Nabbers
Well-Known Member
Coco isn't just a hydroponic medium, though. I have done quite a few grows using a coco/perlite mix as a soil alternative with organic dry fertilizer (Dr Earth) to get all the benefits of a traditional soil grow with a few less of the headaches that an overthinker like me is prone to - I don't have to worry about my soil coming with gnats or mites, or consistency being different from one bag to the next (like Fox Farms has an east and west coast facility producing the same products - different people have claimed different results with the same soil depending on which facility it originated from). Coco still has its differences from one brand to another but if you rinse and buffer properly you should be able to get pretty much the same thing every time.
As far as great white, I used it in my first several hydro grows when I was a new grower but found it harder to keep my reservoir clean. The thing about beneficial microbes is that in soil they spread out better than a plant's roots can, and get into much tighter spaces, externally digesting organic matter and forming a transportation mechanism with the rest of the colony which plant roots feed off of. If you were to go on General Hydroponics' website here they mention that the advantage of hydroponic growing is not needing to use organic fertilizers that need to be broken down into a form usable by the plant and thus not needing additional soil organisms. If you're using something with organic components like Fox Farms Big Bloom which contains worm castings and guano, I would say your bennies will help but I would also say you're sacrificing some of the benefits of hydroponics by doing so. Hydroponic feeding isn't natural, and that's a good thing. We're trying to get better than natural results by using better than natural methods. People pumping CO2 into their grow tents creates an environment that isn't natural either. In the real world, nature isn't perfect and plants have evolved to do the best they can with what's available, but we as growers can do better through the power of science. And since in hydro you're applying the nutrition in the water directly to the roots, there's no searching for food that needs to be done and that negates yet another benefit of microbes. I think most of what you get from using a microbial product in a hydroponic system is that they compete for space with harmful microbes which helps prevent things like root rot, but that's nothing you can't get from using a few drops of bleach / pool shock / H2O2 with the regularity that you should be attending to your hydroponic solution anyway (checking PH and PPM levels frequently). And then if you do use any of those at any point, they will kill off any microbial life you have previously added and eliminate them from your root structure.
Having started growing cubensis mushrooms long before I delved into the world of botany, I curated a serious obsession with mycology (as so many shroom growers do). If you are dead set on using beneficial microbes, I would personally suggest Mykos which contains the single strain Rhizophagus irregularis (aka Glomus intraradices) which has been shown to increase phosphorus uptake in the roots of certain plants and tends to dominate other microbial species anyway (citation and other citation).
As far as great white, I used it in my first several hydro grows when I was a new grower but found it harder to keep my reservoir clean. The thing about beneficial microbes is that in soil they spread out better than a plant's roots can, and get into much tighter spaces, externally digesting organic matter and forming a transportation mechanism with the rest of the colony which plant roots feed off of. If you were to go on General Hydroponics' website here they mention that the advantage of hydroponic growing is not needing to use organic fertilizers that need to be broken down into a form usable by the plant and thus not needing additional soil organisms. If you're using something with organic components like Fox Farms Big Bloom which contains worm castings and guano, I would say your bennies will help but I would also say you're sacrificing some of the benefits of hydroponics by doing so. Hydroponic feeding isn't natural, and that's a good thing. We're trying to get better than natural results by using better than natural methods. People pumping CO2 into their grow tents creates an environment that isn't natural either. In the real world, nature isn't perfect and plants have evolved to do the best they can with what's available, but we as growers can do better through the power of science. And since in hydro you're applying the nutrition in the water directly to the roots, there's no searching for food that needs to be done and that negates yet another benefit of microbes. I think most of what you get from using a microbial product in a hydroponic system is that they compete for space with harmful microbes which helps prevent things like root rot, but that's nothing you can't get from using a few drops of bleach / pool shock / H2O2 with the regularity that you should be attending to your hydroponic solution anyway (checking PH and PPM levels frequently). And then if you do use any of those at any point, they will kill off any microbial life you have previously added and eliminate them from your root structure.
Having started growing cubensis mushrooms long before I delved into the world of botany, I curated a serious obsession with mycology (as so many shroom growers do). If you are dead set on using beneficial microbes, I would personally suggest Mykos which contains the single strain Rhizophagus irregularis (aka Glomus intraradices) which has been shown to increase phosphorus uptake in the roots of certain plants and tends to dominate other microbial species anyway (citation and other citation).
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