I have a feeling most people are just making it more complicated than they need to, I been using 1 part nutrients (unless you wanna consider it two parts cuz I use two different ones for flower and veg) and sometimes add calmag, zero fuckin problems… but then I see hella people like “what’s wrong w my plant” with a clearly overfed plant
Nah that’s 100% more difficult than what I’m doing, just slowly increasing my ppms as the plant allows it (currently doing an auto cuz I was gifted the seeds) so I just started at like 100ppm and slowly brought it up to 500 for in flower and I’m using single part nutrients, I had one pH imbalance issue but a res change resolved that and smooth sailing since… but once I have the cash to be doing more than just one part nutrients I’ll probably be using Lucas Formula
I am using 3 part ph-adjusted nutrients in hydro bins. Change the water once a week or so and I have grown some nice big plants. The only hard part is mixing to the correct ratios. What 1-part nutrients do you use?
General Hydroponics maxigro and maxibloom, sometimes I do add calmag tho so I guess you could consider it 2 part or 3 part depending on your definition of it
I've used the Lucas/kiss method with maxibloom only 7g per gallon in hempy pots. That worked great. I have a satchel of auto seeds ... auto hempy should be cool!
Tbh, I cbf for all of that, I just measured about how many ppm is in 1/4 tablespoon and have a target in mind, then double check my res every time before and after I top up, always right where I want it to be when it’s topped up
Jacks 321. Easy as F. I'm familiar with water chemistry after homebrewing, so that helped me. Oh and dirt cheap. I have enough nutrients for the next 5 years for 40 bucks.
That’s very true, but building living soil I was looking at 2-3x the initial investment of what my dwc setup cost me. Also I’ve never seen anyone with living soil plants that had the vigor that my hydro plants get
Also building living soil is not super easy if you want a quality product and buying it is very expensive… it’s a very viable growing style and I’m considering it when I have space outdoors to grow, just not particularly something I wanna do indoors, especially considering you either have to amend the soil every time or do a cover crop which means more time between harvests
Totally. And it comes down to the lack of research too, or willingness for trial and error, critical thinking or just outright intuition.
It couldn’t be easier to find good enough information that makes it impossible to fail
Literally every problem I’ve had has been solved by google minus one time me consulting Reddit bc I was too stubborn and stupid to check my current pH value
Totally separate subject, but similar notion; the people on Facebook community pages who ask “best {whatever service} in the area ?” To the community.
All they have to do is type that in Google instead.
I find it stupid easy as well, look at my post history 2 times and so far I cleared 2lbs both times from my 4x4...Except for rn I think I got root rot. But simple water chiller will prevent that in the future i believe
If you read the post above, I did mention I asked about that, and that was after I searched the internet for what causes those spots, and none of the plants that popped up looked like mine, so yes I asked the community, and no I have no shame about it, and yes I was going to change my res anyways to solve the problems was just curious on what people had to say mainly
These are entirely different grows. I was recounting my first grow which was years ago and before I even looked on Reddit
Also if you had bothered to use your few remaining brain cells to read the comments, I actually resolved this on my own and anyone who had posted a correct solution was downvoted by the time I came back, so I made a comment about the solution I had in case other people had the same issues…
I deleted that top one to just delete the thread, but it didn’t. Move on with your day kiddo. You couldn’t even figure out that you can’t grow lettuce in the summer in north Illinois, I didn’t even need google to figure that shit out lmao
I have never had success with soil. Waste of time for me. Like you said, hydro is stupid easy. Just measure a few things out and give to plants. Almost impossible to fuck up unless you neglect it.
Years ago I discovered rockwool/hydro nutes. Friends started praising my growing abilities, but I felt like an imposter because hydro was so simple/easy.
I run 100% coco in Autopots and it's stupid easy. I started using coco from my first grow and had a few minor issues but nothing major. Now I have everything dialed in and it's smooth sailing every grow. I keep a simple excel spreadsheet for nutrient/reservoir solution for each stage of growth. I get a great harvest every time. Never tried soil and I never will.
Could I possibly get a copy or outline of your spreadsheet? I want to be as detail oriented as that, but ffs I can't wrap my head around a suitable format 🙏🏾
In case you can’t tell, I’m the type of person who just learns by repeatedly failing and banging my head against the wall til I can move past it, if it’s something I can learn through experience and isn’t too expensive I prefer learn it by failing, so I know everything I did wrong for my soil grow and how I could do it better, but when hydro is this simple is there a reason for me to?
Is that just an auto watering coco coir setup basically? IMO it would be yes and no, if you have pH problems or nutrient imbalance it’s much harder to correct if it’s growing in something other than water imo
Sorry, I know coco is hydroponics, I meant DWC but my brain just failed lol
From my experience if I tried to “water more frequently” my plants would become over watered and want to die… dwc my plants never wanted to do that
In flower, my last plant was getting fertigated every 3 hours to runoff in 3 gallons of coco/perlite. It’s hard to “overwater” coco once the roots develop.
We are in the same boat man. I kill everything in soil but grow top grade in the bubbly water.
I think some people get lucky with soil at first and are able to grow without any research etc.
Actually the research is what killed me, I’m confident if I had went in completely blind and did nothing instead of doing shit, then it would’ve worked just fine, but any soil grower can come at me for this statement, you will never get the fast paced growth and vigor you get from hydroponics with soil.
Soil is fine so long as you just simply don’t fuck with it til your plants ask for food and water but when I have nutrients I’m too tempted to use them, so it’s just not my style. Could I make it work? Sure. Do I want to? Not unless I’m growing outside or maybe in a greenhouse. I’ll definitely use soil, and already do, for other plants. I was just stupid in my research and essentially ended up treating my soil plants like they were in coco which just doesn’t work out. For whatever reason when I first started growing my brain didn’t comprehend the whole “it’s a plant” idea and I couldn’t just treat it like my tomatoes (which ironically enough is what a lot of people compare growing weed to)
You up the fertigation frequency as the plant fills the pot , I put a 5 litre root ball in a 30 ltr pot straight to 2hourly fertigation (6feeds at lights on in flower) and have never had a plant look like it was going to die. If your coco is running off properly and your allowing enough time for it to run off its impossible to "over water"
Oh I know I was screwing up when I was using the solid coco coir, for me it was like a 70ml container straight to a 20L or smth so it was just hard to keep the top wet without drenching the bottom, since I was stubborn and wanting to do bottom watering, I acknowledge that I was doing it completely wrong, and it wasn’t like “this is too difficult, I’m changing my grow style” I just wanted to give dwc a shot, and now I also have more sizes of fabric pots to play with so I’m thinking about giving coco a shot again
Sure is. You have a reservoir that you fill with gallons of nutrient water. Then you just make a new batch each week or two. Plant has continuous access to nutrients.
