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Growing cannabis through Clay Pebbles

One type of growing medium that cannabis plants use is expanded clay pebbles and is a big part of hydroponic gardening. It’s spherical, light, and it also has a ceramic feeling to this and also has a lot of iron in this. It does need to go through different manufacturing processes, where they get heated to higher temperature levels, expanding the clay, trapping the air within little clay balls. The pebbles are great for hydroponic gardening, but it also is good for insulation and also other applications too. This can be up to 15 mm for the large pebbles, and the bigger ones will hold onto moisture a whole lot more, and for a much longer period of time than those which are smaller. 

Can you use clay pebbles to grow cannabis. 

You can, and it’s something that lets you use the ebb and flow, or the drip feeding system into a tray or pot to grow this. How do you use this then? We’ll go over that now. 

The steps 

If you’re going to grow something in expanded clay pebbles, you need to first make sure that the impurities and other residues are cleaned up and are sterilized. You want to make sure that this happens so it doesn’t ruin the pH or the EC levels, and you want to make sure it’s all stabilized correctly too. You want to clean this and make sure that they’re in a 5.5 ph. solution for up to 48 hours, and make sure that they’re cleaned every single day. This does play a major role in the development of a plant, and it’s health. You then want to use either ra floor and drain or a drip system, we’ll go over each of these next. 

Flood and Drain 

Flood and drain systems are made up of a tray that has about 10 cm of depth to it, and ten, it’s filled up with the pebbles. Then, there is a drainage area that’s connected to a tube that works to create a control system for the flooding, getting rid of the water. If that doesn’t stop it the way it should, it can help to prevent the damages, or also the flooding of the water irrigation within the space to grow. 

This is something that lets you evacuate each of the nutrients, which helps with the substrate, and lets you control the humidity levels along with the irrigation as needed too. 

Drip irrigation 

This is something that works well too for clay pebbles, where you put the drippers in the correct location to make sure that the water distributes evenly, and that all parts of the substrate have the same, or something similar in moisture levels, so that you don’t have to worry about the pockets drying, and the roots are only developing in the presence of moisture. 

When you grow these, you need to factor in the humidity, ventilation and whatnot, so that you don’t have it stay too wet for too long. 

Fertilizing this 

You will notice with this that the roots get attached to the clay and then grow this, and it grows directly with the solution of nutrients. 

The EC in this needs to be lower than those that are typically used in the growing of coco-coir, and that’s because this is something that you don’t want to hit past .6 points since this can cause the plants to struggle with growth. You don’t want to let the EC get too high right away, so that it grows well, and lets the plants properly grow without deficiencies.