Agreed; I don’t generally approve of piracy, but I’m not able to pay that kind of money for non-credit courses.
But someday soon the country will acknowledge cannabis as not only medicine, but just another medicinal plant. No more dangerous or taboo (in my eyes) than herbs.
I can post the transcripts. They don’t let you download the videos. Its a credit course. For an extra $135 they’ll put it on your transcript to work towards a degree in botany
I’m sure his new courses will be rife will all the data they have from the ongoing research, but he’s also got some good videos out to get started on if you haven’t yet. This one is pretty comprehensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID9rE5JewVg
But I’m definitely excited to see what’s coming out of their labs. Love to take the course, but in this economy? lol sorry Bruce.
Definitely hoping they will expand upon Dr Bugbee’s current growing video. His use of only 20-10-20 and a 50/50 mix of peat and vermiculite are interesting, but his feeding seems to be quite dependant on the fact that they have quite hard water in Utah, I don’t think it would work for everyone without supplementing some Ca and Mg.
I believe they’re using 50/50 peat and vermiculite, not perlite.
this guy is a professor at UConn who is doing a cannabis course as well and he’s posted most of his material in a series of youtube videos…he’s also split them into shorter videos which makes it a little easier to find what you’re looking for:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfDn7HuC58X9BPWUtjpkqQg/videos
DeBacco University
Whoops yeah it was a little late when I posted, currently have a 4cuft bag in the car 
I will check out the DeBacco content, seems to be quite a bit of it!
They use 75% peat 25% vermiculite with Jack’s 20-10-20 with added Phos, copper, silica
he seems to have gone berserk since CT legalized, wow, it’s like a whole degree program is online for free. I’ve been using more vermiculite, now my aeration is about 50/50 vermiculite/perlite. If you use super coarse vermiculite it works well, the containers still feel light and it drains well.
I’m thinking when the plants are rootbound they’ll get a little more cation exchange with the extra vermiculite
Wow quite a difference from the video from a year ago, I think they were mentioning that the silica was covered by the vermiculite but I guess they have changed to add some. Curious about what they use for phos as their phos didn’t seem that low compared to their K, but maybe its MKP.
Hi DavesNotHere are you signed up for the course? If so please share a few more gems of wisdom.
I have to wonder why he switched his ratio to 75/25 from 50/50 after just 1 year of his Youtube video being online which got 1.8 million views!
Now all of us who adopted his (seem to be very good) methods are scratching our heads!
With other questions like:
Does he still add the gypsum and lime?
Why did he add those other 3 amendments?
Given this rate of change, perhaps his method will be completely different in another year from now!
Personally, I don’t even have access to Jacks where I live, so have been using other (more complete and full spectrum) hydro nutrients (along with the gypsum and lime) which has served me well… but always interested to learn, alanyse and experiment more based on Bruce’s fantastic research…
I agree course is a little bit expensive for some people (cheap charlies like me) since most of the topics were already covered in depth online and these techniques seem to be re-made after just 1 year. However I would love to be proven wrong.
The mix they use is for all their studies is:
75% peat
13% vermiculite
12% rice hulls
0.7kg/m3 wetting agent
1kg/m3 wollastonite
1.3kg/m3 hydrated lime
Optimal nutrients for veg: (these are all mg/L). For flower they increase the P up to 50mg/L. But they are still running tests on how much P in flower reaches optimal yield.
N- 120
P- 30
K- 129
Ca- 50
Mg- 17
S- 21
Si- 8
Fe- 1
B- 0.40
Mn- 0.32
Zn- 0.32
Cu- 1
Cl- 1
Mo- 0.06
thanks for the updated info on Bugbee’s grow! It’s interesting to me but mostly irrelevant as I’m using living soil & organic nutes - Bugbee runs what I would call a chemie grow. Organic media and nutrients have more minerals naturally.
It was interesting to see someone using vermiculite over perlite which is unusual for cannabis. I think it would be a mistake to try to replicate his grow exactly in a small home grow operation.
Yep I’m in the same place. But if you get your soil tested at least there’s some number to Guage how far off from optimum it is.
I’ve been working with that too - just got my mix tested by Logan Labs and paid for a phone consult with their pro agronomist - well worth it
Super interesting. So any explanation for why he switched to a higher ratio of peat? Someone on another forum suggested, perhaps because vermiculite is expensive for large scale commercial use.
This is getting a bit cumbersome now with all the ingredients… I used to like (and still enjoy) the simplicity of his 50/50 + 2 small amendments.
That was fine for home use, but now… not so sure anymore… his whole system just became a lot more complicated it seems…
How out of whack was your soil?
The tests showed my mix was too hot - soluble salts were coming at over 1600. Also it had too much magnesium and sulfur. Bill told me to drop the Langbeinite and reduce added compost and fertilizer.
My biggest mistake was not realizing that compost can be quite hot and release a lot of nutes and minerals. Bill advises no more than 5% added compost. To increase the “living soil” aspect he advises added hummus to the mix - aged stuff that is not hot w/ nutrients. The nutes and minerals in compost vary widely and can’t be predicted.
This goes directly against stoner wisdom and the “Clackamas Coot” recipe of 1/3rd peat/coir, 1/3 compost, and 1/3rd aeration.
The tests help me realize, after years of growing, that the symptoms of too much nutes can look the same as too little. Too much nutes or minerals like magnesium cause lock-out. You get yellowing leaves but adding more nutes doesn’t help. It took the soil test for me to realize the problem was too much. I made a new base mix, got it tested, and started seedlings - the jury is still out but I’ll know in a few weeks how it does.
Dropping the Langbeinite was huge - the tests show my mix already had enough potassium and magnesium, and then some! Bill said putting Langbeinite in a base mix is a terrible idea - it’s highly soluble and immediately releases a ton of minerals with the first watering. He said keep it on the shelf just in case a quick adjustment or boost of cal/mag/po is ever needed but not in the base mix.
Any more thoughts on the Utah course? 
I mean part of the whole thing is that this is a lab focussed on cannabis growth, and as they are conducting scientific experiments they won’t just find one thing that is best and never test something else again.
You can grow cannabis in dirt, water, peat, pretty much anything. Maybe a year back they found their soil medium worked quite well and was simple for a home grower. As this course is more focussed they may go into further details and it seems they have tested new materials. Wollastonite seems to be quite new to the market, I personally can’t easily find it anywhere but it would add Ca and Si to the soil. Hydrated lime will add again more Ca along with being quite basic to raise the pH of the media.
Hell, with the wollastonite apparently adding quite a bit of silica, something like the rice hulls may not be truly needed, and one could go with straight vermiculite or throw in a bit of perlite.
We don’t truly know how beneficial any of these items are, maybe this provides 10% greater yields vs straight pro-mix, maybe it is 30%. Whether it is worthwhile to you is a different matter.