Foxfarm or general organics?

Hey am looking at getting a starter kit..

Foxfarm dirty dozen starter $100
or
General organics go box starter $40

Are they the same or whiwhich do you suggest I get?

Neither of those are organic. Both salt based and full of chems and heavy metals. . If you want true organics then build your own soil.

anything from either company is crap.

Age Old Grow/Bloom and General Organics Cal Mag maybe some Bud Candy too

FF

CreamCannon said:

Hey am looking at getting a starter kit..

Foxfarm dirty dozen starter $100
or
General organics go box starter $40

Are they the same or whiwhich do you suggest I get?

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Any particular reason you feel the need to buy over-hyped, mass marketed chemicals passed off as organic as opposed to sourcing natural amendments and building your own recyclable soil mix?

DonPetro said:

Any particular reason you feel the need to buy over-hyped, mass marketed chemicals passed off as organic as opposed to sourcing natural amendments and building your own recyclable soil mix?

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Cause life is tough and people are lazier now more then ever >.>
I wish i cud mix my own soil, but i rent my house and theres not much space. Easier to jus buy bags of soil. Roots Organic is a good quality soil. I reuse soil when i can thou to cut on costs. Building your own is definitely the cheaper and higher quality route thou. Don see those to things together often

Sir KK

DonPetro said:

Any particular reason you feel the need to buy over-hyped, mass marketed chemicals passed off as organic as opposed to sourcing natural amendments and building your own recyclable soil mix?

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Cost efficiency, am on a budget and figured a kit will suffice for the first grow. I do intend on mixing my own soil in the future.

Funny, I made 8cu/ft of soil for less than 200$ and have enough amendments left to make another batch the same size. Tell me again how it's more cost efficient?

30$ for the peat moss, I got the rice hulls, 50lb bale for 8$, and local compost for 50c a pound. My amendment bill was just over 100$. So is it more a matter of the time it'll take to cook, or not being mentally ready for the prep work?

Inflation sir... I live in hawaii.. there's all of one hydroponic store here with limited stock and inflated prices. Most of the garden stores here are also pretty limited with shit like miracle gro.. I priced around what I could find here locally and everything else I searched online. Lotta places won't ship to hawaii.. and if they do the shipping costs are unreal. I initially tried to roll with a bag of ideal420 soil... the bag was only 50$ online... but the shipping alone was $150.... It's cheaper to do a kit till I have extra income to invest more in it.

HockeyBeard said:

Funny, I made 8cu/ft of soil for less than 200$ and have enough amendments left to make another batch the same size. Tell me again how it's more cost efficient?

30$ for the peat moss, I got the rice hulls, 50lb bale for 8$, and local compost for 50c a pound. My amendment bill was just over 100$. So is it more a matter of the time it'll take to cook, or not being mentally ready for the prep work?

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Touche. That is pretty tough. Sometimes you forget how nice you have it being in a metro area. Still, you might be able to find a couple things locally, and substitute certain materials with others that could work. Lava rock in place of perlite, things like that. Kelp should be in abundance. Rock salt probably is as well. Oyesters shells. Do a little research, you might have some local options, or other ways to create the same nutrient base with different amendments. Look into finding the main components of the soil locally (I'm sure there has to be a way to get compost in HI), and then you might not be hit as hard getting the smaller bags of things that don't weigh much shipped.

Fight for your limitations and your reward is you get to keep them...

P-

General Organics is fine. Good old Earth Juice Original is fine, too. The Bio-Weed kelp extract is made from...get this... seaweed. The Bio-Marine is made from real squid that were once alive.

The CaMg+ comes from... oyster shell, dolomite and some form of vinegar to solubilize it (all natural ingredients last I checked). The liquid humic acid comes from.... natural deposits of lignite (omg). And other products in the line are derived from such natural ingredients as, alfalfa, rock dust, soybean & kelp meals, plant extracts and mined minerals. No synthetic chelating agents or laboratory derived chemicals are in the product. Can't say the same for the Fox Farm line.

You know what I hate, though? When people who think they know things about a product or product line, just because it comes in a bottle (as opposed to what... a box or a pouch or fresh out the cow?) talk down to and discourage other would-be growers because they are apparently incapable of helping in any actual fashion... just because different people maybe need to do things... differently. But, oh they couldn't possibly understand- why can't everyone be just like them?

Do you go down to the bogs and harvest your own sphagnum? Perhaps you live in Singapore or somewhere you can collect your own coco fibers? Are we all supposed to live on a beach and be physically capable of diving for or otherwise collecting our own kelp? Not to mention taking that weekend trip out to the quarry to mine our own rock dusts? Not to mention, assuming everyone is even physically capable of mixing their own soil or doing any of that.

