Organic vs. Synthetic (Cleaner High)

Bugeye said:

My personal belief is that organic weed produces a cleaner high than weed grown with synthetic (salt based) nutrients, all else equal. My belief is of course biased by my preference for organic growing techniques so I'm wondering what others think?

I'm defining a clean high as leaving you feeling good on all fronts while you are high and as you come down. No anxiety, no headaches, no undesired side effects. I'm not speaking to flavor or smoothness of smoke, just the high.

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I enjoy organically grown more on average and in general because of the sustainability and because it typically produces a more consistently high quality.

But I have to add this because it is not impossible to grow absolute top shelf with chemicals.

I have had amazing chemically grown stuff run by a guy who REALLY knew what he was doing. Easily comparable to the best organic I've had. But, you rarely see that. And that guy has been running the same strain for many many years. And he went out of his way to figure out what it really needed and did a lot of hard work to feed it what it really wanted in the proper ratios and he adjusts his formula from week to week. It's pretty seriously hardcore. A friend of mine recently took me to see his setup, it's sort of like the vert tower of power Heath Robinson has a thread on here about. This guy gets amazing results and it's so automatic for him and well automated. Super impressive. He's made a living off 4000 watts of lights and a pretty good one at that supplying some of the dispensaries around here.

Flip side, I've seen amazing results with organics the very first time in the ground with no fucking around necessary. And I've seen organics perform as well as guys running hydro setups when the soil is really humming and teeming with life - as well as well buffered with all the nutrients the girls need - a relatively easy process to get going even for a rookie.

But I will say that the type of high really depends more on genetics than medium.

I have a Black Widow I grow organically that will make your head spin. If you're prone to anxiety you better be prepared because you will surely experience it. That's more genetics though. It will burn nice and smooth and it tastes nice and smells awesome.

hyroot said:

flushing doesn't remove nutes. It only removes salts. Those chemicals stay in the buds. Your body absorbs the chemicals when you inhale or digest those flowers. The chems build up over time and cause disease because your body can't purge them out or break them down. If you argue this. That will show how inept you truly are. But you probably will since you like to troll. So good day!!

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The plant is capable of storing nutrients for sure, but it does this as a means of survival and does it organically or not. The real difference you're seeing between the two methods is that a well built RLOS soil will basically give the plant what it needs when it needs it and there won't be any major fuck ups because nature is doing the work for you. With chemicals you have to figure out what the plant wants and when it wants it. And not every plant from a pack of seeds likes the same thing necessarily forget about different varieties.

Makes getting a plant well dialed in quite a bit more difficult. It's also easy to overfeed and if you do that you can't fix it later. It's noticeable.

But you can, with absolute certainty, grow with chemicals and produce absolutely the best quality possible from any variety. It is significantly more difficult. Not to mention how rough on the environment these things can be. So I always encourage going organic. In some ways it's more work, but once you are established it becomes quite easy to take care of. I suspect you already knew that part though

unwine99 said:

It is my personal belief that your personal belief is purely a placebo effect. But hey, perception is reality so smoke up that organic weed -- no hating coming from my way.

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It's certainly possible. But in my experience a well built organic soil will grow amazing plants consistently whereas many of the nutrient formulas are pretty generic and don't always produce as healthy plants as consistently simply because it takes some time to learn how your girl really likes to be fed. I think there's definitely a placebo effect for some though. I've seen it demonstrated many times over actually on that Penn and Tellar special.

Mind you you can grow crappy organic buds too if you aren't patient and don't build a soil properly, but it's pretty hard to fuck it up IMO.

A lot of organically grown produce in the supermarket is grown in questionable soil IMO..

hell lettuce in mexico is grown with human feces and all the potential problems that come with it (contaminated with all kinds of stuff, parasites etc and it's not exactly a complete source of plant nutrition - it lacks many things that greatly help especially since many humans have terrible diets).

chuck estevez said:

I grow organically with L.E.D lights, my weed is FAR superior than your synthetic hps crap.LMFAO

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While I love the new COBs and their efficiency, HPS + UV has produced the best bud I have seen. I'm sure LED + UV would be amazing too. Maybe even a little better, but I'd have to see a real scientifically done head to head. I suspect the quality difference is marginal and possibly pretty subjective as well. Certain terpenes might be more plentiful under the HPS spectrum whereas maybe something else is more plentiful under the LEDs (different terpenes etc - I've grown enough of the same cuts in different setups to know that environment plays a huge role in the final product and lights are included in that).

