Guess I should have mentioned some more details on growing methods/mediums, etc.
I have been at this a long time now and have used a variety of methods over the years - living organic soil, bagged soil/soilless, coco, hydro (DWC, top feed drip, flood and drain, NFT/aero). My favorite, and the one I’m probably most passionate about is living organic soil. I just love the idea of letting Mother Nature run the show, but I do like to run hydro and more recently (last few years-ish) started getting into coco a bit. I really like that it allows much easier use of organic inputs than hydro, but still similar growth rates and yields.
I have also done a lot of runs over the years in amended store bought soils using a variety of different feeding methods. All sorts of bottled nutrients, dry organic nutrients, compost teas. Using store bought soils is just a convenient, easy method to use so I often fall back on it I guess.
I’ve also done a lot of runs using the old General Hydroponics AeroFlo’s. Love those machines! My buddy has my last remaining Aeroflo and he ghosted me, so I consider it a lost cause at this point but I am planning to build my own modified version eventually. I have the manifold mostly built and have a bunch of extra spray lines (they screw onto the manifold). So I just need to get a reservoir and cut some 4” square tubes.
And I still have an old General Hydroponics Rainforest I use (w/the vortex sprayer). That little machine is a great small single light hydro setup. I can pretty easily pull 2lbs from 4-5 plants under one 600w LED in that machine. I’m sure I’ll do another run with it at some point this year (probably).
This current run is mostly in store bought bagged soil. Roots organic original and fox farms ocean forest. Feeding methods are a mix of organic inputs mostly, and things like fresh aloe, seed sprout teas, compost teas, some foliar feedings, top dressing with EWC/compost, etc. I do have my own composter and worm farm so I try to produce my own as much as I can.
I am testing out some of the Organics Alive nutrients on the 3 plants in flower now. I grabbed their sample pack.
It comes with small amounts of their soluble dry organic nutrient line, a few bottles of their liquid extracts and a sample of their compost (which I used to make aerated compost tea). So far I am liking it. We’ll see what the end flower results look/smoke like though! I know the 2 strains well, so we’ll see how they compare to previous runs.
I am cooking up a batch of living organic soil now as well. So next round there will be plants in living organic soil. I had organic soil that was multiple years old but I had to leave it behind when I changed locations so I’m starting over on that front. This past year has not been fun…
I also bought a plastic tote to make a SIP (sub irrigated planter) ala @CrunchBerries thread. So that will be a fun project! That is one grow style that I haven’t done and I’m very much looking forward to trying.
Ok, I think that mostly covers it. Sorry for the long post