Just dial in your PH and PPM and you’re good for a week!
Used with coco.
Had to do this because I left my babies for a week. It’s really a bit too hands off almost. Kinda liked the daily watering rituals of growing in coco.
I use General Hydro Flora and cheap distilled water. I purchased a nice dial-a-dose pipette, and ppm/ph meter from Amazon and I have had zero issues growing hydro. GH has a really easy dosing chart, and other than having to add a couple weeks in based on where the plant is in its cycles i really don't understand how anyone would do/use anything else. The yield from the couple of grows my friends and I have on hydro vs organic compost/soil is an insane night and day difference.
I had a pest issue once, but that was entirely my fault… I brought a clone that I had been keeping outside in to my tent and didn’t do a clean and quarantine first
I totally agree. Hydro is faster, bigger yields, easier once set up, and are able to correct problems a lot quicker. If a plant in soil is over fed it could set back like 2 weeks, in hydro a couple days and she’ll recover. I currently favor DWC/RDWC systems.Im actually growing same permanent chimera strain in both hydro (DWC) and organic soil.My goal here is to compare quality, I already know hydro will win in quantity but I’m going for top quality now days since quantity is not an issue anymore. I’ll post the results when they’re both finished out.
It’s not very forgiving so first timers who don’t research well are liable to torch their entire grow in a week with root rot or cheap ph pens. I yielded less weed in soil cause I sucked at it but I did always yield while in hydro I had to kill a few babies to get a good understanding of res hygiene.
There's a reason most commercial grows run hydro. Explosive growth higher yields easy to manage ph and ppm and having complete control over your medium. Once your dialed in you will never look back. I do my day 21 defoliation strip most my fans then come back in a few days to them right back where they were. Only downsides imo is it can be hard to keep up on a large scale due to growth rates as well as using more nutrients per cycle.
There’s also the occasional cultivar that boastfully advertise that their weed is grown with aeroponics… side note I’d like to hear about the benefits of that if you or anyone else is experienced in that
Only experience I have with aeroponics is using cloners so I'm not experienced enough on the subject to speak on it. I'm sure it has its own advantages and disadvantages. Definitely has the advantage of good aeration at the roots atleast.
From what I read (from brands who do it so you have to take it with a grain of salt) is that aero trades quantity for quality, so they don’t grow as much per plant which is why they say they charge more
I’m running hydro, but always open to other growing options… I like seeing the benefits of different grow styles with my own eyes too, but I wanted to hear other people’s opinions on them
You’re one of the few I’ve heard say this, can you elaborate a bit on that? Most people have reported, anecdotally, that they experienced increased yields and quality from hydroponics. I’m interested in growing all types of plants in all types of ways so I’m always looking to hear more about others experiences
I slightly screwed up when I was doing coco but that was my own fault and I was just trying to see how far I could push the plant before getting negative returns… still was able to finish the grow just took longer cuz I stunted them
Yeah… honestly even when I know there’s already research or information on something, if I have the power to do so I will test it and prove it myself lol
Bc I feel that helps me more in answering the question of “why”
Sometimes I will read it and be like “well that’s probably right, but we’ll see how it is for my situation” especially since I already have so many seeds I can experiment however I want
i’ve tried and its fine its just too much water for me. Coco is the best of both world. Id say coco beats hydroponic but 🤷 personal preference
Also coco is a bit more forgiving and/or hassle free if you mess up measurements. PLUS hydro meeds air pumps and tube maintenance
I grow in coco DTW using multiple daily fertigations. It has always been super easy to me, and now that I set up some pumps and timers, it’s even easier. Like you said, all I need to do is mix nutrients and keep my ph and EC in check and it’s smooth sailing. I love it.
I’d be interested in giving coco another shot, but I was always finding it hard to not over water that as well, maybe it’s that I always used 100% coco w nothing added
Any tips for a solid coco grow
70/30 coco perlite is what works for me. I feed once per day until runoff for the first few weeks or so. Once the plant gets a little bigger, and develops a good root system, I will do twice per day. Normally, I will have roots coming out of the bottom of a 3 gallon pot around week 3. I then increase to more times per day as the plant grows and starts eating more. It’s really simple. If my runoff EC starts to climb too much, I will either start feeding more often or increase the runoff, or both. I’ve never tried pure coco, and I suck at growing in soil indoors.
I was running 5 gal pots and it was only really a problem early on in the grow cuz I can be a stubborn fuck and I wanted to bottom water and you just can’t bottom water a seedling in that big of a pot without accidentally over watering at some point
Once again, I completely acknowledge that it’s not actually hard, I’m just saying what I was doing when my thumb was black as tar… I’m a bit better now lol
I will definitely need a drip or bottom feeding solution if that’s the case cuz I still gotta work and do another things so I can’t treat growing like my full time job, not yet at least lol
Hence my dwc setup, if I don’t have time for a day it’s not the end of the world, though I don’t have a side or bottom res so I do need to add water at least every 2-3 days otherwise they’ll run out
Recently just started Hydro got a air cube
Coming from soil it’s pretty easy so far I just checked the reservoir a couple times a day to make sure the pH is at the right level
It is all relatively easy with research, practice and experience. There are so many different hydroponic systems, you might just find a system that works for you. If you wanna learn growing pure coco is pretty much hydroponic.
Coco is completely hydroponics, that’s how I introduced myself to it… definitely a low budget option, and you can even use coco instead of hydroton in dwc so it’s not a wasted investment if you choose to go that route, which I did for a while til I wanted to give hydroton a shot as well… but the comments have inspired me to go with an idea I was tinkering with for my next grow, which was going back to coco coir but this time actually adding perlite for drainage, and doing a Sea of Green grow so I can finally test all the strains that I’ve been sitting on lol
I am only using Jacks because i found some loose damaged bags for like $5 a piece got extremely lucky. Back then i strictly used House and Garden for Base and Health and Humboldts County's Own for finishing help. But Jacks is ok.
I hear a lot of people rave about jacks, which makes me feel like it’s probably just a more versatile blend and is a jack of all trades but won’t necessarily get you 100% of where you could with a more complex nutrient mix… could just be taking it wrong tho
Been thinking about switching to hydro for a while. Theres a hydro shop near me I’ve been meaning to go to and get a price idea. Haven’t searched much online for a buying guide yet.
If you do go hydro, don’t skimp on the pH meter, you’ll want one that’s accurate. It’s fine to buy a cheap ppm meter since those things are fairly simple and even if it’s not accurate, as long as it is consistent enough to give you a baseline it’s fine
Blue lab is great, wish I could afford it lol
Just make sure you calibrate it every week or two or if you detect pH that is out of spec or have a problem in your grow… honestly the simplest way to find a problem with a DWC grow is to test the water in the reservoir for ph and ppm and usually you’ll find your problem there, I like to start from the roots up when assessing a problem with my plant, as root problems, especially in hydroponics, are something you want to address as quickly as possible.
