AutoPot system and Orgasoilux

[DesignatedDave]

Hi,

I'm going to be starting a new grow and I am considering using orgasoilux and their own nutrient feeding schedule with the autopot system.

I plan to use the XL 25L pots with clay pebbles and the airdome at the bottom with the orgasoilux.

First off, would you recommend doing orgasoilux in an autopot system or should I rather stick to a normal airpot?

Now with this being a bottom feeding system, Can I assume any top soil amendments, for example earthworm castings and gypsum would be rendered useless here unless I fed it water on top of the dry amendments and it soaked down right? What do you recommend here?

The AqUAValue5 allows for organic liquid nutrients to be feed via the autopot system, however, is this recommended or should I recommend top feed the nutrients and keep the autopot system with just clean water?

thanks,

Dave

[Ill_Evan]

Autopot have a very specific methodology when it comes to organics within their system. Previously with the old aquavalve it was highly discouraged to use organics but with the new aquavalve5 they developed specifically for organic nutrients. In my opinion I would not use organics with autopots only because I feel like the recommended methodology is quite cumbersome and I got into autopots so I could do less work and not more, but to each their own and if you want to try it out then go for it. 

Here is the link for the autopot methodology:

AutoPot_Growers_Guides_Nutrient_Information.pdf

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

11 hours ago, DesignatedDave said:

Hi,

I'm going to be starting a new grow and I am considering using orgasoilux and their own nutrient feeding schedule with the autopot system.

I plan to use the XL 25L pots with clay pebbles and the airdome at the bottom with the orgasoilux.

First off, would you recommend doing orgasoilux in an autopot system or should I rather stick to a normal airpot?

Now with this being a bottom feeding system, Can I assume any top soil amendments, for example earthworm castings and gypsum would be rendered useless here unless I fed it water on top of the dry amendments and it soaked down right? What do you recommend here?

The AqUAValue5 allows for organic liquid nutrients to be feed via the autopot system, however, is this recommended or should I recommend top feed the nutrients and keep the autopot system with just clean water?

thanks,

Dave

Hey bud, 

material pots with hand watering for indoor home growers are the way to go. 

autopots are like niche things. it's something different, it's something new with a group of ride-or-die followers, but nothing will ever beat the old school normal pot with hand water method. you'll be doing autopots for a while and soon find yourself running back to the grow shop for material pots to minimize the headaches. I've seen all kinds of questions surrounding autopots that make me ask, "but why?" so many componenets you never really know where the problem lies. 

the new aquavalves for organic feeding is nice, but I don't think organic nutrients itself should be mixed and left for more than 24hrs, otherwise you risk cultivating pathogens and unwanted bacteria. also organic nutrients interact with eachother and if left for too long and conditions allow it, you'll be brewing up some unwanted organic chemical reactions aswell causing PH/PPM swings just like with synthetics, since you got a reservoir feeding the autopots, the nutes go into water and not directly into the soil where it would have been buffered down to the right PH, what you got now is a organic situation that you have to measure ph and ppm with, so it's a cool concept, just not practical especially if you going after it to make less work for yourself. instead you'll be making more work for yourself. 

autopots work best with synthetic nutrients and even then you get build up.

I ran synthetics through a big irrigation system. and I mean big.... 9 hectares of irrigation... after a year you cut open pipes and find salt build up. I don't even wana know what the pipes would have looked like if we ran organics. 

remember there's gona be times where the liquid inside the pipes aren't there, and that doesn't leave you with clean pipes, the residuals stay behind and dries up. this is where build up happens. with all irrigation systems. it's just much worse with organics than with synthetics. 

[Dr. Green]

I'm currently doing autopots with freedom farm classic and TA pro organic nutrients which is meant to be a organic nutrient for drip systems. 

 

I have 15l pots and top fed with plain water for the first 2 weeks until the roots reached the bottom. When I activated the autopots the first res was filled with water only and the plants did not like that at all.

 

I then started feeding with nutrients and it has been going better but the grow took a knock from that first res with just plain water. 

 

I will try it again on the next run and do nutrients in the res as soon as I start using the autopots 

 

Salts with autopots is definitely easier but I will only make up my mind after the next run

[Ill_Evan]

3 hours ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

material pots with hand watering for indoor home growers are the way to go. 

Totally agreed. I think on a case-by-case basis it can really benefit some home growers. Me for example I like it because watering by hand after putting in nets and doing all the training can sometimes become really cumbersome because I can't really open up the tent all the way to reach the pots at the back corners easily. In this regard, the autopots really help. However if I could do the hand watering easily I would stick to fabric pots like I do in my Organic Tent™. I currently have autopots setup in a smaller 1.2x1.2 tent but I do think I will probably hit-up the fabric pots again in there after harvest. 

