While it's on my mind (and before I tear off to go do more harvesting), I'm going to bust a few marijuana growing myths, for those just joining this thread.
Critical thinking 101 - mind the buzzwords - "hydro" ain't "tha bomb":
* There's no difference whatsoever between the resin/THC yield of a particular strain raised in hydroponics as opposed to a good soil mix. Plants raised in hydro will develop more vigorously and will gain overall size faster only due to greater levels of oxygen supplied to the roots. You'll get lots more bud out of hydro and it'll be quicker than soil in comparative development by a couple of weeks, but absent slower performance and lower yield, the THC you get from soil grown as opposed to hydro will be identical for any given strain.
MO and MO!
* MORE is almost NEVER better. Plants are not V8 engines, where more air & fuel always equals more output. With plants, there's 'too little,' 'just right' and 'dead.' MORE will get you in trouble every single time with nutrients/ferts and watering. The only things where more is ALWAYS better (up to a certain practical limit where 'more' makes no appreciable difference) is with luminous intensity applied to the plants and ventilation. You get more luminous intensity from a brighter light, not by putting more dim lights in the same area.
Beware snake oil.
* It's traditionally been hard to get good information about growing cannabis, but forums like this help the situation quite a lot. Makers exploit your ignorance to line their pockets. The vast majority of 'magic sauces' on sale in hydro shops are somewhere between utterly useless and harmful. They are profit makers for the hydro shop, not grand and magical plant growing adjuncts. It absolutely amazes me what a cool looking package label will do for sales. Since most dope growers are young men, magic sauce sellers often leverage the 'high performance' image of popular motor oil packaging. There's not much between the appearance of a jug of Castrol oil and most products in a hydro shop.
Before you buy anything, aside from deadset basics like nutes and H2O2, search the web for real scientific botanical evidence from independent researchers (preferably peer-reviewed writings from the horticultural colleges of big universities) that the active ingredient actually has some benefit. In hydroponic systems, there's zero benefit to adding any carbohydrate, sugars (including molasses), etc- and in fact, these 'carbo load' sauces will cause probs in non-organic hydro ops. Carbs are great for feeding bacteria, mould, fungi, etc. but cannabis plants won't absorb them at all. There should be no organisms (beneficial or otherwise) in a non-organic hydro op aside from the cannabis plants. Don't get me started on crap containing beeswax and brewers' yeast.
Drinking water from your tap is great for hydro ops, chlorination is your friend. Chlorination suppresses pathogens in the pipes and will protect an open tank of nutes for 2-4 days, until the chlorine evaporates. My fully organic veggie patch out in my back yard gets most of its water out of the garden hose. In just one example, I've got a cherry tomato plant that is 11ft tall and threatening to get bigger. RO & distilled water are expensive wastes of time. Unless you have highly saline bore water, tapwater is just fine. In 20 years of growing, I've never seen a problem in a grow op caused by municipal water.
It's amazing how LITTLE you really need to grow great plants. Start with ONLY nutes, pH correction as required and H2O2. Once your op runs reliably- and you are able to tell the difference between problems caused by a new additive and a problem induced by a fault in the grow room's operation, THEN think about adding things, one by one and very carefully observing the plants for changes.
New growers should not try to innovate. Find an example of an op that's making great plants and copy it to the letter. If it works well for someone else, it'll work well for you.
If you have some problem in the op, go back to first principles. Make sure your op is providing the conditions it should be- don't rush out and buy some magic sauce to try to cure problems.
Last edited by Al B. Fuct; 04-15-2008 at 02:32 PM.
Reason: clarity
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