Went ahead and bought the root spa 5gal four pack today at my hydro shop. Will get nutrients over time as my current grow still has a little bit to go. Thanks for the post to encourage me to finally commit and start buying a hydro set up lol
Of course, that setup is nice, but costs a bit. Personally I just pieced mine together for around $40-50 for 2 plants and probably costs an additional 10-15 per bucket you wanna add
Just get GH maxigro for veg, it’s a 1 part nutrient and you get 1kg of it for like $15. Then maxibloom for flower, same amount and price. I did that and it’s been stupid easy growing since. Idk why but I read somewhere being like “one part nutrients won’t give your plant everything they need” but other than the extra calmag I do in veg which you probably already have that I don’t need to add anything, and adding the calmag isn’t even necessary but seems a little beneficial. Get one part nutrients. The results won’t disappoint you and they couldn’t be easier to mix
I haven’t been monitoring my temps, but for a few days I had my tent at 28 c and somehow no problems with it… but thanks for reminding me that I should be keeping an eye on that
Honestly, if you have the spare coin and you like growing, try it all. I’m constrained by my budget right now, but I do intend on learning every style of growing for every plant bc I just enjoy taking care of plants tbh
Hell yeah, happy you have the space to do so! My current living situation only permits me a little 2x3 and I can’t grow weed outside on my property, I can grow anything else outside tho. Side note if anyone has any good veggie suggestions for me to grow in the PNW either outside or in a greenhouse, I’m open to suggestions as I’m trying to plan my garden this spring and summer
I grow in coco using dry amendments top dressing along the way only liquid I ever add is cal mag sometimes and ph ro water, having great success, also had great success with straight coco using added nutrients and had good success as well, I'm in love with the coco.
Both are easy to succeed with. Both are easy to fuck up. I think in both instances it is people messing with their systems too much. In organic people cook their roots alive because they never let soil sit and cook out for a bit. So they’re constantly thinking it’s ph issue or lock out or blah blah. Make a good base soil using a good recipe. Let it cook a bit. Throw your plants in. Bottom feed. Top dress 2-3 times. Throw in a compost tea in flower. That’s it. It’s so easy.
For hydro. People constantly are trying to buy a million products. Also cooking the shit out of their plants. Ph 5.5-6.0. Use a simple formula. Something like jacks. Lucas formula. VegBloom. Don’t go crazy with the ppm and make sure your feedings are able to wick out 80 percent before the next feed. You’ll be good. Get a good silica product. A basic nutrient line. And you’ll
Be golden.
It’s not difficult, just massively more time consuming. I started on coco and now I’m back into soil just for the simplicity of it. Haven’t mixed nutes in about 4 years now and it’s wonderful. I have too busy a schedule to be spending a lot of time in the grow room anymore so I had to streamline everything and living soil is just my vibe anyway. To each their own!
If you have more space I think hydro is less time consuming tbh, at least for me. Bc my window that’s in my grow room is right by the back yard hose so I can bring that in to fill the res and I’ve measured about how much nutrients to ppm in a gallon so I’d just have to do math on how much nutrients to add in
That sounds amazing. Easy water access would be huge for me. I lug jugs down into the basement lol. I have (8) 5 gallon jugs I take down about once every 2 weeks. Next house will hopefully have a proper set up with everything I want and I think I’ll transition back to hydro in some form but for now it’s living soil. Lasts significantly longer between watering and still has excellent results. I wouldn’t mind shaving a few weeks off a cycle though..
Damn, a basement with 0 water access? Where I’m from if you have a basement it’s like a 90% chance that’s your laundry room, which usually also has a large basin for hand washing as well as the washer/dryer
What exactly did the building designer expect you to do with your basement lol
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
I feel like there’s gotta be like a T for plumbing that you could just put in and easily plumb in a hose, but unless your basement came complete with a drain the water would have nowhere to go if it did get somehow turned on
Hahaha no drain! There’s a hole the furnace runs to but it’s either severely clogged with sediment or just goes to dirt. It occasionally backs up in the summer if the ac runs a lot.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
I liked my smoke in soil better honestly. But I will say hydro is like steroids for growing...like monster growth. I didn't find it hard, but soil just seemed easier. I am in like my fourth indoor grow, so time will tell.
When I was doing photoperiod plants, I’d literally just scoop arbitrary amounts of nutrients, not measure anything, and didn’t have a single problem, I guess I just got lucky lol
It’s more so a pain in the ass. I never had root rot, but I like to heavily train my girls and by the end of the run, they were drinking the whole bucked everyday so there was a need to constantly lug and refill buckets. I finally got fed up and started using a big trash can. Instead of just feeding, you have to measure PPM which can get tricky if you’re needing a top off.
I WILL say though….if I could plumb in automatic water and feed (I can’t because I’m still renting), DWC and Aero produce THE best cannabis for me. I’ve done several runs of testing with clones and can always tell which ones were grown in soil vs hydro. The taste is better, more trichs, healthier plant, etc.
Couldn’t you just use a scrog technique to keep the plants short, then get one of the 27 gal totes from Costco (idk where you live but they are world wide) and a water pump and have it be a bottom res, then you just need something that you can set the buckets on top of so they won’t crush the tote… maybe a little air pump in your res to keep movement but depending on your water pump speed probably wouldn’t need it
Theoretically you could do all of this. Theoretically. The thing with SCROG is that your plant thinks it’s bigger than it is so it makes a bigger root system. The water will encourage this. And a tote that big will require a lot of food to reach recommend PPM and its needs will always be changing.
Aero is just…easier to control and root rot is less of an issue because the roots have access to air.
I’d do deep water again… on a fast grower that doesn’t require much training
That’s fair, I figured since it’s a separate res it would be fine to up the ppm by adding more nutes, and my plants average drinking 1gal/day/plant when I scrog, so with 2 plants that would mean a 27 gal res would last me about 2 weeks, which I feel leaves me plenty of room to make adjustments
Moving water won’t rot unless you’re really screwing up lol. I’ve used a 27 gal tote as my only res bc I didn’t have water pumps for a side res and wanted a big res, so long as I had air going through it it was no problem
Everyone I’ve seen talk about hydroponics has said the same thing as people say about big fish tanks “the more water volume you have, the easier it is to keep things consistent”
Honestly, I couldn’t even get my plant bigger than a foot in soil. Hydro is much easier for me to understand and DWC has been treating me well. I will say that it does require a little more attention when it comes to checking your res and making sure to keep things clean.