SPLFreak808 said:

Not all people agree but i notice it too. I even noticed upon my first organic harvest. The smell is cleaner and more fruit like, you can smoke a whole eighth and not have a dry throat after, the taste is even different. Not as strong but definetly smells much more fresh. I smoke alot, and i have 1 day off a week. That day off will rape a quarter from one of my jars if im cleaning all day. I cant smoke a quarter of most chemical shit in one day without a dry throat for a few hours after that. Organic doesnt do that and this whole time i thought it was because i dont flush.

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I think this is more due to the problem of many chemical fertilizers, feed schedules and charts being so generic. It's easy to overfeed and it's also easy to do it and have it not be completely obvious it's even just a bit. If you do that it causes damage that is irreversible and always noticeable IMO.

whitebb2727 said:

Yea but how many people did it take for them to film that result? 9 out of 10 could have tasted the difference and they show you the one that didn't.

Its a comedy show. Its all perception.

I raise chickens. They run free and eat bugs. They taste better so do the eggs. We raise grass fed cattle. You can't buy beef like that. We raise a garden with manure, compost, and castings.

It all taste better. Some call it placebo. Ill say its more the fact the closer to nature you live, the better you feel.

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I think it's more the reward of knowing you did it yourself and I'd call it something other than a placebo, it's also significantly fresher and that isn't a placebo either. Organics doesn't automatically mean quality either, if a farmer is slacking on keeping his soil healthy either through rotation or amendments it can go down hill relatively quick. Then you have plants that are lacking. If you're a commercial farmer running a corporate farm and it isn't your own the chances of the work inputs going in being absolute top quality compared to something you're doing yourself for yourself, especially when considering costs, I think is a lot less likely. Just less pride in the work. It's just a job. Like commerically grown weed vs boutique small crop well taken care of stuff.

I really don't think you're experiencing a placebo effect at all.

whitebb2727 said:

I don't really care about those studies. When you connect to nature and develope a symbiotic relationship your life is better for it.

Now on to the studies. Even though the government sets a acceptable level of pesticides and other toxins that does not mean its safe. There are things that the body can purge quickly. Even worse are most of the man made synthetic chems. It is not the one dose that hurts you. Its the fact those chems stay in the body and build up over time. That is the danger.

Now the test that show no nutritional difference in organic and none organic produce. There are studies that show if you go back 70-100 years that a lot of foods had higher nutritional value. It would stand to reason that it would take many years of organic farming to reverse that.

I like my connection to nature. I hunt, fish, raise a garden and animals. My kids are involved in all aspects. It is raw, it is visceral. It is the way of life.

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This is another factor, we've destroyed our soil. And farmers trying to get back to organics will find that it's going to take many years to build up a properly healthy and robust soil. Many rotated crops, maybe even outside inputs.

st0wandgrow said:

I've used ebb and flow tables in the past. I'm growing my first DWC bucket right now, 5 weeks in to flower. Dude, it takes no skillz. I could train the monkey in my avatar to do it. lol

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I think growing with chemicals and getting your plant what it really needs consistently and not going overboard on something with the relatively limited ratios available is pretty difficult. Well, maybe difficult is the wrong word, but time consuming as it's a bit of trial and error as your first run will almost certainly not be perfect and a giant PITA compared to the alternative.

foreverflyhi said:

Well then my good friend,

I can't argue with that, especially if I don't have the scientific research to back it up.
Geuss all I can say is, (yes a smart ass reply)
Thousands of growers here in California have been doing it wrong all this time, because in my 18 years of smoking, i never had a hydro herb that made me go wow. And yes, I do my research before i purchase any herb.
Btw I'm not talking about just one part of California, I'm talking about north, east, west and southern California, the state known for some of the best herb in the world... Want to clarify that because I know where I get my herb, and how it's grown.
heheheheh sound snotty and privledgesd I do
Don't worry out of staters, we are losing our belt soon due to no water lol

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Most chemical growers do do it wrong for the record.

OGEvilgenius said:

I think this is more due to the problem of many chemical fertilizers, feed schedules and charts being so generic. It's easy to overfeed and it's also easy to do it and have it not be completely obvious it's even just a bit. If you do that it causes damage that is irreversible and always noticeable IMO.

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Im not sure what you're saying? If you let her cannibalize herself late in flower even if she had nute burn during early flower then she is still ruined?

