Shrubs First
Well-Known Member
Not a prob dude, i can explain whatever. You are correct, that is a specific type
of Hydro, that you are talking about is Deep Water Culture, or DWC. And yes
you will be told to use Fox Farm when you start, I used it when I started, its
pretty much the go to fail safe for starting out, I mean your plants will look very
healthy if grown in Fox Farm. But I have come to recognize that Fox Farm flavor
and odor and I don't really enjoy it, it is very artificial, which is the best way to describe many of the ingredients in FFOF. Sunshine #4 is much much cleaner
than FFOF and you will have a much better flavor, the flavor of soil, with the
benefits of Hydro, although I would still say Roots Organics has a better soilless
mix.
Yes I water the plant as if it is Soil, near the beginning it was taking 5-6
days for my medium to completely dry out, and the plants stillll werent drooping. This isn't exactly ideal, which is why next time I will be adding more
Hydrocorals and Perlite, I would like to be able to water it every 3-4 days so I
can be more accurate with my nutrients..
The main difference between someone growing in soil and my grow is that there
is no decaying biomatter in my grow. Soils often have varying degrees of organic compounds in different states of decomposition.
My media was completely inert when I began this grow meaning if I want the
plants to have anything to eat besides pure h2o I would have to add it. The
problem with feeding organic in a media such as mine is that many people don't
realize your plant is unable to break down these organic foods. The roots don't
recognize them as food. The micro organisms and Mycorrhyzae and Trichoderma
see it as food, which makes it very very important to have thriving colonies
of them, they eat the organic materials and your plant in turn eats what the
micro organism basically shits out.. many feeding schedules nowadays include supplemention of these benificial
colonies, Fox Farm does not, which makes many of their organic claims seem
very fishy, if it were 100% organic where are their Mycorrhyzae supplementations
to help break that organic matter down?
And most Hydro media such as Rock wool, expanded clay pellets or perlite
can not host these beneficial organisms making organic hydro a complete
waste of time......................until COCO COIR! This stuff is inert, yet can
host allll of these benefical microbes. It is trully great stuff and very
inexpensive, I will probably never use anything else as a base media.
Hope that helps clear some stufff up..