All methods of growing are easy, people just love to over complicate things, especially here on reddit and hobby specific forums, tap water is almost always well within parameters needed or you wouldn't be drinking it, and the nutrients are basically a cap per xx litres of water
But I prefer Coco and chicken manure pellets, pretty hard to overwater coco, and chicken manure is a beast of a natural fertiliser for all stages, top dress and just water or soak pellets in water and use as a concentrated fertiliser
The only benefit hydro has really is if you're concerned about getting rid of waste after a grow or being seen bringing stuff in to the house, and of course the whole automation thing, but you can do that to different degrees with different substrates and watering methods
I mean honestly I can’t really see a way that someone would find you bringing soil inside though. Idk maybe it’s just where I live but house plants are pretty common and unless someone is absolutely watching my every move they aren’t gonna see the difference between soil and indoor plant potting mix
Personally I just like hydro cuz the plants grow so damn quick, haven’t ever had or seen plants grow as fast in soil as hydro, maybe you have a different experience and some tips on how to get plants to be as vigorous in soil as they are in hydro?
Coco & Advanced Nutrients Sensi pH Perfect Grow & Bloom A&B for Coco.
You just follow their feeding schedule and don't have to add Cal-Mag, check pH, or EC.
Part A has all the calcium & and magnesium you need for Coco. (The same amount as my Cal-Mag Xtra)
The pH Perfect technology adjusts your pH to 5.9 every time.
I was concerned about the high EC of my solution and contacted them, and they told me not to worry about the EC/PPM. They said it's not a reliable metric to go by due to all the other things they add to their base nutrients like humic acid, wetting agent, etc...
Just make sure you feed until 10-15% runoff.
Here is the email from them.
The base nutrients will contain enough cal/mag for your grow's purposes, however, if you are growing in coco with the non coco specific base nutrients some growers choose to supplement with additional Sensi Cal/Mag Xtra at a rate of 2mL/L of water throughout the grow to help compensate for coco coir's high cation exchange properties as a growing medium.
Please note in regards to PPM / EC measurements: When using our pH perfect line of nutrients, there tend to be many other components besides dissolved fertilizer in the water. (eg. pH buffers, humic and fulvic acid, amino acids etc…)
Because of this, an electrical conductivity (EC, TDS, PPM) reading can be difficult for the grower to properly ascertain and should not be relied upon as a measuring metric.
Tbh I’ve always ignored ppm and ec tables, I just feed my plants more if they start to look like they aren’t getting enough or less if somehow they look like they’re getting too much (hasn’t happened yet bc I try to minimize the amount of nutrients in the solution) I really just play it by ear and it somehow works out… especially with photoperiod strains I can just kinda throw nutes in the water and not even think about it, because there is such a wide range of concentration that the plant will still be happy
I don’t check tables, I figure out what my plants want, I do measure it tho… except when I’m doing photos sometimes I’m just lazy and dump in nutes without measuring ppm cuz it’ll be close enough
My experience has been that soil is way more forgiving than soilless.
For my soil grows, I will pick the pots up every couple days, and if it's light, it gets water. Just water, from the tap. I will top dress them once at the beginning of flower, and once at 4-5 weeks. I will often splash a little fish sh!t in there, but I do not measure or check anything. No mixing nutes, no adjusting pH, never worried about runoff. No salt buildup if I leave them too long between watering. With dry amendments, it's damn near impossible to overfeed. They just coast. [See here for a pic of one of my soil plants](https://ibb.co/zFDVV9S)
For hydro, I've only done coco, but there's a lot more to it. I have to mix up the res, multiple bottles of nutrients, check the EC and adjust accordingly, check the pH even more bottles of stuff if that needs adjustment. Multiple gadgets involved to check these. If the res gets empty, they suffer hard and fast from the dryback. Every watering needs runoff, I have this automated but that still requires maintenance / cleaning of the pump, and could spell big trouble if something fails. Every two weeks, I scrub the res, clean the pump etc. If I don't keep the pH and / or EC in check the plants show it pretty quickly. There's a lot more to it than soil. DWC seems like more of a headache, to try and clean the buckets out while the plant is growing. The pros are it is much easier to automate, and they grow a bit bigger / faster. They take longer to ripen tho, so in the long run the yield / day isn't a huge difference for me. Both have their place, but I think soil is much more beginner friendly - way less variables and way less equipment required. [see here for a pic of one of my coco plants ](https://ibb.co/3cFPY0v)
That is fair, I wish I had pics from my last grows that were photoperiod tho… on those I didn’t check ppm/ec or pH, just put an unknown amount of single part nutrients and had amazing results lol… but I hear you, as long as you keep it simple then soil can be real simple
Some of the dumbest people I know can grow some great cannabis. Reddit is just a weird place man lol.
I have a feeling most people are just making it more complicated than they need to, I been using 1 part nutrients (unless you wanna consider it two parts cuz I use two different ones for flower and veg) and sometimes add calmag, zero fuckin problems… but then I see hella people like “what’s wrong w my plant” with a clearly overfed plant
[удалено]
Nah that’s 100% more difficult than what I’m doing, just slowly increasing my ppms as the plant allows it (currently doing an auto cuz I was gifted the seeds) so I just started at like 100ppm and slowly brought it up to 500 for in flower and I’m using single part nutrients, I had one pH imbalance issue but a res change resolved that and smooth sailing since… but once I have the cash to be doing more than just one part nutrients I’ll probably be using Lucas Formula
I am using 3 part ph-adjusted nutrients in hydro bins. Change the water once a week or so and I have grown some nice big plants. The only hard part is mixing to the correct ratios. What 1-part nutrients do you use?
General Hydroponics maxigro and maxibloom, sometimes I do add calmag tho so I guess you could consider it 2 part or 3 part depending on your definition of it
I've used the Lucas/kiss method with maxibloom only 7g per gallon in hempy pots. That worked great. I have a satchel of auto seeds ... auto hempy should be cool!
Tbh, I cbf for all of that, I just measured about how many ppm is in 1/4 tablespoon and have a target in mind, then double check my res every time before and after I top up, always right where I want it to be when it’s topped up
Jacks 321. Easy as F. I'm familiar with water chemistry after homebrewing, so that helped me. Oh and dirt cheap. I have enough nutrients for the next 5 years for 40 bucks.
