Roots are not like human gut at all. You are not a plant. Totally apples and oranges.
And bat caves were sources of potassium nitrate for gunpowder in preindustrial times. Feel free to look it up. Not only that, saltpetre aka Potassium nitrate can be found in places on the surface. Egyptians used it. It’s not new or “unnatural”.
I agree with you on that @vernal.
So I exclude my last post. But I still feel good organics gives plants more of what they need for optimal potential.
This is why we debate. To make us better at what we do. Even if we don’t agree.
@Vernal you are very good as a debater. You don’t instigate, but rather seek truth. And this makes a good topic that we can all learn from…
They don’t actually recommend animal feces for organics anymore due to the salt content that puts extra osmosis pressure on micro organisms in the soil. You can get away with a certain weight per hectare and still not cause harm, though.
That is a really good way to put it. People that are not in agreement tend to bring much more out into the light when discussing in a civil way.
I think there is something to be said for the ease of adjusting salt based nutes. Every strain tends to like things a bit different, even different phenos of the same strain. Than different concentrations of nutes depending on temp, air flow and light levels/spectrum. As a coco grower I can make corrections almost instantly. So I would ask, is it as easy to adjust organics? Serious question as I have never used them.
If we knew exactly what a plant needs or offer a wide ray of nutes somehow in a coco flood and drain organic method then maybe I can see chemicals winning. But there’s like 2 people who do that…
Valid. Got to read a few labels to understand how much salt, fat and sugar is in fast food. Honey fried chicken, Big Macs, how much sodium is in a serving of KFC mashed and gravy?
I dunno I got enough time left for you guys to learn to feed the whole world …I was just tryin’ a figger the best way to turn these here beans into some buds. 
Also works wonderfully to dye your socks.
Lol! Hydro power!
I hear you on roots not being like the human gut, the microbiology around the roots and in the soil system is more like the gut from my understanding.
We haven’t addressed micro nutrients here on this thread too much. Having a balanced soil system, which has a full buffet of anything the pant could need or want to uptake from its root system, and to allow the organisms that have co evolved for this purpose to help the plant uptake what it needs when it needs it, will give most growers a better chance at producing a better, more full expression of a wider range of plants.
This holds more true when talking about a variety of lines that have been grown in a variety of different conditions and places.
I’ll agree on this. I have grown sativas, hybrids, indicas and autos all in my same soil mix, my crunchberry going currently is the only plant thats been under performing in it, its just… finicky, big and slow. I want to see a clone of it grown in hydro, I think thats where it would shine. Soil just isn’t pumping enough, fast enough for it. It has always looked hungry, even supplementing with bottled nutrients. As long as I’m doing my due diligence and making sure there’s enough calmag in the water and the ph is right there’s nothing I need to change from one type to another with well cooked soil.
It can take years to make a soil that good
What micronutrients?
Plants need 13 elements. Some disagreement among that number (some say a couple more like silica and vanadium but 13 will grow any plant fine) and a couple more are helpful. But that’s it. The micros plants need are in “complete fertilizers”. That’s why they are complete.
I could understand your collective thought process if hydro plants were somehow “less than” but they grow twice as fast and yield more, bigger, denser flowers. No matter how hard you try you’ll never match the yield or growth with organics, because it’s a less efficient model to deliver nutrients, water, and air to roots.
I say about 3 grows, reamending and allowing it compost time in-between. What I’m running now is almost as good as the tga super soil I made way back when, and I started this batch in fall 2018. I just keep adding used mushroom substrate, occasionally I’ll add a bag of perlite too, and giving it 3ish months between uses. Just gotta be careful about too much calcium swinging my ph up from the mushroom substrate, it happened last time. 2 good low ph waters and it balanced out though.
That tga super soil was amazing on grows 4 and 5, just damned expensive to make.
Totally agree with this, and its why I say I’m not getting a perfect expression on my crunchberry. If its a heavy enough feeder, its just not going to do as well in soil, I think modern strains are mostly what falls into this category.
Any time humans try to take absolute control there is always more room for error. You mentioned yourself that there is disagreement about how many are necessary, how many are helpful. This changes as our knowledge changes, and likely in 50 years someone who takes your same outlook on this subject will give a different set of numbers.
We are still discovering sub atomic particles and fir firing out how they behave and learning more everyday, and this keeps happening at a faster pace. It’s that human arrogance that holds us back on so many things, one of which is slowing down the degradation of our lands because growing with PRIMARILY with salts is “better”.
To say we know EVERYTHING a plant needs to truly reach its full potential is not fact, its human arrogance.
If you idea is better is the weight and density of flowers, fuck yeah hydro is better all the way. But better for someone else might be how do I make really great smelling, tasting and feeling flowers and not have set an automated system or constantly measure ph, ppm, etc.
Container size and bugs and micro life already present has a huge effect on that too. I have a much better time making new outdoor beds than I do indoor pots when it comes to establishing the soil
Yeah, thats why I say that compost time in-between is key. I drop it in a big black tub with a yellow lid (20 or 25 gallons) add in my used sub and let it cook during the next grow. It let’s all that microbiota co-mingle.
Oh, and rain water for all the wild flora and fauna in it. love using rain water.
I think one of the main fallacies in your argument, @vernal, is that you are looking at a very narrow interpretation of what better is. I tried to get you to entertain the idea of looking at that from other angles, at which point you twisted my questions to you into statements that I think we should let people stave to death.
For you, maybe better is pounding 3 glasses of soylent every day and never having to worry about what, how, or when you are going to eat. For me, better is definitely going into my garden and harvesting veggies and then preparing them, often in ways that are the long or tedious ways to do so. Why? Because I have cooked for a long fucking time, in lots of kitchens and I know that even though I might not understand on a molecular level everything I am doing, that for some things that produces a better textured, more full flavored end result that I enjoy much more.
But, hey you want to subsit on soylent, who am I to say that’s not “better” for you.
Has anyone seen any studies or info on cannabinoid profile in hydro vs soil? This is something that I haven’t seen but would be really interested in.
Most specifically the less occurring CBG, THCV etc
I am somewhat of a cook myself…don’t mean to toot my own horn but I know my way around a kitchen.
Worked in them enough.
But…plants don’t have taste buds. Their needs are quantifiable and easy to reproduce. The bud I grow are better than anything organic I’ve seen in person and I do it cheaper and easier than organic. IDK why I would grow less amounts of less good weed to satisfy some preconceived notion about terroir-esque nonsense.
I was reading about night soil and it seems that the waste from well fed lazy people is more nutrient rich than poorly fed active people.
So fat and lazy saves the day, organic or otherwise.
Terroir is not nonsense, you can quantify differences in the same grape stock grown different places. You can even quantify differences in carrots grown in different places. Some of these most people would be able to perceive in sensory evaluation, some less so. If you claim terroir does not play a role in the end result of a plant(some more than others) you don’t pay close enough attention to the details. I don’t think cannabis is a good example of this for most of us, as I doubt many of us have been fortunate enough to true side by side of the exact same cut, grown very well, in a variety of locales and environments.
This is why terroir is such a big thing in the wine industry, some of these same vines have been going so long, and you get all these different vintages, and some store really well. There is a long recorded record of these kinds of results in wine around the world. Looking at cannabis from this angle is very much in it’s infancy in the grand scheme of things.
I totally agreed hydro is better for you, I never disagreed with that. You seem he’ll bent on making an argument the hydro is THE BETTER method hands down, which is absolutely not the case.