I just want to thank everyone for helping me grow the best medicine I could have. I recently harvested my first fully organic water only plant and was definitely impressed. Never turning back. I should have gone this way on my first grow. First grow I used fox farm nutrients and ocean forest soil in 5 gallon containers and got 2 oz off 3 of them and 4 oz off one of them. This was my second grow and I mixed up the easy beginners soil mix. I used 5 gallon self watering containers and never gave it even a tea, it may have gotten 1 cup of a tea its entire life. Just water. And I listened and listened to everyone tell me "You can't just give it water" "Organics has lots of problems" blah blah blah, I never listen to anyone anyways and glad I didn't this time. I pulled 8 oz (actually a little more because we ate some bud raw and I didn't record the weight of some branches chopped early) off this plant and the next one is even bigger. Thank you everybody for the best yielding, highest quality medicine. Never going back.
Glad to hear it! I laugh at anyone who poo-poos organic growing, because they often times simply don't understand how plants grow. It's never about growing healthy plants, healthy food or healthy people, it's always about growing the highest yielding bud possible. No attention to quality or sustainability, only profit margins and e-peen. Glad to count you among the group that has cut the bullshit and turned an eye towards a healthier planet.
I don't grow organically for a healthier planet. I don't do it for sustainability, or any other buzzwords that are popular at the moment. Don't get me wrong, these things are all well and good, but my real reason is that it is easier, cheaper, and produces healthier and happier plants, which makes me healthier and happier, too! I crack up when I hear the hydro-heads and the shiny bottle brigade talk about the perils of organics and the superiority of chemicals, and they know everything, so I just smile. They may eventually come around on their own. I'm not sure if I could've been converted after I started, either, I had to make my own decision. This group of folks in the Organics Forum are some knowledgeable and decent people. They have helped me tremendously.
You wouldn't be surprised to find that if you ever came to Denver, it's almost impossible to find truly organic meds. Some places label it as organic, but it's still bottled. Most stores are still hydroponic oriented here. It's quite annoying. Hopefully legalization, environmentalism, science, and common sense play a major factor in determining the future of growers' method of growing (i.e. organic). I just jarred my first organic grow last night. My grow tent temps were average 93 F. My buds are sticky icky, saturated in trichomes, and aren't even brown (though they are quite dark green). Temps would get over 100 F at the hottest point of the day. I was thrilled to see how healthy of plants a good organic mix grows, even when temps are devastatingly high.
Indeed, organically grown plants are definitely hardier! In looking for stuff to put into your organic mixes, don't forget to look at FARM SUPPLY and FEED stores. A lot of the stuff that goes into the mixes is also fed to livestock, and you can get larger quantities for cheaper! Be creative in your sourcing, I haven't been to a hydro shop in a very long time, except for when I grabbed a big bag of perlite to make my SIP's... Man those temps sound even higher than mine! LOL!
I would definitely hit up feed stores, but I live in the heart of downtown Denver lol. Rent is high, and so is the temperature! Here's the girl I just jarred (harvested a week too early lol).
My temps were not quite as high but they got up to 90 quite often and would normally be a high of 86 or 88. The humidity was over 70 most of the time as well. Not ideal definitely but it worked and better than my last grow which had the right temperature and humidity. Healthy plants are tough to hurt. Organics produce healthy plants with little effort. I don't understand why people want to bother with mixing bottled nutrients and pHing their water.
Same concept, different terminology perhaps. I'm on the same wavelength as you. Change comes from inside in the first place. If more people decide to return to natural farming methods, then the healthier planet and sustainability issues will fall into place on their own. We can't change the world without first changing ourselves, and the world will change with us when we make that decision; no extra work required. Easy, cheap, healthy, happy. Doesn't get better than that.
Amen Brother! The natural just makes more sense. It's way more magical and inspiring than the artificial.
The more research I do, the more amazed I am at how interconnected nature is. Everything works together in sync. Everything is working towards the greater good and the bigger picture. One microbial species may exterminate another, but the entire food web benefits in the process, including our plants and ourselves. A laboratory can't do that. It's very amusing to me the way agricultural chemists seem to think they can do things better than nature. They've been at it for, what, maybe 100 years? Nature has been doing it for millenia without a problem. In the short time we've been trying to one-up natural processes, we've succeeded only in destroying the natural balance. It's time we worked on restoring that balance.
As I understand it hydroponics date back to 1627.. (First published account) Egyptian times if you count hieroglyphs. You are right it is more work. I naturally took to it because of the science,!it apeals to me. Graduated cylinders, nutrient solutions, meters, dated records of PH, PPM, and temp levels picking out the trends and finding the optimim levels.. I have 80 gallons of amended organic soil cooking in my garage and I'm excited to run it but.. I will always have a Hydro system running next to it.
I totally understand that. Science is always fun, and applying it to gardening is fun too. However there are many ways to use science in the growroom/garden without using toxic chemicals and killing soil life. Grab a microscope and start checking out your microbe colonies and start recording some data! You can talk to MicrobeMan about that and he can show you some cool science. Grow some mushrooms. Lots of sterilization, measuring, lab safety procedures and such there. Lots of fun!