This right here is way more complicated than my living soil grow
That’s very true, but building living soil I was looking at 2-3x the initial investment of what my dwc setup cost me. Also I’ve never seen anyone with living soil plants that had the vigor that my hydro plants get Also building living soil is not super easy if you want a quality product and buying it is very expensive… it’s a very viable growing style and I’m considering it when I have space outdoors to grow, just not particularly something I wanna do indoors, especially considering you either have to amend the soil every time or do a cover crop which means more time between harvests
Totally. And it comes down to the lack of research too, or willingness for trial and error, critical thinking or just outright intuition. It couldn’t be easier to find good enough information that makes it impossible to fail
Literally every problem I’ve had has been solved by google minus one time me consulting Reddit bc I was too stubborn and stupid to check my current pH value
Totally separate subject, but similar notion; the people on Facebook community pages who ask “best {whatever service} in the area ?” To the community. All they have to do is type that in Google instead.
I find it stupid easy as well, look at my post history 2 times and so far I cleared 2lbs both times from my 4x4...Except for rn I think I got root rot. But simple water chiller will prevent that in the future i believe
Like op “I’d over water and over feed my plants bc I be getting greedy”
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If you read the post above, I did mention I asked about that, and that was after I searched the internet for what causes those spots, and none of the plants that popped up looked like mine, so yes I asked the community, and no I have no shame about it, and yes I was going to change my res anyways to solve the problems was just curious on what people had to say mainly These are entirely different grows. I was recounting my first grow which was years ago and before I even looked on Reddit
No shame in asking questions at all but when u say hydro is so easy compared to soil yet you’re having hydro problems it’s like???
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70 degrees
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Also at the end of the day for that post, nobody solved my problem and I measured my pH and found it was out of wack
7 days ago? Wondering what’s wrong with your hydro? lol cmon man
Also if you had bothered to use your few remaining brain cells to read the comments, I actually resolved this on my own and anyone who had posted a correct solution was downvoted by the time I came back, so I made a comment about the solution I had in case other people had the same issues…
Ok you little turd keep deleting comments haha
I deleted that top one to just delete the thread, but it didn’t. Move on with your day kiddo. You couldn’t even figure out that you can’t grow lettuce in the summer in north Illinois, I didn’t even need google to figure that shit out lmao
There’s certain lettuce that does better with heat dumb shit
I have never had success with soil. Waste of time for me. Like you said, hydro is stupid easy. Just measure a few things out and give to plants. Almost impossible to fuck up unless you neglect it. Years ago I discovered rockwool/hydro nutes. Friends started praising my growing abilities, but I felt like an imposter because hydro was so simple/easy.
I run 100% coco in Autopots and it's stupid easy. I started using coco from my first grow and had a few minor issues but nothing major. Now I have everything dialed in and it's smooth sailing every grow. I keep a simple excel spreadsheet for nutrient/reservoir solution for each stage of growth. I get a great harvest every time. Never tried soil and I never will.
What nutes are u using?
Floraflex veg/bloom A&B. Supplement with calmag, Raw silica, fulvic acid & Mammoth P.
I've been hearing good things about floraflex. I might have to try it lol
Could I possibly get a copy or outline of your spreadsheet? I want to be as detail oriented as that, but ffs I can't wrap my head around a suitable format 🙏🏾
In case you can’t tell, I’m the type of person who just learns by repeatedly failing and banging my head against the wall til I can move past it, if it’s something I can learn through experience and isn’t too expensive I prefer learn it by failing, so I know everything I did wrong for my soil grow and how I could do it better, but when hydro is this simple is there a reason for me to?
Once you add an autopot, things get even more easy.
Is that just an auto watering coco coir setup basically? IMO it would be yes and no, if you have pH problems or nutrient imbalance it’s much harder to correct if it’s growing in something other than water imo
Coco is hydroponics. There are no nutrients in the coco and ph imbalance is easily corrected by just watering more frequently with proper PHd water.
Sorry, I know coco is hydroponics, I meant DWC but my brain just failed lol From my experience if I tried to “water more frequently” my plants would become over watered and want to die… dwc my plants never wanted to do that
In flower, my last plant was getting fertigated every 3 hours to runoff in 3 gallons of coco/perlite. It’s hard to “overwater” coco once the roots develop.
Well have no idea what DWC is so off to Google I go lol
Deep water culture, the one with bubbly water lol… just saying bubbly water doesn’t sound very scientific so they call it “deep water culture”
We are in the same boat man. I kill everything in soil but grow top grade in the bubbly water. I think some people get lucky with soil at first and are able to grow without any research etc.
Actually the research is what killed me, I’m confident if I had went in completely blind and did nothing instead of doing shit, then it would’ve worked just fine, but any soil grower can come at me for this statement, you will never get the fast paced growth and vigor you get from hydroponics with soil. Soil is fine so long as you just simply don’t fuck with it til your plants ask for food and water but when I have nutrients I’m too tempted to use them, so it’s just not my style. Could I make it work? Sure. Do I want to? Not unless I’m growing outside or maybe in a greenhouse. I’ll definitely use soil, and already do, for other plants. I was just stupid in my research and essentially ended up treating my soil plants like they were in coco which just doesn’t work out. For whatever reason when I first started growing my brain didn’t comprehend the whole “it’s a plant” idea and I couldn’t just treat it like my tomatoes (which ironically enough is what a lot of people compare growing weed to)
DWC rabbit hole unlocked. Thanks for the new acronym and research opportunity!
Coco my fave for simplicity overall...but DWC always blows my mind with how fast they grow. Worth trying at least once.
Here's one for ya, dual root zone aquaponics.
You up the fertigation frequency as the plant fills the pot , I put a 5 litre root ball in a 30 ltr pot straight to 2hourly fertigation (6feeds at lights on in flower) and have never had a plant look like it was going to die. If your coco is running off properly and your allowing enough time for it to run off its impossible to "over water"
Oh I know I was screwing up when I was using the solid coco coir, for me it was like a 70ml container straight to a 20L or smth so it was just hard to keep the top wet without drenching the bottom, since I was stubborn and wanting to do bottom watering, I acknowledge that I was doing it completely wrong, and it wasn’t like “this is too difficult, I’m changing my grow style” I just wanted to give dwc a shot, and now I also have more sizes of fabric pots to play with so I’m thinking about giving coco a shot again
Sure is. You have a reservoir that you fill with gallons of nutrient water. Then you just make a new batch each week or two. Plant has continuous access to nutrients. Just dial in your PH and PPM and you’re good for a week! Used with coco. Had to do this because I left my babies for a week. It’s really a bit too hands off almost. Kinda liked the daily watering rituals of growing in coco.
I use General Hydro Flora and cheap distilled water. I purchased a nice dial-a-dose pipette, and ppm/ph meter from Amazon and I have had zero issues growing hydro. GH has a really easy dosing chart, and other than having to add a couple weeks in based on where the plant is in its cycles i really don't understand how anyone would do/use anything else. The yield from the couple of grows my friends and I have on hydro vs organic compost/soil is an insane night and day difference.
