What I’ve Learned in the First 4 Weeks of Growing

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tobh

tobh

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your full of shit bugs facts? really never, overwatering fact ? really? bullshit infact ive not got the time for idiots bye... fact
i understand how hard it is to be confronted on things you hold dear to your heart. why you new members can't provide any real rebuttals in a discussion is beyond me. instead you attack character, reason, and real subjective experiences with name calling and empty arguments. y'all can fuck right off. go back to RIU or icmag or whatever other hole you crawled out of. i engage in conversation with people that actually know wtf they're talking about and can change my mind on things when they prove my experiential assumptions to be invalid. you've done none of that and followed suit with other dude that also called me full of shit. enjoy being on ignore.
 
tobh

tobh

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hes full of shit dude...
i'm full of shit yet your plants are obviously overwatered and probably bug infested. talk to me when you can produce a healthy plant like these.

DSC 0252

DSC 0292
 
alanmac101

alanmac101

28
3
so why you quote me and not say anything? there's nothing factual about what you said, especially if you haven't tried anything different.

In nearly 20 years of growing, I've used damn near every medium there is and soil has historically, and repeatedly, proven to be subpar to promix, coco, and hydro (of different methods). The easiest by far has proven to be rockwool, only seconded by recirculating dutch buckets. Let me explain why my opinion is what it is.

In soil:

You are lucky to see veg rates even half as fast as in a soilless medium. FACT.

You're more likely to have bugs and general filth around your grow area. FACT.

You can't rapidly resolve fuck ups because it retains water like a chick on her period. FACT.

You're more likely to overwater and completely fuck up because nothing changes quickly in soil. FACT.

You have new growers with maybe a couple harvests under their belts and that buddy that "grows organic trees outdoors" that think they know their shit, when IN FACT they don't.

Now, in soilless/hydro:

You have full control over whatever is going on in the media. FACT.

You can quickly address lockouts, deficiencies, and other common issues with visible results within days, not weeks. FACT

You have almost zero chance of overwatering. FACT.

You stand a better than not chance of having pests introduced to your environment by a subpar, money hungry organization hustling basically different kinds of animal shit with some compost, peat and bark mixed in. FACT.

You get exponential growth rates cutting down seed-to-harvest. FACT.

You end up with a cleaner burning, higher quality product. FACT.

Now if you can change my mind on any of the above with valid proof aside from shouting an opinion with no backing other than cognitive dissonance and an insistance on being a childish troll, I'm all ears. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and don't @ me. I'm working on not being a dick and rather drop you on ignore than deal with a keyboard warrior that hasn't added any value to this forum at this point.

i understand how hard it is to be confronted on things you hold dear to your heart. why you new members can't provide any real rebuttals in a discussion is beyond me. instead you attack character, reason, and real subjective experiences with name calling and empty arguments. y'all can fuck right off. go back to RIU or icmag or whatever other hole you crawled out of. i engage in conversation with people that actually know wtf they're talking about and can change my mind on things when they prove my experiential assumptions to be invalid. you've done none of that and followed suit with other dude that also called me full of shit. enjoy being on ignore.

i understand how hard it is to be confronted on things you hold dear to your heart. why you new members can't provide any real rebuttals in a discussion is beyond me. instead you attack character, reason, and real subjective experiences with name calling and empty arguments. y'all can fuck right off. go back to RIU or icmag or whatever other hole you crawled out of. i engage in conversation with people that actually know wtf they're talking about and can change my mind on things when they prove my experiential assumptions to be invalid. you've done none of that and followed suit with other dude that also called me full of shit. enjoy being on ignore.
thats because you ARE full of shit dude have a fkn read at your posts hahahaha angry little fkn gnome haha stop with the crack dude.... seriously ...
 
tobh

tobh

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thats because you ARE full of shit dude have a fkn read at your posts hahahaha angry little fkn gnome haha stop with the crack dude.... seriously ...
again, attacking my character. you're a new member, and like half of you fucking children coming onto the forum lately you're another one attacking me without providing any valid responses. making it real hard for me not to be a dick. i'm done with you.
 
