Now that you’ve gotten a few grows under your belt, maybe you might help us to understand your methods. So what medium do you prefer, soil or hydro? Take the poll below!
The medium/method I prefer is:
- Soil
- Hydroponics
0 voters
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I like growing in both but I prefer hydro. I like the immediacy of hydro and knowing exactly what I’ve given the plant. I like that I can recover a plant as quickly as a problem arises, and now that I have a few grows under my belt, I feel pretty confident I can fix just about any problem in short order.
In soil I actually (ironically) feel more disconnected from the plant… I tend to treat issues in soil like hydro… flush and reset.
I primarily use dirt for outdoors now. I switched from keeping my moms in dirt to using coco/perlite instead, which coincides with my hydro feeding schedule better.
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Where’s soilless in the vote? That’s my preferred medium.
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Probably for this, the type of soil-less you do might be closest to soil.
You haven’t graduated to flood and drain tables yet, have you?
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No, and won’t. With my back and not having “leak” support, I will stay away from hydro except dwc until Mike retires and can help a little more.
And my opinion is that soilless is more like hydro than soil 
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Yes, that is right, it is all about how you feed it.
Think about Black Thumb Betty and all that chaos, at first, lol.
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And that’s almost every time, lol
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I remember well, lol
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Speaking of which, @Growernick apparently grows in coco with highly organic amendments and is growing living soil. Hootie might want to venture over and have a look.
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Are there journals here? Where would one find that, specifically?
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@pomeroymc would you like to share with us what it is you like about using coco over soil in your style of growing?
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I don’t officially use coco, but the reason I originally switched to ProMix HP, which is primarily sphagnum peat moss and perlite, was due to the fact that I burnt my first grow pretty bad not having a clue that hot soil might still have some active ingredients during the flowering phase.
One thing I like is how easy it is to water to approximately 15%-20% runoff which provides mini flushes each time, but the biggest benefit for me is having the control of what my plant gets and when.
I gotta admit, I also like that I kind of get hydro benefits with the rapid growth I see in ProMix HP versus soil.
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Nice! Good Drain To Waste practice.
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Thanks, yeah, just not an actual table, lol
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The chaos was with others not understanding my method. 
My organic Promix grows kick butt, thank you very much, contrary to what that stupid Promix video would try to tell me. 
My problem was with spritzing my seedlings’ leaves, not with my medium. Lesson very well learned.
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I chose soil, but I grow in a mostly soilless medium consisting of 50% Promix BX, 25% perlite, and 25% FFHF. I like having the control of a soilless medium, while at the same time being able to use organic soil methods with great success. Incidentally, using Earth Juice and tons of microbes allows a pH range of 6.2-7.0 in my medium.
I want to switch to coco, eventually, solely for environmental reasons (digging up peat releases so much carbon). Definitely not next season, but maybe in 2021.
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Hey @Growernick… you know I am diving deep into living soil… do you have any suggestions…possibly where I might be lacking in your opinion… I am just waiting to start composting which is about 3-4 weeks away… by dropping straw down and top dressing with bokashi… worm beds are when I get around to it…lol…
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I love ebb and flow. Just finished my first dirt/soil indoor grow and was extremely impressed.
Dirt gives you some wiggle room imo, but slower to see improvements if something’s off compared to ebb
Packee
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If you have not yet set up a worm bin, I strongly urge you to start there. You’ll be amazed at how much work a red wriggler can do for you
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Yes I usually get worms locally (red wriggler specifically)… I am using castings and a month away maybe from getting a worm bed and vermiposting… but thank you for the advice…
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