Self Watering Bases

Hi CatfishGrows, You can check out my rockwool and autopot diaries. I've never used wicks or coco coir. To me it seems like rockwool-autopot is the perfect combination. Of course the most crucial part is to put an air pump under the rockwool to keep the roots oxygenated. The reservoir must contain a water pump to keep the nutes evenly mixed in the water. Let me know if you need more tips. Regards

I tried the AC brand wicking bases and found they were ok, but needed daily filling and were hard to clean if there was any kind of buildup. Maybe better now that you can put in auto fill valves, just like Autopots. Personally I switched to Autopot after my experience with wicking bases. They give a very precise and fully autonomous (power free) watering experience. Easily getting 30% more yeild than when hand watered or with wicking bases. Slight investment up front, but pays for itself in first run

I've been growing a lot with wicking ropes. Right now Im using Airpots with a lot of wicks (probably around 10 per pot) with a lot of success. Even though with the airpots the coco is drying out faster. You might want to use thicker wicks. I also put some wicks outside of the pot to the surface to irrigate the top aswell. I also have good experience with fabric pots and bottomfeeding them with a tray. Its perfect for coco, but also very suitable for soil, as you just need to fill your tray with water until the plant doesnt drink anymore and just put the rest to waste. I never had root rod btw and I also bottom feed all my other (non smokable lol) plants with success.

Not a fan of bottom irrigation for anything soilless. It's not as bad with soil/supersoil etc. Soilless mediums need consistent runoff to maintain nutrition levels over time. Might as well grow in soil if not doing that every fertigation. Any process that benefits from a little runoff is manual labor for you if using a bottom-irrigation setup - on top of other drawbacks listed by others. You can manually do some occassional top-down irrigations, and likely will need to incorporate such behaviour regardless, but that kinda defeats the purpose of having automated irrigation, eh? I suggest a diy irrigation setup. Use pressure-controlled drippers and it's easy as pie. It'll be cheaper than branded products but might cost slightly more than a pump-less bottom irrigation setup unless they really rape you on the price, lol. A pump, 1/2" tubing, some fittings and a reservoir doesn't cost much. Can build a system for 12 plants and spend less than 200 USD, erring on high side. That's buying a nice 55-gal barrel and not using some flimsy trash can as a reservoir, lol. Smaller setups will be even cheaper. Check out my irrigation system. Week 10 of any of my "mint" diaries has a short video as well as the automated drain. Cheaper. Better.

They're simple to use but do have a tendency to have the roots grow out of the bottom of the pot into the wick lines..Ideally you want to raise the pots off the bases to prevent this but it's difficult without using a copper disc at the bottom of the pot. The roots WILL over take the wicking lines without them. The bases also only hold a gallon or so of water - depending on brand. Otherwise a very inexpensive alternative to Autopots. I also use 2 of their systems as well.

Sure 🙂 Yes, it works great. Thanks to the consistently perfect moisture level, your plants grow stronger, healthier, and often noticeably bigger 🌱💪🏻 but best way is the autopot System

putting trust in a wick is a bad idea,getting let down by that 1 weak link...go for the autopots if i was you