alanmac101

alanmac101

28
3
again, attacking my character. you're a new member, and like half of you fucking children coming onto the forum lately you're another one attacking me without providing any valid responses. making it real hard for me not to be a dick. i'm done with you.
its hard for you not to be a duck simply because you ARE a dick now fuck off and ignore me like you siad 3 posts ago knobhead
 
alanmac101

alanmac101

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its hard for you not to be a duck simply because you ARE a dick now fuck off and ignore me like you siad 3 posts ago knobhead new memeber or not your the 1 tht started saying soil is shit you get overwatering and bugs all factual hahahahaha again your full of shit
 
tobh

tobh

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I prefer my soil grown indoor to any other bud. Ever. Period.

Tried a bunch of growing techniques and mediums, the soil grown give me the healthiest plants with the best smells and tastes.
It can work for some, I won't argue that. Personally I've seen more issues come from new growers in soil than any other media, including my own struggles with it. I feel it leaves way too much outside of the control of the grower, and for a new grower with the helicoptering tendencies, it doesn't provide enough opportunity for tweaking and whatnot.

Does organic soil produce some phenomenal bud? Absolutely. The terpene profiles are entirely unique and the trichome coverage can be phenomenal. Is that common? No, not in my experience. There's a reason hydro has always fetched a higher market price.

A bit of a divergence here, but there's also another big reason commercial vegetable croppers run hydro. It reduces costs exponentially, conserves water and energy, reduces environmental impacts, and produces higher quality product with higher brix levels with less manual labor than organic soil. Soil is hard, no if's and's or but's. It's also more expensive in more ways than the monetary costs.

The same applies to small personal grows. Sure, the initial investment in all the gear for hydro or soilless is expensive -- pumps, piping, fittings, timers, reservoirs, nutrients, etc. but that's the initial investment and typically the cost is offset in the first two grows. Soil is an ongoing expense between sticky traps, predatory cultures, organic cultures, new soil, IPM treatments, etc. Difference here being well cared for hydro gear will run for at least two years, if not more. Soil has ongoing expenses. Plus, it's outright dirty. Soil ends up on the floor, under nails, in the buds, etc. Hydro can be entirely sterile if treated appropriately, and leaves a grow room ready for scrub down as soon as the media is removed without requiring a vacuum.

All that being said, THIS is a response that warrants conversation. Thank you for not telling me I'm full of shit @GreenMtnGuru, or outright attacking my character. You provided input based on subjective experience and run on what works for you. If only the new members would learn proper communication skills instead of taking the route of high school boys trying to fight, that'd be great.

I will continue to maintain that soil is simply too finicky for new growers for the reasons above. mistakes are easy to make and hard to recover from as opposed to easy to make and easy to recover from. i've yet to overwater a plant in coco or hydro, and i've yet to have one completely die as a result of trying to fix a mistake unlike in soil. That's based on my personal experience of nearly two decades of growing. Call me brown eyes.
 
GreenMtnGuru

GreenMtnGuru

345
93
It can work for some, I won't argue that. Personally I've seen more issues come from new growers in soil than any other media, including my own struggles with it. I feel it leaves way too much outside of the control of the grower, and for a new grower with the helicoptering tendencies, it doesn't provide enough opportunity for tweaking and whatnot.

Does organic soil produce some phenomenal bud? Absolutely. The terpene profiles are entirely unique and the trichome coverage can be phenomenal. Is that common? No, not in my experience. There's a reason hydro has always fetched a higher market price.

A bit of a divergence here, but there's also another big reason commercial vegetable croppers run hydro. It reduces costs exponentially, conserves water and energy, reduces environmental impacts, and produces higher quality product with higher brix levels with less manual labor than organic soil. Soil is hard, no if's and's or but's. It's also more expensive in more ways than the monetary costs.

The same applies to small personal grows. Sure, the initial investment in all the gear for hydro or soilless is expensive -- pumps, piping, fittings, timers, reservoirs, nutrients, etc. but that's the initial investment and typically the cost is offset in the first two grows. Soil is an ongoing expense between sticky traps, predatory cultures, organic cultures, new soil, IPM treatments, etc. Difference here being well cared for hydro gear will run for at least two years, if not more. Soil has ongoing expenses. Plus, it's outright dirty. Soil ends up on the floor, under nails, in the buds, etc. Hydro can be entirely sterile if treated appropriately, and leaves a grow room ready for scrub down as soon as the media is removed without requiring a vacuum.