[DesignatedDave]

Thanks for the informative replies.

Up until now I been using fabric pots, I've considered trying the plastic airpots just for a change, but in both cases I hate dealing with the run off.

My idea behind the autopot system (and I havent bought it yet, so still deciding) - was to let the system do water only and any nutrients or compost teas, etc I would hand feed from the top.

Looking at the orgasoilux feeding schedule, the nutrients & teas are only given once a week, so I would probably close the valves on the autopots 2 days prior to hand feeding them. Whatever run off there is will go into the tray and the roots should just absorb them up again. I would obviously need to be careful not to overfill it.

On the other hand, I can save the R6500 I would pay for the autopot system and just try out these 25L airpots.... choices choices...

On the Orgasoilux note, there is something in their nutrient schedule which I am uncertain about.

It states: " Fill your watering can with water first before adding and mixing the nutrients (Apply approx. 1L of mixed liquid feed per 20-25L container)"

So normally if I was mixing up 20L of nutrients, I would take the per liter value (eg: 2ml/1L) and multiple it by the number of litres in mixing into. So 2ml x 20L = 40ml of solution to be added to the water. From here I would give say 2L of water to each plant.

But from reading the above, am I right in understanding that they saying I shouldn't be doing this and I should _only_ be giving each plant in a 25L container only 1L of mixed nutrients at time. This seems like an extremely light nutrient schedule if that's the case, I mean bio bizz is like every single water?

Organic Liquid Feeding Program.pdf

Edited July 16, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[DesignatedDave]

Ok scratch that, I'm going to leave the organic thing until grow season for my outdoor and greenhouse plants.

I decided to go with two 4Pot 25L XL autopot systems and synthetic nutrients, this after getting amazing help and information from a gentleman at Green Thumb Hydroponics, who put up with me and my questions for 3 hours and was so helpful it was ridiculous.

Synthetic nutrients is a new field of growing for me, should be interesting.

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

does this dude grow himself or he just works there? 

here's a little short story on how synthetic nutrients came into play

I threw my synthetic nutes in the bin, only place for that stuff! I am not a commercial grower and I am not in it to cut corners, I am in it to grow good weed for myself. I don't have 1000 plants to look at all at the same time, so I can really focus on the needs of each individual plant. took me a while to realise the difference, but there's benefits in all aspects of growing organics, not only the end result. soooooo many benefits, but let me not keep singing songs about organics cause I know how offended people get when you don't allow them to figure it out by themselves. 

let's see how long it takes you to move over to organics with hand watering  

just because a pot with living soil and hand watering has been done since before christ it's seen as old and not cool and people are detered thinking "there must be better, easier ways to do this", but for real those egyptians figured it out man. 

reports of hydro/aquaponics go back thousands of years too, but when you look at the big picture every grower of every caliber has there "modern phase" where they dabble with all the cool new things, but sooner than you'd think they all turn back to the oldschool ways and all the modern equipment and other kak is just tossed to the side. or like me, it all hits the bin and you save the next person some time and school fees.

even with commercial farming in the year 2022 where it's all modern you'll find a bigger number of organic farmers right now than you would've 10 years ago when synthetics was the conventional way. too many people have realised the difference that's why theres this universal shift happening at the moment. synthetics becoming a thing of the past. it was cool, but it wasn't better...

synthetic nutes is the gimmick of cannabis growing, it's all marketing and attention grabbing. something new, something different, something cool, but that's about it. it has it's place in commercial farming, but even then it also has major downsides and a much more negative impact on the environment if you working on commercial scale you should be the first person to think about environmental impact... oh man.... there I go, singing songs of organics again!

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

20 hours ago, DesignatedDave said:

Thanks for the informative replies.

Up until now I been using fabric pots, I've considered trying the plastic airpots just for a change, but in both cases I hate dealing with the run off.

My idea behind the autopot system (and I havent bought it yet, so still deciding) - was to let the system do water only and any nutrients or compost teas, etc I would hand feed from the top.

Looking at the orgasoilux feeding schedule, the nutrients & teas are only given once a week, so I would probably close the valves on the autopots 2 days prior to hand feeding them. Whatever run off there is will go into the tray and the roots should just absorb them up again. I would obviously need to be careful not to overfill it.

On the other hand, I can save the R6500 I would pay for the autopot system and just try out these 25L airpots.... choices choices...

On the Orgasoilux note, there is something in their nutrient schedule which I am uncertain about.

It states: " Fill your watering can with water first before adding and mixing the nutrients (Apply approx. 1L of mixed liquid feed per 20-25L container)"

So normally if I was mixing up 20L of nutrients, I would take the per liter value (eg: 2ml/1L) and multiple it by the number of litres in mixing into. So 2ml x 20L = 40ml of solution to be added to the water. From here I would give say 2L of water to each plant.

