Flavor differences soil vs. hydro

Hi Sub,

First, I wanted to compliment you on your strains and success. You are clearly the “new school” of cannabis breeders, and your strains clearly show that! Please keep up the good work sir!

Another RIU member asked a question of you about soil vs. hydro, in which you answered that the plant does not know any difference. Yet I continue to see people pushing soil and organics nutrients as the elite growing style, citing better flavors.

So, what’s the real scoop? I am growing hydro, and have a run of Querkle in flower that should be ready in about 4 weeks. I use GH, following the Lucas formula for flower (0-8-16, 1300 ppm in RO water). The plants are beautiful, lush and healthy. My question is, providing both methods are fully flushed, is there ANY benefit in growing in soil, especially in terms of flavor?

BTW, I can apparently buy seeds faster than I can grow them. I have an extensive collection of TGA seeds, including Querkle (my first TGA grow), JTR, Qleaner, JC II, Agent Orange, Jilly Bean, Vortex, Apollo-13 BX, and Space Queen (Space Jill), as well as many other seeds from other breeders. While I currently grow using hydroponics because it’s relatively easy (I heard it called “growing by numbers”!), I also want to get the very best flavor and smoking experience possible. Do I need to change to soil to get that experience, or has the difference in flavors between the two methods been exaggerated?

Thank you in advance for your response!

Sliv

bumpity bump bump bump...

Good question. As a dirtbagger I would be interested in hearing some experianced opinions. I've only been growing a couple yrs and I had always reasoned that I was sacrificing a little yeild and time for better quality. Am I right??

https://www.rollitup.org/subcools-old-school-organics/271527-lets-run-some-tga-strains.html

Subcool, have you read this post? I sure would like to hear it from you directly what your opinion is.

THANK YOU!

I am performing an experiment right now with 1 week left til harvest. I have 3 hempy buckets(10 plants each 15 gal tub) running on lucas formula (gh micro and bloom). One of the buckets I've added fox farm big bloom which has a very low npk value so it only adds organics to the mix. I only applied the big bloom during flowering, also added it during flush watering.

conclusion so far.....

Size: No increases in yield

Looks: Appearance is very similar with organics having slightly more trichs

Smell: Definate difference in smell, analogy: The scent of the sythnetic fertilizer buds vs. synth/organic buds is like the smell of oranges vs. breaking open orange peels. the orange peel smells like oranges but also so much more and it kinda stings the nostrils.

Flavor: Haven't smoked it, will know at end of Feb after dry/cure. I'm sure there is a great chance of a difference in that too.



As for results of growing 100% organic, I don't have that experience.

I remember this debate back on Overgrow, I remember seeing that the hydro vs soil and the result was that the hydro produced more bud, and it also produced way more bubble hash. So flavors will change is the amount of THC and other CBN is changing. I remember the smoke report and he said it almost was like two different strains. As far as Organic vs Synthetic, organics is going to produce a higher grade medicine. You might not yield as much with organics, but that's what you are smoking. You have to think the molecules are moving from the medium to your flowers via the plant. Synthetic fertilizer is needed because without it we could not sustain the world's food supply.