And hey, blackstrap comes in a bottle, fuck that. We should all be growing our own beets or cane and spinning our own sugar for molasses. Everybody has their own worm bins here right? Because ya know, if you didn't see it come out the worms ass, it can't possibly be organic! As for local compost, sure I could get it for free, but I wouldn't DARE put that crap on my garden. Know why? Local doesn't = quality. My town, for example, makes compost from autumn leaves, street debris and municipal yard waste. Composted ingredients also include dog shit, condoms, hypodermic needles, Styrofoam cups, FritoLay chip bags, and broken crack pipes. Now that's what I call organic!

captain google. Do some more research. We've already been.over this. There's chemicals in go not listed on the bottles. Like all the others. To source locally means to.support your local economy. Small businesses. Not big shady corporations. Homemade castings are better not because we see it comes out of a worms ass. But because all companies feed their worms next to nothing. Mostly feed them cardboard. So.store bought castings have very little if any nutrient value. Of course there will be shitty compost at some places. Don't buy it from the city. Buy from a nursery or farm supply.. Geez. with molasses as long as its preservative free , it should be good. I buy only one brand... So..

Captain of misinterpretations and he who is unaware of the premise of sarcasm, indeed we have: http://rollitup.org/t/vegan-organics-aka-veganics-with-matt-rize.364864/page-125#post-9977525

But you're right. If you can't keep your own worms, don't even THINK about trying to grow "organically".

Maybe some day you'll wake up and realize it isn't about what is "better". It's about what other people are capable of, what their actual needs are, and it's about saying fuck you to your pompous "my way only" interpretation of organics, or growing in living soil. I mean shit no offense but you can't even interpret the ODA Heavy Metals database correctly, the way it was meant to be interpreted. Instead you imagine that it provides information that it simply doesn't, and ignore completely the fact that certain natural amendments have more heavy metals than stuff that comes in a bottle... and that nobody ADDED THEM.

Then you go and use these misinterpretations to talk shit about products you've never even used, and say fuck a company just because it's "a corporation". Well, so is PBS.

Sorry, but if someone wants to grow, and grow in living soil, and their head spins when people say "no no no if you really wanna be organic you have to...". As long as someone even fathoms growing for them self, who am I to give them a hard time just because they don't want to break their fucking back doing it? And if they ask something simple like "Fox Farms or General Organics", I'm going to say "General Organics" because in my humble opinion it works, is conducive to feeding soil\microbes, is a complete line and doesn't contain any of the synthetic chelating agents (EDTA), ammonium nitrate, or other ingredients which are ACTUALLY LISTED ON FOX FARM FERTILIZER BOTTLES.

And be sure to buy your compost from the corner nursery or farm supply store... because we all know places like that always make their own stuff and don't ever buy it from, I don't know, a wholesaler or perhaps some sort of CORPORATION.

You should totally have your own forum, though.

We can call it "Hyroot and friends stuck up organics: I help you long time. LONG TIME!".

Hey do you happen to buy your molasses from Wholefoods? Did you know they're a... corporation?

Know who makes Plantation Blackstrap? Allied Old Enlgish in-fucking-corporated. Evil shit, huh?

Maybe we should tone down the language a little?

Why I don't use stuff out of a bottle? Because companies do stupid crap like using Potassium or Sodium Hydroxide to render kelp to a black powder, add water to reconstitute it, and boom! Seaweed extract! Think the pgr's and pgh's, auxins, etc survived that? This goes on and on, across the board.

I have used the General Organics line, and I think it sucks. I've tried fox farm, botanicare, GO, super soils, etc. Living soil worked for me the first time. Not only that, it gave better results the first time then other products that I tried perfecting for rounds and rounds. The problem is, in a mad dash to make as much money as possible, these companies are putting out some pretty crap products and labeling them ‘for organics’. Mykos powders with 2 million spores of trichoderma? No thanks.

So I don't promote a living soil because I'm pompous or holier than thou, I promote it because it works and gives a superior end result to anything I've tried. I love the ROLS threads because people take the time to research what goes into their soils. Agree or disagree, we all learn. If people are too lazy to read or to do some of work then it’s their loss.


Peace!
P-

Nullis said:

You should totally have your own forum, though.

We can call it "Hyroot and friends stuck up organics: I help you long time. LONG TIME!".

Hey do you happen to buy your molasses from Wholefoods? Did you know they're a... corporation?

Know who makes Plantation Blackstrap? Allied Old Enlgish in-fucking-corporated. Evil shit, huh?

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The only thing I ever bought at whole foods is barley seed. One time about 30 min ago. Barley seed is very hard to find. I usually get brer rabbit molasses. Lately I've been getting locally made molasses from a date farm. They grow other shit too.


every sunday at the farmer market there a girl who sells her homemade molasses too. its the off season so the farmers market booths don't show up for another month. They are closed from june - mid nov

We're not stuck up. We're realistic. you want organic. Then build a soil. No bottle will produce an organic grow.


You should start a forum called Nullis and the haters. A place where you can hate on everything everybody does and argue all day long with out anything to back up any claims.

Nullis said:

Captain of misinterpretations and he who is unaware of the premise of sarcasm, indeed we have: http://rollitup.org/t/vegan-organics-aka-veganics-with-matt-rize.364864/page-125#post-9977525

But you're right. If you can't keep your own worms, don't even THINK about trying to grow "organically".