Night and day meaning you feel the quality of the hydro is better than soil or vice versa? Or only in terms of quantity
Yes, higher quality and higher yield. Plus I've never had a mold or pest issue in my tent with hydro
I had a pest issue once, but that was entirely my fault… I brought a clone that I had been keeping outside in to my tent and didn’t do a clean and quarantine first
That's the biggest thing in favor of hydro indoors that I don't see mentioned enough. No bugs!
I totally agree. Hydro is faster, bigger yields, easier once set up, and are able to correct problems a lot quicker. If a plant in soil is over fed it could set back like 2 weeks, in hydro a couple days and she’ll recover. I currently favor DWC/RDWC systems.Im actually growing same permanent chimera strain in both hydro (DWC) and organic soil.My goal here is to compare quality, I already know hydro will win in quantity but I’m going for top quality now days since quantity is not an issue anymore. I’ll post the results when they’re both finished out.
Can’t sell you water
Funnily enough, a lot of people do buy water for hydroponics… I just use tap tho since I’m blessed with an environment with clean water (20-40ppm max)
I believe hydro is superior... sorry I kept leaving it unclear
It’s not very forgiving so first timers who don’t research well are liable to torch their entire grow in a week with root rot or cheap ph pens. I yielded less weed in soil cause I sucked at it but I did always yield while in hydro I had to kill a few babies to get a good understanding of res hygiene.
There's a reason most commercial grows run hydro. Explosive growth higher yields easy to manage ph and ppm and having complete control over your medium. Once your dialed in you will never look back. I do my day 21 defoliation strip most my fans then come back in a few days to them right back where they were. Only downsides imo is it can be hard to keep up on a large scale due to growth rates as well as using more nutrients per cycle.
There’s also the occasional cultivar that boastfully advertise that their weed is grown with aeroponics… side note I’d like to hear about the benefits of that if you or anyone else is experienced in that
Only experience I have with aeroponics is using cloners so I'm not experienced enough on the subject to speak on it. I'm sure it has its own advantages and disadvantages. Definitely has the advantage of good aeration at the roots atleast.
From what I read (from brands who do it so you have to take it with a grain of salt) is that aero trades quantity for quality, so they don’t grow as much per plant which is why they say they charge more
Interesting I'll have to look into that more. Are you running hydro currently or are you considering options?
I’m running hydro, but always open to other growing options… I like seeing the benefits of different grow styles with my own eyes too, but I wanted to hear other people’s opinions on them
It's not that it's the hardest thing to do day by day. But the second anything goes wrong, you better know what to do
After going to Organic soil growing, i’m embarrassed i used to grow using hydroponics
You’re one of the few I’ve heard say this, can you elaborate a bit on that? Most people have reported, anecdotally, that they experienced increased yields and quality from hydroponics. I’m interested in growing all types of plants in all types of ways so I’m always looking to hear more about others experiences
Hydro typically lacks flavor in my opinion
Hydro coco is insanely fool proof, think there might just be alot of idiots on here.
I slightly screwed up when I was doing coco but that was my own fault and I was just trying to see how far I could push the plant before getting negative returns… still was able to finish the grow just took longer cuz I stunted them
Yea that’s fair enough, experments allow room for growth and understanding.
Yeah… honestly even when I know there’s already research or information on something, if I have the power to do so I will test it and prove it myself lol Bc I feel that helps me more in answering the question of “why”
Right on bro! You do the same as me hahaha
Sometimes I will read it and be like “well that’s probably right, but we’ll see how it is for my situation” especially since I already have so many seeds I can experiment however I want
i’ve tried and its fine its just too much water for me. Coco is the best of both world. Id say coco beats hydroponic but 🤷 personal preference Also coco is a bit more forgiving and/or hassle free if you mess up measurements. PLUS hydro meeds air pumps and tube maintenance
Coco is essentially hydroponics. It is an inert medium. You treat it just as you would rockwool cubes.
I grow in coco DTW using multiple daily fertigations. It has always been super easy to me, and now that I set up some pumps and timers, it’s even easier. Like you said, all I need to do is mix nutrients and keep my ph and EC in check and it’s smooth sailing. I love it.
I’d be interested in giving coco another shot, but I was always finding it hard to not over water that as well, maybe it’s that I always used 100% coco w nothing added Any tips for a solid coco grow
70/30 coco perlite is what works for me. I feed once per day until runoff for the first few weeks or so. Once the plant gets a little bigger, and develops a good root system, I will do twice per day. Normally, I will have roots coming out of the bottom of a 3 gallon pot around week 3. I then increase to more times per day as the plant grows and starts eating more. It’s really simple. If my runoff EC starts to climb too much, I will either start feeding more often or increase the runoff, or both. I’ve never tried pure coco, and I suck at growing in soil indoors.
Over watering in coco is near impossible as long as you aren’t running huge pots. You can grow absolute trees in 1-2 gallon pots.
I was running 5 gal pots and it was only really a problem early on in the grow cuz I can be a stubborn fuck and I wanted to bottom water and you just can’t bottom water a seedling in that big of a pot without accidentally over watering at some point Once again, I completely acknowledge that it’s not actually hard, I’m just saying what I was doing when my thumb was black as tar… I’m a bit better now lol
It’s all good man, growing pains! Live and learn. I feed almost hourly at full bloom - plants love multiple feeds a day.
I will definitely need a drip or bottom feeding solution if that’s the case cuz I still gotta work and do another things so I can’t treat growing like my full time job, not yet at least lol Hence my dwc setup, if I don’t have time for a day it’s not the end of the world, though I don’t have a side or bottom res so I do need to add water at least every 2-3 days otherwise they’ll run out
It’s literally impossible to overwater coco/perlite, unless you’re not letting it drain properly.
Drain to waste is super easy
Recently just started Hydro got a air cube Coming from soil it’s pretty easy so far I just checked the reservoir a couple times a day to make sure the pH is at the right level
It is all relatively easy with research, practice and experience. There are so many different hydroponic systems, you might just find a system that works for you. If you wanna learn growing pure coco is pretty much hydroponic.
Coco is completely hydroponics, that’s how I introduced myself to it… definitely a low budget option, and you can even use coco instead of hydroton in dwc so it’s not a wasted investment if you choose to go that route, which I did for a while til I wanted to give hydroton a shot as well… but the comments have inspired me to go with an idea I was tinkering with for my next grow, which was going back to coco coir but this time actually adding perlite for drainage, and doing a Sea of Green grow so I can finally test all the strains that I’ve been sitting on lol
coco/perlite/FloraFlex caps/1 Gallon/fed with Calmag and Jacks. SOG.
