Thatās the truth, I think people want to believe itās more complicated than it is. Maybe they hear and see all the high tech grow stuff at dispensaries or old growers making it sound mysterious. Or maybe people donāt understand anymore that when it comes to making or growing things, doing it often isnāt that hard, itās doing it really consistently and at a high level of skill and control thatās hard. I believe in that ten thousand hours thing when it comes to skills, Iāve managed to achieve that in a couple things so far in life that were easy, then hard, then easy again. Weed seems just like that, itās easy to grow something with the right set of directions, hard to learn to both react to and steer the plant the way we want it to express, and then easy again once you know your growing system and genetics.
I actually picked living organic soil because it seems like a simpler route to maximum quality than hydro to me, though Iām learning that might not be a direct comparison. It was easy to buy good dirt and water it and then start adding bottled organic nutes, and use Recharge the whole time (grow shop guy pressed a few packets into my hand as I checked out with a 4x4, pots, dirt, etc and said youāll like this, and he wasnāt wrong) and get a bunch of good weed. Itās hard right now trying to change my systems up to get things where I want them to be, and I can see how itāll be even easier once Iām done, which is one of the goals.
This winter/spring is the first time in my life Iāve had anyone willing to take some seeds and get growing at their place, so Iām trying to keep things simple for them, especially if Iām not going to be there to get hands on much or at all. That means telling them to get some decent organic potting soil and perlite/pumice or some ProMix and cloth pots locally at the garden centers Iām sending them to, and then Iām handing or mailing them seeds, some small glass bottles/jars of my weird, important, and cheap things like SEA-90, PureCrop1(definitely making a quart or two of the recipe that @Pier_Rat posted, thanks for reminding me about OpenSalts Wiki, dude!), Mr Fulvic, Recharge, and Mykos. And then for fertilizers I picked up 24 lb of Osmocote Plus Indoor/Outdoor from Walmart for $20/8lb bag and Iām sending folks plenty of that for their weed and house and yard plants. Osmocote is a salt fertilizer plays nice with organics because of the time-released nature of it, thereās never enough salts in the soil to mess with the food web the way raw salts will do. As long as you use some gypsum to balance back out and mobilize the long term salt deposits itās supposed to be great for yearly use in yards, so thatās what I do with our hedges and lawns, seems to really get them jumping up in the spring when I spread it around now, about 3-5 pounds a year in our 1/8 acre lot.
Or if they want to do fully organic, I tell them to order a bag of CoM Stonington Blend dry mix and a bag of their Pacific Fish Bone Meal, or go to Walmart or Loweās for Dr Earth or Espoma Tomato-Tone. Tomato Tone fucking crushes with weed according to everyone who uses it, itās too stinky for me inside with no odor control so it stays in my raised beds, but it makes nice tomatoes!
Anyways yeah, snake oil salesmen everywhere, we are in a real time for them in weed now that thereās so many total noobs going on Google and getting sucked Iām by some asshole with a big SEO budget instead of ending up here and learning about the better ways, including how simple and cheap growing is if you want it to be. Iāve watched you grow a shit ton of good looking weed in all those tents with Dr Earth and a couple extras, so I know you didnāt get got by the hype.
