Indoor Testing the eazyplug pyramid mini.

[olbobcat]

I am pretty stoked seeing this, I found them in my area and they have all the pieces.
I might have to give them a try some grow. I will be watching on your progress. The large ones are 3 times the price of the mini.
But the whole system looks like it could be a thing!

 

[myotis]

I think I will be watching how they turn out, they look really handy.

 

[The Iconoclast]

I am pretty stoked seeing this, I found them in my area and they have all the pieces.
I might have to give them a try some grow. I will be watching on your progress. The large ones are 3 times the price of the mini.
But the whole system looks like it could be a thing!

Yes the 10" ones are 4 times the volume. It is not really meant to be used as I am so this is a worst case scenario in that I have no experience of hand controlling the nutrient in a tiny inert media. Right now I am curious to see if she can get to an oz, or maybe she'll just be 7 grams.

For now I'm getting what I wanted a tiny stand alone couple of plants that I can put anywhere. I've always been put off a bit by going for bags and media, but if I ever had the need I know that whatever I can get with the mini would be better on the big pyramid. A lot of it is an aesthetic for me, I love simplicity and non clutter. For the mini for example most pots are thin at the bottom and wider at the top, so it's very pleasing on the eye to see the pot sort of disappear by having the top small. Also the forced symmetry of the root system seems to force a similar balance and symmetry up top, although this is just a plausible conjecture at this stage.

I mainly like that I can now easily do the sorts of test I wanted to do, and not only that but because any test plant I grow will have identical root structure and living conditions so that I can get an idea of the form of the plant before planting.

I will be planting a new hydro bean soon, another Brooklyn Sunrise, but this time I'm going to put the eazyplug into one of the 2" cubes first and let some roots grow through all around before burying into the clay substrate, because what I have seen from the mini pyramid this will force the roots to radiate out on all sides.

Not sure if I should do anything about the algae on the sides, it's not really getting out of hand and there are no insects around, I have a 6% H202 so I might spray a little on the outside and see what happens.

Feeding is very tricky for me at this stage because it's not something I'm used to, I just make a reservoir and I'm done, maybe splash a bit of extra nutes at a later time. Right now I don't know if I should feed her constantly with a very weak solution at 250, or feed her about 800 once then water only for a couple. Or maybe I should just use water and watch for signs from the plant what nutes to add. Like at the moment I can't tell if maybe a bit extra nitrogen would be good or useless or harmful. But I'm sure I'll find all this out in due course as long as there is no unforeseen catastrophe and she dies.

Here's another daily update, she has grown an inch and a half the past day. 10 inches high now hoping to get to 12" and fill out a bit.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Okie dokie I think I've come up with a plan regarding watering. I now have a 9 litre bucket of nutrient at at about 900ppm and I hold the plant by the stem with two fingers and a thumb and twirl her over the bucket and pour the good juice over the top of the plant and let it drain back into the bucket. I guess I can do this as often as I want.

After shooting up to double the size in a week she stabilised at 13" and is setting flower. I have her under a 100W panel and now I'm wondering if anything much more is going to happen. Here's is some flower shots and some lower flowers.

 

[DCLXVI]

Thanks for all the updates. Neat to see this progressing.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Sorry for the close update but she is changing quickly. 15 inches now, she looks very sparse from the side but from the top the leaves have arranged themselves to get the most light. I am now using a new flowering reservoir nute that I made for my big grow, so now this one is getting 1700ppm and so far no ill effects.

 

[Mañ'O'Green]

 

[The Iconoclast]

It feels to me like these buds are hardly growing, but I compared a shot from one week ago and I couldn't believe the difference. I've not grown the Banana Kush before but I intend to not top this and just try and have the one main stem just to if this makes any different.

Thoughts so far is that it is flowering about 2 weeks early and the stretch is much more relative to the size of the plant that I've seen this must be something to do with the roots releasing some sort of hormones. I'm guess if I were to anthropomorphise the plant that it would be thinking to itself, "I seem to be stuck in some sort of rock crevice and so I had better grow tall and flower early because I'm not in a good spot, although I do seem to be well fed"

It would be interesting to see a bean in a mini pyramid placed on the top of a normal soil filled grow bag.

I can easily see this plant being grown in a lounge room as a decorative lamp, with a 100W puck above it and an appropriate lampshade.

 

[The Iconoclast]

All the leaves are very green despite having a 1:2:2 nute regime, and I realised that there's a lot of leaves and the buds do not look like fattening much and I figured there's more than enough healthy leaves all round the buds sites, more than enough in fact as so off they come. Discovered that the runoff was 3500 but no leaf burn. Now I'm pouring a half litre of fertigator over her every watering to keep the ppm at the res level.

There's not much more I can do now other than experiment with pruning and nute balances next grow, but I have plenty of freebie seeds to test, so, am determined to crack this nut. A couple of before and after shots, you can see from the top down that there's plenty of leaves.

 

[The Iconoclast]

Six Week Update:

Ha, I just realised that I can hold the plant sideways under the light to get better shots, it's strange holding her upside down and nothing falls out.