But from reading the above, am I right in understanding that they saying I shouldn't be doing this and I should _only_ be giving each plant in a 25L container only 1L of mixed nutrients at time. This seems like an extremely light nutrient schedule if that's the case, I mean bio bizz is like every single water?

Organic Liquid Feeding Program.pdf 89.33 kB · 2 downloads

when you say airpots? you mean those black ones with the weird spikes?? bro have you noticed how theres a shit ton of material pots flooding the market right now??? those air pots are not the way to go brother...... what's pushing you away from the material pots and how did you land on airpots? those are gona give you more trouble than the autopots

nute shcedules are not meant to be followed to a T, if you followed the Biobizz schedule your plant might catch fire, they call for waaaaaayyyy too many nutes. 

I look at nute schedules only for teetsy bits of guidance, very very minimal, when I think about what feed to give and how much, then I look at the plant. it helps to know the strength of the stuff you use, that's why I use biobizz. it's well reputed and straight forward to use. 

 

[Ill_Evan]

Hate to admit it but I must acknowledge my slow turnaround to organics and fabric pots. Straight up had some of the best harvests just like that. 

@Naughty.Psychonaut is the hero we thought we didn't need. 

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

lol, oh stop it  

another cool thing about organics is the longer you're into it the cheaper and easier it becomes till the point where the only input to your grow is the cost of electricity. and as we all know, solar power is the only reasonable future for us here in SA so we should be thinking about that anyway, for the whole house not just the grow. 

[DesignatedDave]

Oh please don't get me wrong, I've been doing organic all the way up until now and I am by no means throwing it away.
My entire outdoor and greenhouse grow this year will be organics without a doubt.

For my indoor though, I want to give the synthetic nutrients a try. I'm obviously avoiding petroleum based or engineered nutrients because fuck that.
Organic "additions" like Mycorrhizal fungi, Trichoderma, Bacillus Amyloliquefaciens, EM-1, CMC, BM, Humic & Fulvic Acid, bio-simulants and bio-boosters still apply and provide benefit when using synthetic nutrients.

From the plants perspective, I'm not convinced it really cares whether or not an organic method broke down the nutrient or a chemical process broke it down, it just wants to absorb it. 
Sure you don't have the slow release of organic so it requires more input from the grower to manage this, but I'm keen to give it a try. 
I watched an interesting interview with a Dr. Bruce Bugbee from Utah university regarding "Organic vs Synthetic" and shares some interesting info - Youtube link here

Interestingly, the best cannabis I have ever smoked in terms of taste and strength (not grown by me) was grown in a hydroponics system using only Nutrifeed from seed to harvest, nothing more, nothing less.
I might fire up my 3rd tent and do a run with nutrifeed after my current plants have been harvested and dried.

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

you can see things from the plants perspective!? damn boooiii, then why you asking advice on the forum? we should all be learning from you!  

lol no I know what you mean, I guess it is what it is hey, like I said, let's see how long it takes you to realise the difference  

[DesignatedDave]

1 minute ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

you can see things from the plants perspective!? damn boooiii, then why you asking advice on the forum? we should all be learning from you!  

lol no I know what you mean, I guess it is what it is hey, like I said, let's see how long it takes you to realise the difference  

I had to edit my post again, Figured I would give some more info.

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

10 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

let's see how long it takes you

 

[DesignatedDave]

2 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

let's see how long it takes you 

Edited July 18, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

the ONLY BENEFIT that comes with using synthetics is mass production. 

(emphesis on the word BENEFIT) 

food farms upscaling to feed the masses

however the world is over populated, so feeding the masses creates an even bigger problem.... so you're creating a problem by trying to solve a problem and it leaves the whole world with an even bigger problem? 

if, like Dr. Bruce stated, there is no difference in organics vs synthetics, perhaps it's cause he is too focussed on the fine detail to see the bigger picture. 

AND IF there is no difference, why support and promote the one with the more negative environmental impact and that encourages an even bigger global problem?

do I need to go on???

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

3 minutes ago, DesignatedDave said:

don't attach too much emotion here brother, that shits not gona get you anywhere

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

I put the 4 leaf clover there as a little token of luck, and I meant it.

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

On 7/17/2022 at 6:59 AM, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

but let me not keep singing songs about organics cause I know how offended people get when you don't allow them to figure it out by themselves. 

classic

[DesignatedDave]

7 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

the ONLY BENEFIT that comes with using synthetics is mass production. 

(emphesis on the word BENEFIT) 

food farms upscaling to feed the masses

however the world is over populated, so feeding the masses creates an even bigger problem.... so you're creating a problem by trying to solve a problem and it leaves the whole world with an even bigger problem? 

if, like Dr. Bruce stated, there is no difference in organics vs synthetics, perhaps it's cause he is too focussed on the fine detail to see the bigger picture. 