SPLFreak808 said:

Im not sure what you're saying? If you let her cannibalize herself late in flower even if she had nute burn during early flower then she is still ruined?

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It does actual damage to the plant. It's not ruined (subjective) but it will always taste odd in my experience. The plant picks up nutrients it doesn't need, stores them in places it doesn't normally. You notice it in the smoke IMO and most chemical shit is overfertilized even if only slightly. The plants can be pretty forgiving. Cannabis especially.

This is partly my opinion, it may not be the complete truth as it's something I haven't worried about in a while and as a result haven't researched much (mostly I've been reading about genetics). I should probably study what actually happens. I have been meaning to pick up a botany university text. It's more just my experience and hypothesis.

OGEvilgenius said:

It does actual damage to the plant. It's not ruined but it will always taste odd in my experience. The plant picks up nutrients it doesn't need, stores them in places it doesn't normally. You notice it in the smoke IMO and most chemical shit is overfertilized even if only slightly. The plants can be pretty forgiving. Cannabis especially.

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Ah well this is something new! Also regarding Synthetic fertilizer you're saying the ratios on the bottle are usually lower than whats actually inside? Nice info, im going to try and test this next time because i live for comparisons haha. Good day

SPLFreak808 said:

Ah well this is something new! Also regarding Synthetic fertilizer you're saying the ratios on the bottle are usually lower than whats actually inside? Nice info, im going to try and test this next time because i live for comparisons haha. Good day

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No, I'm just saying they're a one size fits all solution when plants don't really work like that. Some lineups like GH's 3 part leave more room to adjust things, but most folks follow the schedule they provide to some degree.

Sorry for spamming up the thread also, I am just not very good at multitasking and/or quoting I tend to get distracted unless I focus pretty hard on what I'm doing (in this case typing).

I'm a bit of an aspie.. pretty mild case (yes diagnosed.. I guess it's just all called autism these days but there are dramatic differences between people with it and most people don't know I have it unless they're pretty perceptive or know what to look for... Bill Gates is likely one as an example but most folks wouldn't know it... not that I'm anything like Bill Gates other than maybe sharing some tics and other sensitivities) but I definitely have a tendency to lose focus on things real easily so my apologies.

I also have a horrible tendency of posting before I really should so I wind up adding thoughts to things as they come to me so I don't spam up the thread even worse... apologies for that too.

Plus there were a lot of good thoughts to respond to or help clarify some things. These are some of my own theories, but a lot of it is based on the science of it all.

hyroot said:

flushing doesn't remove nutes. It only removes salts. Those chemicals stay in the buds. Your body absorbs the chemicals when you inhale or digest those flowers. The chems build up over time and cause disease because your body can't purge them out or break them down. If you argue this. That will show how inept you truly are. But you probably will since you like to troll. So good day!!

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lol dam i wonder then why everyone

hyroot said:

flushing doesn't remove nutes. It only removes salts. Those chemicals stay in the buds. Your body absorbs the chemicals when you inhale or digest those flowers. The chems build up over time and cause disease because your body can't purge them out or break them down. If you argue this. That will show how inept you truly are. But you probably will since you like to troll. So good day!!

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OK what n the fuck did i just read i think i just found my signature lmfn@off

Darth Vapour said:

lol dam i wonder then why everyone


OK what n the fuck did i just read i think i just found my signature lmfn@off

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I did say LOL didn't I? LOL

@hyroot, please explain the difference between organic and synthetic IRON, COPPER,BORON,NICKEL.......etc


then please explain how the plant knows the difference between organic or synthetic NPK, thanks

It's all about the microbes, yet no one ever acknowledges this. lol The threads are all about chem vs synthetic. Meanwhile no one has microbes on the job, but many simply think they do.

Well Rrog your partially right, owe but i disagree it appears now that most tree Huggers and there dogs, are thinking that more Microbes are needed to do the job its not the 100 million - 1 Billion microbes are in one teaspoon of good soil something mother nature over millions of years decided for equilibrium,, but We no better mother nature is wrong we need the ratio of 5 million to 3 Billion and especially for marijuana right

Based on what I have read in this thread, I think my perception that my organic weed produces a cleaner high than the synthetic stuff I've grown in the past likely speaks to the fact that I'm getting plants closer to their genetic potential with organics than I did with synthetics. My synthetic nute grows were indoors and my organic have been under the sun, so differences in light quality could also factor in. Anyway, I appreciated all thoughts.