tsp cal/MAg gets the PPM right in the range. i just have the cheap Ph tester with the vial and drops(its really all you need to start since you can get it in the Ph range and keep it there) no need to get a super expensive meters to start as i have noticed that the more i mess the worse the plants get. i change the nutes around 14 days right now since my plants are tiny and i fianlly has a little root poking out the bottom! but as they get bigger i am sure i will change it every 7-10 days but i check the PH every 3 days.
 
The other guys seemed to haved covered the bucket set up really good. When your system is all set up and ready to go, then the nutes come it. Some thinks Ive experienced Id like to share.

1. Do not use the Aggresive Grow Phase unless you have the adequate light and room. This works really good for outdoors though. I used an Aggressive Grow Phase on my Fatalii at reached phenominal hights....problem was it was indoors and I didnt want risk breaking any branches taking it outside. What should of gave me hundreds of peppers has only given me three so far due to inadequite light.

2. I only changed the solution once a month as the water level went down I would just top it off. Now tha I will NOT be using the aggressive, but the normal grow phase. I will try changing the solution every two weeks.
 
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