AND IF there is no difference, why support and promote the one with the more negative environmental impact and that encourages an even bigger global problem?

do I need to go on???

I think you should rather watch the interview before assuming that is what he says and having a counter argument.. He doesn't say that at all 

 

8 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

don't attach too much emotion here brother, that shits not gona get you anywhere

Huh what you mean? I gave a thumbs up?  

 

7 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

I put the 4 leaf clover there as a little token of luck, and I meant it.

Ok, cool thanks 
 

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

His point is the same thing you said, the plant can't tell the difference if it's synthetic or organic.

so if Dr. Bruce claims there is no difference, then why lean away from organics if it's JUST AS GOOD AS SYNTHETICS?

that's your argument, I am just using it against you.  

Like I said, there are sooooooo many benefits to growing with organics besides your end results (the weed you harvest) 

like it or not, if you endorse a product you support it. so, why support a product that is adds to the list of bad things we do? 

PLUS, there are BIG differences Dr. Bruce doesn't even get close to touching on. 

if you think I have to watch that video to get clued up on how natures works you in for a big surprise my guy. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331132826_The_Impact_of_Chemical_Fertilizers_on_our_Environment_and_Ecosystem 

 

https://www.420sa.co.za/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=27969

besides, if you can make the argument that the best weed you smoked was from synthetic grow, and I take your word for it cause your word is as good as mine, right? but my word is that the best weed I ever smoked was from organic grow. so what? that's not gona do anything to your judgement? 

 

[Naughty.Psychonaut]

35 minutes ago, DesignatedDave said:

Huh what you mean? I gave a thumbs up?  
 

ah hahah sorry man so we still good  

I just know how this discussion goes from having it a million times before so I sometimes jump to conclusions, which is wrong of me, but trust me I don't mean to come across as offensive or anything  

but yeah stick around and show us how your grow shapes out, I am always excited about all weed things so even if I am not completely in support of what's happening I like to see and learn more from others 

[DesignatedDave]

36 minutes ago, Naughty.Psychonaut said:

His point is the same thing you said, the plant can't tell the difference if it's synthetic or organic.

so if Dr. Bruce claims there is no difference, then why lean away from organics if it's JUST AS GOOD AS SYNTHETICS?

that's your argument, I am just using it against you.  

Like I said, there are sooooooo many benefits to growing with organics besides your end results (the weed you harvest) 

like it or not, if you endorse a product you support it. so, why support a product that is adds to the list of bad things we do? 

PLUS, there are BIG differences Dr. Bruce doesn't even get close to touching on. 

if you think I have to watch that video to get clued up on how natures works you in for a big surprise my guy. 

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/331132826_The_Impact_of_Chemical_Fertilizers_on_our_Environment_and_Ecosystem 

 

https://www.420sa.co.za/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=27969 174.44 kB · 5 downloads

besides, if you can make the argument that the best weed you smoked was from synthetic grow, and I take your word for it cause your word is as good as mine, right? but my word is that the best weed I ever smoked was from organic grow. so what? that's not gona do anything to your judgement? 

 

Did you get as far as people using manure in organic farming and how it's fucking up the phosphorus in the soil in these large organic grows?

He doesn't advocate for the use of either, he explains where he sees organics working, where people are fucking up organics on a mass scale that its doing just as much damage as synthetic nutrients and how organics can work, but it needs a more scientific approach. He mentions where he sees synthetic nutrients being used and how its useful in controlled metered environments or when instant change is needed to correct deficiencies in plants. It allows people to experiment with the different elements, for example, upping the sulphur individually to see the impact on terpene production. I shared the video more for informational purposes, you never know, someone new might land on this page from google and the video might be interesting for them, it wasn't specifically aimed at you.

My guy, I really don't doubt your superior "GrowAwesomeness" or knowledge in anyway, I'm sure you know your shit, grow the best weed and there is probably a lot I could learn from you. I don't thinking anyone here, including myself is questioning that.

However, could I ask you to stop being an Organic Elitist for just a second here and understand that maybe, just maybe someone like myself might find this shit interesting and would like to experiment with this? I'm not entirely sure why this is bothering you so much, I'm not against organic in anyway what-so-ever, in fact I rather enjoy it, it's like you completely ignored the fact that all my other grows, and future outdoor and greenhouse grows are organic with top feeding 

 

Edited July 18, 2022 by DesignatedDave

[Ill_Evan]

@Naughty.Psychonaut let the man do his thing from here. I know you're probably loading up a moerse rebuttal now but as you said before you've had this conversation a hundred times. 

We haven't even gotten a chance to see a grow diary or report yet. Let's look forward to that before going full nuclear.