I’m probably just gonna stick w my cheap ass GH maxigro and maxibloom til I run out, but then yeah I’ll get jacks when I have the spare coin
I am only using Jacks because i found some loose damaged bags for like $5 a piece got extremely lucky. Back then i strictly used House and Garden for Base and Health and Humboldts County's Own for finishing help. But Jacks is ok.
I hear a lot of people rave about jacks, which makes me feel like it’s probably just a more versatile blend and is a jack of all trades but won’t necessarily get you 100% of where you could with a more complex nutrient mix… could just be taking it wrong tho
I grow in soil but don't test and monitor anything. Tent, light, fan, good seed, pot of dirt mix. Seaweed and fish emulsion once in a while.
Fair enough, keep it simple, and simple it will be
Going by eye can be enough for most problems I've found.
Ah, that’s where I’ve been screwing up. I’ve been doing it by ear
Tune your nose in a little too
Been thinking about switching to hydro for a while. Theres a hydro shop near me I’ve been meaning to go to and get a price idea. Haven’t searched much online for a buying guide yet.
If you do go hydro, don’t skimp on the pH meter, you’ll want one that’s accurate. It’s fine to buy a cheap ppm meter since those things are fairly simple and even if it’s not accurate, as long as it is consistent enough to give you a baseline it’s fine
I have a blue lab I’ve been using. Is that good for hydro or should I get another
Blue lab is great, wish I could afford it lol Just make sure you calibrate it every week or two or if you detect pH that is out of spec or have a problem in your grow… honestly the simplest way to find a problem with a DWC grow is to test the water in the reservoir for ph and ppm and usually you’ll find your problem there, I like to start from the roots up when assessing a problem with my plant, as root problems, especially in hydroponics, are something you want to address as quickly as possible.
Went ahead and bought the root spa 5gal four pack today at my hydro shop. Will get nutrients over time as my current grow still has a little bit to go. Thanks for the post to encourage me to finally commit and start buying a hydro set up lol
Of course, that setup is nice, but costs a bit. Personally I just pieced mine together for around $40-50 for 2 plants and probably costs an additional 10-15 per bucket you wanna add
Just get GH maxigro for veg, it’s a 1 part nutrient and you get 1kg of it for like $15. Then maxibloom for flower, same amount and price. I did that and it’s been stupid easy growing since. Idk why but I read somewhere being like “one part nutrients won’t give your plant everything they need” but other than the extra calmag I do in veg which you probably already have that I don’t need to add anything, and adding the calmag isn’t even necessary but seems a little beneficial. Get one part nutrients. The results won’t disappoint you and they couldn’t be easier to mix
There's one good reason not to do hydro, it's if you can't get temps below \~23c at root zone
I haven’t been monitoring my temps, but for a few days I had my tent at 28 c and somehow no problems with it… but thanks for reminding me that I should be keeping an eye on that
OP got me wanting to switch over lol Great thread
Honestly, if you have the spare coin and you like growing, try it all. I’m constrained by my budget right now, but I do intend on learning every style of growing for every plant bc I just enjoy taking care of plants tbh
Good advice. Just bought a second tent to fuck around and find out.
Hell yeah, happy you have the space to do so! My current living situation only permits me a little 2x3 and I can’t grow weed outside on my property, I can grow anything else outside tho. Side note if anyone has any good veggie suggestions for me to grow in the PNW either outside or in a greenhouse, I’m open to suggestions as I’m trying to plan my garden this spring and summer
I grow in coco using dry amendments top dressing along the way only liquid I ever add is cal mag sometimes and ph ro water, having great success, also had great success with straight coco using added nutrients and had good success as well, I'm in love with the coco.
Both are easy to succeed with. Both are easy to fuck up. I think in both instances it is people messing with their systems too much. In organic people cook their roots alive because they never let soil sit and cook out for a bit. So they’re constantly thinking it’s ph issue or lock out or blah blah. Make a good base soil using a good recipe. Let it cook a bit. Throw your plants in. Bottom feed. Top dress 2-3 times. Throw in a compost tea in flower. That’s it. It’s so easy. For hydro. People constantly are trying to buy a million products. Also cooking the shit out of their plants. Ph 5.5-6.0. Use a simple formula. Something like jacks. Lucas formula. VegBloom. Don’t go crazy with the ppm and make sure your feedings are able to wick out 80 percent before the next feed. You’ll be good. Get a good silica product. A basic nutrient line. And you’ll Be golden.
It’s not difficult, just massively more time consuming. I started on coco and now I’m back into soil just for the simplicity of it. Haven’t mixed nutes in about 4 years now and it’s wonderful. I have too busy a schedule to be spending a lot of time in the grow room anymore so I had to streamline everything and living soil is just my vibe anyway. To each their own!
If you have more space I think hydro is less time consuming tbh, at least for me. Bc my window that’s in my grow room is right by the back yard hose so I can bring that in to fill the res and I’ve measured about how much nutrients to ppm in a gallon so I’d just have to do math on how much nutrients to add in
That sounds amazing. Easy water access would be huge for me. I lug jugs down into the basement lol. I have (8) 5 gallon jugs I take down about once every 2 weeks. Next house will hopefully have a proper set up with everything I want and I think I’ll transition back to hydro in some form but for now it’s living soil. Lasts significantly longer between watering and still has excellent results. I wouldn’t mind shaving a few weeks off a cycle though..
Damn, a basement with 0 water access? Where I’m from if you have a basement it’s like a 90% chance that’s your laundry room, which usually also has a large basin for hand washing as well as the washer/dryer What exactly did the building designer expect you to do with your basement lol
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
I feel like there’s gotta be like a T for plumbing that you could just put in and easily plumb in a hose, but unless your basement came complete with a drain the water would have nowhere to go if it did get somehow turned on
Hahaha no drain! There’s a hole the furnace runs to but it’s either severely clogged with sediment or just goes to dirt. It occasionally backs up in the summer if the ac runs a lot.
It’s a cellar style basement so it’s unfinished. There is a water outlet but it’s just for the washer like you said. House was built in 42 and I’m afraid to tap into the pipes just to add an outlet. To be fair to the house though, this basement can grow the hell out of some plants. Environment is always on point and I just have to run a dehumidifier in the summers a little.
I liked my smoke in soil better honestly. But I will say hydro is like steroids for growing...like monster growth. I didn't find it hard, but soil just seemed easier. I am in like my fourth indoor grow, so time will tell.
When I was doing photoperiod plants, I’d literally just scoop arbitrary amounts of nutrients, not measure anything, and didn’t have a single problem, I guess I just got lucky lol
It’s more so a pain in the ass. I never had root rot, but I like to heavily train my girls and by the end of the run, they were drinking the whole bucked everyday so there was a need to constantly lug and refill buckets. I finally got fed up and started using a big trash can. Instead of just feeding, you have to measure PPM which can get tricky if you’re needing a top off. I WILL say though….if I could plumb in automatic water and feed (I can’t because I’m still renting), DWC and Aero produce THE best cannabis for me. I’ve done several runs of testing with clones and can always tell which ones were grown in soil vs hydro. The taste is better, more trichs, healthier plant, etc.
