Anyone have any experience on mixing an organic such as Mother Earth Super tea Or any other Tea. Do Organics Enhance the Chemical nutes effectiveness?
I did it for years, mixed ammended soil, added chemicals to it. Doesn't work well, the chems kill off the micro-herd and make you chem dependent. It's kind of an oxy-moron.
I know, right? I used to look for an 'opportunity' to pull them out and mix some up...any leaf that curled, or changed colour, or was slow growing, any damned thing. I was hopeless...
You guys have already covered the microbial aspect of the question. Now I just have one thing to add. If you are using bottled (organic) nutrients like General Organics' line, wouldn't using the so called organic nutrients be just the same as the chemicals? From what I understand, chemical nutrients are absorbed only when they come into contact with the rhizosphere. Wouldn't bottled organic nutrients act in a similar fashion? So theoretically, you could use both (with no regard for microbial life) and still accomplish the desired results. I would, however, just stick to one path if it was my grow. If you choose true organics, as Skunk and Jerry have described, you always have to account for the microbial aspect of things.
Non-Organic and 'Organic' nutrients are the same in effect. They, the 'organic' nutrients, kill off the microbials too...been there, done that, not going back....
Don't add anything at the end of flower or it will ruin the flavor. If you are growing with nutes you are going need to flush your soil for a week or two before the buds can come down or they'll taste like garbage. You could mix it like this: use a good organic soil mix, feed it water only, and supplement chemical nutes thru a diluted foliar spray or very diluted and into the soil... It would boost growth rates a little bit, but with a proper organic soil mix you don't need to worry about that, properly grown organic produces bigger yields of better tasting crops more consistently without as much hassle during the growth phase... The problem with chemical ferts is that they use heavy metals in them and you can taste it in the end product, and like others have stated the harshness of some of these chemicals kills off beneficial microbe life including mycohrrizae fungi which helps the plants digest soil amendments more efficiently. Happy soil = happy plants, chemicals make for an unhappy soil life, which is why you have to keep adding them because the plant can no longer utilize what was already gifted to them since birth.
If you are growing with nutes you are going need to flush your soil for a week or two before the buds can come down or they'll taste like garbage. Rinsing the chemical salts from the soil will do what for the flowers? J
I have no clue what it does for the flowers, but if ya taste the side by side comparison, 1 burns the throat and the other 1 is smooth... I think it simulates what happens naturally in organic: nitrogen resources get used up, bacteria slows down and the leafs start to yellow off before the buds branch ripen... Mostly what you are flushing out of the soil is nitrogen, which the nitrogen is a mobile element that can be removed from the plant... If there is too much chlorophyll in the plant, no amount of curing will make it taste better.