Sorry but I’ve not met too many very informed people at hydro shops. Just folks pushing product. I like to do my own research but that’s me.
Early on I had a mentor. His name was Chimera. He helped me more than anyone in my early days. I also took great advice from subcool and breeder steve. But for some reason I hit it off with chimera and we talked daily for years. My suggestion is to find someone who you respect and befriend them. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Well said!
if you want the manufactures opinion, you go to a hydro store, where the staff will repeat what the sales agent told them in most cases, simply because thats all they have to go on. Not that this means you are getting screwed. Some of us make nutrients and we grow MJ with them and we make ourselves available at our own cost. Some really do care about your plants and your successes and wont run from failures, but will provide ongoing after care.
Lots of hydro stores dont even have any growing plants, especially containing MJ since its often illegal to germinate the seeds if not to support the growth via bottles and other shit to buy.
Couple this wobbly legal situation to a lack of serious and unbiased testing systems with MJ, both at vendor and store level, and the missing 1st hand experiences with the hundreds ./ thousands of products in the space, add this to the many producers of nutrients etc providing incentives to resellers to push sales, its certainly a risk and its own minefield.
I think people understand that a business has one reason to exist, that is to make money. Never the less, their are scales of good and bad among the market here, just are there is anywhere, this is true in the support of MJ.
Across many markets, we the consumers are the reason we the consumers get screwed. Just look at Facebook, look at how it treats the millions of its users, does this stop the users, no it doesnt!
We cant blame the conspiracy world for the world, but we can look hard at ourselves and understand how we perpetuate our own misery generally. If we can get our heads around the facts, that its us fucking us up, and not some 1%, then we might also grow better plants and not blame someone else when things go wrong.
Only go to stores with growing plants if you are going to adopt this go to store method of searching data, again you have to trust the store owner has your interests at heart. There are many really good ones to counter the many shitty ones, but it is a case of luck depending on your zip code.
Better to follow your advice to research yourself. Once you know, no one can pull the wool over your eyes :-)