All that being said, THIS is a response that warrants conversation. Thank you for not telling me I'm full of shit @GreenMtnGuru, or outright attacking my character. You provided input based on subjective experience and run on what works for you. If only the new members would learn proper communication skills instead of taking the route of high school boys trying to fight, that'd be great.

I will continue to maintain that soil is simply too finicky for new growers for the reasons above. mistakes are easy to make and hard to recover from as opposed to easy to make and easy to recover from. i've yet to overwater a plant in coco or hydro, and i've yet to have one completely die as a result of trying to fix a mistake unlike in soil. That's based on my personal experience of nearly two decades of growing. Call me brown eyes.
Excellent post, points, and debate. Thank you for taking the time to write this out as I made it seem too cut and dry, and oversimplified for someone just getting their feet wet. It took me a couple years to get the hang of a proper soil grow. And I still love my pro-mix rooms too - so not knocking other styles for sure.
 
MIGrampaUSA

MIGrampaUSA

3,732
263
Excellent post, points, and debate. Thank you for taking the time to write this out as I made it seem too cut and dry, and oversimplified for someone just getting their feet wet. It took me a couple years to get the hang of a proper soil grow. And I still love my pro-mix rooms too - so not knocking other styles for sure.
It all has it's place. For me, soil grow fits. I understand it and after some experience, I handle it pretty well. It was a school of hard knocks at times.

With that said, I do have a bucket controller and 55 gallon reservoir so at some point I will give it a try. I expect to run into new and unexpected things at that time. It's all part of it I think.

Happy holidays to all! Be safe in all your fun!!!
 
B

BoboGrower0813

49
18
so why you quote me and not say anything? there's nothing factual about what you said, especially if you haven't tried anything different.

In nearly 20 years of growing, I've used damn near every medium there is and soil has historically, and repeatedly, proven to be subpar to promix, coco, and hydro (of different methods). The easiest by far has proven to be rockwool, only seconded by recirculating dutch buckets. Let me explain why my opinion is what it is.

In soil:

You are lucky to see veg rates even half as fast as in a soilless medium. FACT.

You're more likely to have bugs and general filth around your grow area. FACT.

You can't rapidly resolve fuck ups because it retains water like a chick on her period. FACT.

You're more likely to overwater and completely fuck up because nothing changes quickly in soil. FACT.

You have new growers with maybe a couple harvests under their belts and that buddy that "grows organic trees outdoors" that think they know their shit, when IN FACT they don't.

Now, in soilless/hydro:

You have full control over whatever is going on in the media. FACT.

You can quickly address lockouts, deficiencies, and other common issues with visible results within days, not weeks. FACT

You have almost zero chance of overwatering. FACT.

You stand a better than not chance of having pests introduced to your environment by a subpar, money hungry organization hustling basically different kinds of animal shit with some compost, peat and bark mixed in. FACT.

You get exponential growth rates cutting down seed-to-harvest. FACT.

You end up with a cleaner burning, higher quality product. FACT.

Now if you can change my mind on any of the above with valid proof aside from shouting an opinion with no backing other than cognitive dissonance and an insistance on being a childish troll, I'm all ears. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and don't @ me. I'm working on not being a dick and rather drop you on ignore than deal with a keyboard warrior that hasn't added any value to this forum at this point.
I think it is unwise to make blanket statements about almost anything, especially soil. Not all soil is the same. Like anything else, it starts with the right ingredients.

I have been an outdoor organic vegetable gardener for many years and from my perspective, the closer you can get to duplicating the conditions that nature has worked out over millions of years of evolutionary perfecting, the better off you’ll be.

I make my own compost from horse manure from my sister-in-law‘s horse, unsprayed/adulterated leaves from our own property, kitchen scraps, and plant material from our garden.