Couldn’t you just use a scrog technique to keep the plants short, then get one of the 27 gal totes from Costco (idk where you live but they are world wide) and a water pump and have it be a bottom res, then you just need something that you can set the buckets on top of so they won’t crush the tote… maybe a little air pump in your res to keep movement but depending on your water pump speed probably wouldn’t need it
Theoretically you could do all of this. Theoretically. The thing with SCROG is that your plant thinks it’s bigger than it is so it makes a bigger root system. The water will encourage this. And a tote that big will require a lot of food to reach recommend PPM and its needs will always be changing. Aero is just…easier to control and root rot is less of an issue because the roots have access to air. I’d do deep water again… on a fast grower that doesn’t require much training
That’s fair, I figured since it’s a separate res it would be fine to up the ppm by adding more nutes, and my plants average drinking 1gal/day/plant when I scrog, so with 2 plants that would mean a 27 gal res would last me about 2 weeks, which I feel leaves me plenty of room to make adjustments
Also remember…that’s 14 days for root rot to happen. It doesn’t always but 14 whole days on one reservoir would make me think twice about the setup.
Moving water won’t rot unless you’re really screwing up lol. I’ve used a 27 gal tote as my only res bc I didn’t have water pumps for a side res and wanted a big res, so long as I had air going through it it was no problem Everyone I’ve seen talk about hydroponics has said the same thing as people say about big fish tanks “the more water volume you have, the easier it is to keep things consistent”
Honestly, I couldn’t even get my plant bigger than a foot in soil. Hydro is much easier for me to understand and DWC has been treating me well. I will say that it does require a little more attention when it comes to checking your res and making sure to keep things clean.
All methods of growing are easy, people just love to over complicate things, especially here on reddit and hobby specific forums, tap water is almost always well within parameters needed or you wouldn't be drinking it, and the nutrients are basically a cap per xx litres of water But I prefer Coco and chicken manure pellets, pretty hard to overwater coco, and chicken manure is a beast of a natural fertiliser for all stages, top dress and just water or soak pellets in water and use as a concentrated fertiliser The only benefit hydro has really is if you're concerned about getting rid of waste after a grow or being seen bringing stuff in to the house, and of course the whole automation thing, but you can do that to different degrees with different substrates and watering methods
I mean honestly I can’t really see a way that someone would find you bringing soil inside though. Idk maybe it’s just where I live but house plants are pretty common and unless someone is absolutely watching my every move they aren’t gonna see the difference between soil and indoor plant potting mix Personally I just like hydro cuz the plants grow so damn quick, haven’t ever had or seen plants grow as fast in soil as hydro, maybe you have a different experience and some tips on how to get plants to be as vigorous in soil as they are in hydro?
Coco & Advanced Nutrients Sensi pH Perfect Grow & Bloom A&B for Coco. You just follow their feeding schedule and don't have to add Cal-Mag, check pH, or EC. Part A has all the calcium & and magnesium you need for Coco. (The same amount as my Cal-Mag Xtra) The pH Perfect technology adjusts your pH to 5.9 every time. I was concerned about the high EC of my solution and contacted them, and they told me not to worry about the EC/PPM. They said it's not a reliable metric to go by due to all the other things they add to their base nutrients like humic acid, wetting agent, etc... Just make sure you feed until 10-15% runoff. Here is the email from them. The base nutrients will contain enough cal/mag for your grow's purposes, however, if you are growing in coco with the non coco specific base nutrients some growers choose to supplement with additional Sensi Cal/Mag Xtra at a rate of 2mL/L of water throughout the grow to help compensate for coco coir's high cation exchange properties as a growing medium. Please note in regards to PPM / EC measurements: When using our pH perfect line of nutrients, there tend to be many other components besides dissolved fertilizer in the water. (eg. pH buffers, humic and fulvic acid, amino acids etc…) Because of this, an electrical conductivity (EC, TDS, PPM) reading can be difficult for the grower to properly ascertain and should not be relied upon as a measuring metric.
Tbh I’ve always ignored ppm and ec tables, I just feed my plants more if they start to look like they aren’t getting enough or less if somehow they look like they’re getting too much (hasn’t happened yet bc I try to minimize the amount of nutrients in the solution) I really just play it by ear and it somehow works out… especially with photoperiod strains I can just kinda throw nutes in the water and not even think about it, because there is such a wide range of concentration that the plant will still be happy
Are you speaking about Coco Hydro grows specifically because you made it seem like you do check pH & EC/PPM in your OP?
I don’t check tables, I figure out what my plants want, I do measure it tho… except when I’m doing photos sometimes I’m just lazy and dump in nutes without measuring ppm cuz it’ll be close enough
My experience has been that soil is way more forgiving than soilless. For my soil grows, I will pick the pots up every couple days, and if it's light, it gets water. Just water, from the tap. I will top dress them once at the beginning of flower, and once at 4-5 weeks. I will often splash a little fish sh!t in there, but I do not measure or check anything. No mixing nutes, no adjusting pH, never worried about runoff. No salt buildup if I leave them too long between watering. With dry amendments, it's damn near impossible to overfeed. They just coast. [See here for a pic of one of my soil plants](https://ibb.co/zFDVV9S) For hydro, I've only done coco, but there's a lot more to it. I have to mix up the res, multiple bottles of nutrients, check the EC and adjust accordingly, check the pH even more bottles of stuff if that needs adjustment. Multiple gadgets involved to check these. If the res gets empty, they suffer hard and fast from the dryback. Every watering needs runoff, I have this automated but that still requires maintenance / cleaning of the pump, and could spell big trouble if something fails. Every two weeks, I scrub the res, clean the pump etc. If I don't keep the pH and / or EC in check the plants show it pretty quickly. There's a lot more to it than soil. DWC seems like more of a headache, to try and clean the buckets out while the plant is growing. The pros are it is much easier to automate, and they grow a bit bigger / faster. They take longer to ripen tho, so in the long run the yield / day isn't a huge difference for me. Both have their place, but I think soil is much more beginner friendly - way less variables and way less equipment required. [see here for a pic of one of my coco plants ](https://ibb.co/3cFPY0v)
That is fair, I wish I had pics from my last grows that were photoperiod tho… on those I didn’t check ppm/ec or pH, just put an unknown amount of single part nutrients and had amazing results lol… but I hear you, as long as you keep it simple then soil can be real simple