Maybe some day you'll wake up and realize it isn't about what is "better". It's about what other people are capable of, what their actual needs are, and it's about saying fuck you to your pompous "my way only" interpretation of organics, or growing in living soil. I mean shit no offense but you can't even interpret the ODA Heavy Metals database correctly, the way it was meant to be interpreted. Instead you imagine that it provides information that it simply doesn't, and ignore completely the fact that certain natural amendments have more heavy metals than stuff that comes in a bottle... and that nobody ADDED THEM.

Then you go and use these misinterpretations to talk shit about products you've never even used, and say fuck a company just because it's "a corporation". Well, so is PBS.

Sorry, but if someone wants to grow, and grow in living soil, and their head spins when people say "no no no if you really wanna be organic you have to...". As long as someone even fathoms growing for them self, who am I to give them a hard time just because they don't want to break their fucking back doing it? And if they ask something simple like "Fox Farms or General Organics", I'm going to say "General Organics" because in my humble opinion it works, is conducive to feeding soil\microbes, is a complete line and doesn't contain any of the synthetic chelating agents (EDTA), ammonium nitrate, or other ingredients which are ACTUALLY LISTED ON FOX FARM FERTILIZER BOTTLES.

And be sure to buy your compost from the corner nursery or farm supply store... because we all know places like that always make their own stuff and don't ever buy it from, I don't know, a wholesaler or perhaps some sort of CORPORATION.

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I agree with a lot of this.

IMO we all have a vested interest in turning people on to organics. The planet is on fire, and if people can be shown a more enviornmentally friendly way to grow/garden, then we all benefit from that. To me, the best way to convince people of this is not to ridicule them. You can help someone, and show them some different ideas without being condescending. I've participated in a couple organic forums, and I always end up leaving (or getting banned) because of the collective nose-in-the-air vibe I get. It's very off-putting, and does nothing to move the ball further down the field if converting people to organcs is your aim. If dick measuring is your goal, then stay the course.

Sometimes change is incremental. I don't feel that something like the GO line is the best option, but I see no problems with people using organic bottled products. If they are truly interested in organics then they will continue to read/research and eventually come to the same conclusions that most of us do. Making your own castings and soil is cheapest, best, most enviornmentally friendly way of going about it.

Pattahabi said:

Why I don't use stuff out of a bottle? Because companies do stupid crap like using Potassium or Sodium Hydroxide to render kelp to a black powder, add water to reconstitute it, and boom! Seaweed extract! Think the pgr's and pgh's, auxins, etc survived that? This goes on and on, across the board.

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Well, are you a chemist? If not how would you know if they do or don't?
And, the GO "Kelp Extract" is actually... er... green.

But anyways, I am familiar with the use of KOH to extract humic acids out of compost or lignite. These are used as solvents and may not actually be in the finished product. Know where Potassium hydroxide can come from? A mine. Just like rock dusts. The kelp I usually, use, though comes from a bag and is raw kelp. I just don't think I am the shit because I use the raw stuff that comes in bag, as opposed to the stuff that comes in a bottle.

And I'll use whatever the fuck language I want, because I am tired of straw men and bullshit and pretentiousness and tin foil hats. Guess what every organic anything contains... CHEMICALS. SALTS. How the bitch do you think plants get nutrients? Organic stuff is just, like, magical? NO. MICROBES MAKE SALTS. Chemistry happens in organic soil, whether you like it or not.

And the definition of 'organic' has nothing to do with "came out of a bottle or not" or "did you build that soil yourself?". For all I give a slut, it's about microbes and plants working together to MAKE SALTS AS THE PLANT NEEDS THEM. I wont deny that certain companies make bad products, over-priced products... we have capitalism to thank for that. So, again did you go down to the bog and get that sphagnum? Did you travel to Singapore to get your own Coco? Did you witness your compost go through the thermophilic phase?
Then shut the fuck up. Most companies that produce earthworm castings feed them almost exclusively cardboard. That is probably true, and it's also why I don't buy castings from Unco Industries, and it's also a straw man. In fact, I have a worm bin. But none of that matters, and none of that means that ALL commercially produced castings are bad.

Hyroot can't even admit he's flat out wrong about the ODA database so I could give a fuck less what he has to say, about anything. They just go ahead and add arsenic to everything, you know, for the hell of it. Look, he uses (used to use?) Brer Rabbit Molasess... made by a CORPORATION. Called B&G Foods. Website: http://www.bgfoods.com/

"Promoting" something is different than saying "you're not doing it my way, thus not organic". Which is essentially what Hyroot is saying, and which is essentially pompous. What you people don't seem to understand is for a lot of people there is no corner nursery or farm supply store. There is no local rock dust, molasses, kelp, or anything and driving 100 miles to get it isn't local. Then you assume that if there is such a place or thing, it must be like it is where you're at... well it simply isn't.

Nullis said:

No synthetic chelating agents or laboratory derived chemicals are in the product. Can't say the same for the Fox Farm line.

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So, you're saying that these products require microbes to process them in order for them to be plant available?