I built a two chamber compost bin from skids/pallets and don’t do all the churning and turning that you read about as necessary. I let the red wigglers do the hard work. I build in layers of manure then leaves, grass clippings, or whatever, and just keep on layering as raw materials arise, but the key is to build in layers with the proper ratios of green to brown materials.

Every few layers I sprinkle in Kelp meal, aragonite, crab flower, azomite, humeric, potassium pellets, wood ashes, and basalt to add all the minerals and micro nutrients to super charge it, and super charged it is. This compost I add to my outdoor beds, and my garden vegetables blow people away, and my compost is the secret.

For pots and planters, and for my first indoor grow in my small 8 x 8 greenhouse, which you can check out in my grow diary, I mix 3 gallons at a time in a 5 gallon bucket of 2/3 Vermont Compost Fort Vee organic potting soil and 1/3 my compost, with a cup of worm castings and some vermiculite thrown in.

Those pots are loaded with all the best that nature can provide as a medium for a plant to grow in. That’s only my opinion about soil, and I don’t discount what works for anyone else. There’s always more than one way to skin a cat.
But don’t count soil out.
 
tobh

tobh

Supporter
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263
I think it is unwise to make blanket statements about almost anything, especially soil. Not all soil is the same. Like anything else, it starts with the right ingredients.

I have been an outdoor organic vegetable gardener for many years and from my perspective, the closer you can get to duplicating the conditions that nature has worked out over millions of years of evolutionary perfecting, the better off you’ll be.

I make my own compost from horse manure from my sister-in-law‘s horse, unsprayed/adulterated leaves from our own property, kitchen scraps, and plant material from our garden.

I built a two chamber compost bin from skids/pallets and don’t do all the churning and turning that you read about as necessary. I let the red wigglers do the hard work. I build in layers of manure then leaves, grass clippings, or whatever, and just keep on layering as raw materials arise, but the key is to build in layers with the proper ratios of green to brown materials.

Every few layers I sprinkle in Kelp meal, aragonite, crab flower, azomite, humeric, potassium pellets, wood ashes, and basalt to add all the minerals and micro nutrients to super charge it, and super charged it is. This compost I add to my outdoor beds, and my garden vegetables blow people away, and my compost is the secret.

For pots and planters, and for my first indoor grow in my small 8 x 8 greenhouse, which you can check out in my grow diary, I mix 3 gallons at a time in a 5 gallon bucket of 2/3 Vermont Compost Fort Vee organic potting soil and 1/3 my compost, with a cup of worm castings and some vermiculite thrown in.

Those pots are loaded with all the best that nature can provide as a medium for a plant to grow in. That’s only my opinion about soil, and I don’t discount what works for anyone else. There’s always more than one way to skin a cat.
But don’t count soil out.
you're absolutely correct, for outdoor. i classify greenhouses as outdoor as well, they're not confined spaces within a house, at least not ime. Sure sunrooms are a thing but they're not greenhouses. That compost you have sounds excellent, i do similar for my vegetable gardens on top of doing KNF inputs to really drive the microbiome into overdrive. We produce some amazing veggies, wish we had a greenhouse so we could go year round. The cannabis we grow outdoors also does reasonably well and that's always in soil as well simply due to cost efficiency and availability. Trying to keep a reservoir cooled enough outdoors with how hot it's been getting in the deep summer months here in the PNW would simply be untenable, and plants don't want 90F+ solution being poured on their roots.

my contention with soil is entirely based on what 95% of indoor growers will grab from their local garden center, and the fact that soil is shoved down peoples throats non-stop as the easiest media for new growers. I hold this contention due to my personal experience both in the decades being active on forums, and trying different techniques in my own grows, I've found soil simply has too many footguns that aren't as readily available in other medias. Most of the new growers that show up on forums seeking help are in soil and have committed multiple mistakes that are entirely inherent to soil like overwatering, overfertilizing, bad soil to begin with, lack of cleanliness, etc. Sure, the last part is entirely possible in any grow room but soil definitely adds to the chore list and tends to harbor more pests ime.

Further soil is significantly harder to correct -- if one is building a soil, they better get it right from the start or they'll spend an entire grow trying to correct issues. If they buy soil, then there's a whole other laundry list of issues that can crop up such as poor drainage, bad nutrient ratios, pests, etc. If a grower overfertilizes in soil, it can take weeks to correct the problem and by then they'll have likely drowned the organic cultures and introduced anaerobic conditions to the media results in further problems. If they overwatered, then if the plant manages to survive, it'll still be weeks before any corrections are realized. These are things that inert medias don't suffer from.

i don't intend this to be a blanket statement in any way, shape, or form. It's just an opinion I have and you're absolutely correct in that there are thousands of ways to achieve a successful harvest. I just don't think soil is the easiest method for new growers despite that being what the choir constantly sings.
 
SofaKingHigh

SofaKingHigh

705
143
Lol I love all the people that have no clue what they are talking about. Tobh is 100% correct and knows what he’s talking about. Outdoor sure soil is great because you have the sun to light it and the sky is the limit. Indoor there is not even a debate between soil vs coco or hydro set up. If you say different you clearly have no experience growing indoors but want to pretend after a grow you know it all. This forum is by far the best group of growers on the internet especially in the area of coco and hydro. Go be a keyboard warrior on jokeitup or some other forum.
 
Dothraki

Dothraki

1,523
263
✌️ Anyone pushing GMO should ignore me🤣
Theres nothing wrong with GMOs, it’s how the whole world is able to go to a store and buy pineapples, potatoes, carrots....every single food you eat. Without genetically modified crops you would not be able to farm on such large scales. Also brings bigger fruits, more productive plants, and in SOME cases better tasting food. Although I still prefer a wild strawberry to a store bought one.
Nature>Man
100% AGREE! And since Man = Nature....both would be correct. But I will say this, Nature is not always going to push the plant to produce all those awesome terpenes and trichomes. That’s something Man did, but I guess since we ARE nature...it still fits. I would say for cannabis, conscious choosing, breeding and forcing the plant to do what we want to produce the results we desire, Man definitely has the edge up over random events.
 
B

BoboGrower0813

49
18
you're absolutely correct, for outdoor. i classify greenhouses as outdoor as well, they're not confined spaces within a house, at least not ime. Sure sunrooms are a thing but they're not greenhouses. That compost you have sounds excellent, i do similar for my vegetable gardens on top of doing KNF inputs to really drive the microbiome into overdrive. We produce some amazing veggies, wish we had a greenhouse so we could go year round. The cannabis we grow outdoors also does reasonably well and that's always in soil as well simply due to cost efficiency and availability. Trying to keep a reservoir cooled enough outdoors with how hot it's been getting in the deep summer months here in the PNW would simply be untenable, and plants don't want 90F+ solution being poured on their roots.

my contention with soil is entirely based on what 95% of indoor growers will grab from their local garden center, and the fact that soil is shoved down peoples throats non-stop as the easiest media for new growers. I hold this contention due to my personal experience both in the decades being active on forums, and trying different techniques in my own grows, I've found soil simply has too many footguns that aren't as readily available in other medias. Most of the new growers that show up on forums seeking help are in soil and have committed multiple mistakes that are entirely inherent to soil like overwatering, overfertilizing, bad soil to begin with, lack of cleanliness, etc. Sure, the last part is entirely possible in any grow room but soil definitely adds to the chore list and tends to harbor more pests ime.

Further soil is significantly harder to correct -- if one is building a soil, they better get it right from the start or they'll spend an entire grow trying to correct issues. If they buy soil, then there's a whole other laundry list of issues that can crop up such as poor drainage, bad nutrient ratios, pests, etc. If a grower overfertilizes in soil, it can take weeks to correct the problem and by then they'll have likely drowned the organic cultures and introduced anaerobic conditions to the media results in further problems. If they overwatered, then if the plant manages to survive, it'll still be weeks before any corrections are realized. These are things that inert medias don't suffer from.

i don't intend this to be a blanket statement in any way, shape, or form. It's just an opinion I have and you're absolutely correct in that there are thousands of ways to achieve a successful harvest. I just don't think soil is the easiest method for new growers despite that being what the choir constantly sings.
I apologize. I didn’t mean to characterize your initial perspective as a blanket statement. Poor wording. My bad.

And I totally agree with most of what you said as the inherent difficulties with soil - being crappy to start with, over-fertilizing, infected with insects, and several of the other challenges you mentioned.

But one of the things I do like about soil that I didn’t mention was how forgiving it is in the area of feeding the plants during their various stages, especially during flowering. When I start with a medium that has been perfectly balanced by mother nature for me, containing all the minerals and micro nutrients etc. etc., all I have to do for my plants is weekly minimal nutrient supplements, and I can be conservative because even if I underfeed it, the soil richness itself is my back up, so I can’t go too far wrong.

I feed them with a flowering compost tea that I air bubble for 36 hours, made from purified water, my compost, worm castings, humeric, molasses, azomite, potassium pellets, Cal/phos, and bone meal. Alternating weeks I’ll give them an Epson salt drink, or some other appropriate compost tea. The plants never seem toget too far out of whack that way and seem to be pretty well fed.

It seems to me that so many people have problems trying to balance all their nutrient requirements because it’s more like chemical formulas, which can be difficult to understand for many people, and easy to mess up.
Good soil is like a back up system.

But as you point out, if you consider a Greenhouse as outdoors, it is probably a whole different ball game indoors, and I am sure you know that game far better than I do.
 
B

BoboGrower0813

49
18
so why you quote me and not say anything? there's nothing factual about what you said, especially if you haven't tried anything different.

In nearly 20 years of growing, I've used damn near every medium there is and soil has historically, and repeatedly, proven to be subpar to promix, coco, and hydro (of different methods). The easiest by far has proven to be rockwool, only seconded by recirculating dutch buckets. Let me explain why my opinion is what it is.

In soil:

You are lucky to see veg rates even half as fast as in a soilless medium. FACT.

You're more likely to have bugs and general filth around your grow area. FACT.

You can't rapidly resolve fuck ups because it retains water like a chick on her period. FACT.

You're more likely to overwater and completely fuck up because nothing changes quickly in soil. FACT.

You have new growers with maybe a couple harvests under their belts and that buddy that "grows organic trees outdoors" that think they know their shit, when IN FACT they don't.

Now, in soilless/hydro:

You have full control over whatever is going on in the media. FACT.

You can quickly address lockouts, deficiencies, and other common issues with visible results within days, not weeks. FACT

You have almost zero chance of overwatering. FACT.

You stand a better than not chance of having pests introduced to your environment by a subpar, money hungry organization hustling basically different kinds of animal shit with some compost, peat and bark mixed in. FACT.

You get exponential growth rates cutting down seed-to-harvest. FACT.

You end up with a cleaner burning, higher quality product. FACT.

Now if you can change my mind on any of the above with valid proof aside from shouting an opinion with no backing other than cognitive dissonance and an insistance on being a childish troll, I'm all ears. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut and don't @ me. I'm working on not being a dick and rather drop you on ignore than deal with a keyboard warrior that hasn't added any value to this forum at this point.
Every point you mentioned has validity and can be true in some and maybe even most, but not all cases.

For people who understand and have amassed the experience and comfort level two diagnose and then counter correct any issues with their magic chemistry sets, then more power to them, whatever works for them personally they should use.

But sometimes simple is best, and with all the new Growers now trying to figure out how to exercise our new freedoms to grow our own weed, sometimes making it more complicated and daunting can be counterproductive.

Most people have some familiarity with growing something in soil, either as an indoor house plant person or an outdoor flower or a vegetable gardener. The easiest transition into growing your own weed, and the least expensive, can be the soil route for many.

It’s just a matter of there’s no such thing as one size fits all. There’s always more than one way to skin a cat.
 
CTABB83

CTABB83

188
43
Back to #5 - Your 3 x 3 will make a fine veg tent when you upgrade to a larger tent. lol.

P.S. I can completely fill a 5 x 5 with 5 plants so keep that in mind when looking at upgrade options.
To add to tent size, this is my first attempt growing and getting a 2x2 was a mistake lol. I only planned on 1 plant as I have to be hush hush. And having 1 plant in 7 gall fabric pot along with a carbon filter for when the smell starts leaves little room. Lol
 
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