Organic and Hydro Comparison

In switching over from soil to hydro and had two soil 2 month olds that I decided to let finish out. Thought I would post up a shot of what's going on at 3 weeks of flipping the lights.

The ones in the front are 5 month old organic soil and sitting on a 6" riser. They are noticeably shorter than the 5 week olds in the back. They are in a RDWC system. This is my first try with hydro and while floored with the growth, I'm wondering how the buds will turn out.


This is a top from the soil


This is the Hydo

While I know this isn't a fair comparison because of the age difference, I'm wondering - is it typical to have such a huge stretch in hydro?

Thanks!

On my first hydro run I had a real problem with stretch. They went from 8" to 36" when I harvested, and this was a heavy Indica. I ran the same strain again a second time (first time was RDWC, second was ebb&Flo) and kept the MH in for the first two weeks and they went from 8" to 16" and the buds are much bigger. I have not harvested the second run yet, they are 58 days into flowering, but it looks like I will get a bigger harvest of buds, but not as much of the popcorn buds I use to make edibles/hash.

great advice @hbbum

Long post comming but i put alot of effort into testing hydro vs soil & cured vs non cured , i owned a dispensary & needed to know for real which was the best .

As to yer question about soil bud quality vs hydro bud quality here's my take , i grew soil for 2 to 3 decades & allways shy'd away from hydro & bud quality was one of my excuses , once i went hydro with flood n drain single cola sea of green i was sure hydro FAR outperformed soil for turn around time & yearly harvest weights , still i wasnt sure about bud quality , if your mind thinks one is better vs the other the placebo effect is strong so i did quite a bit of testing .

I used friends & family & gave them pre rolled joints , each one got 1 hydro , 1 soil , i told them different backgrounds on the weed , a few were told i was testing difference between hydro & soil , others that i was testing cured vs non cured , others that i was testing different strains , i did it this way so the odds were greater than 50/50 anybody would pick the correct joint .

I asked 3 basic questions , which had a better taste , which burned cleaner , which gave the best high & had them write down their thoughts after smoking the joints i marked with a drop of food coloring .

The results were all over the place , nobody could tell which was hydro based on taste or burn or even identify the hydro , the ones i told i was testing white widdow ( hydro sour d ) against my own cross strain( still hydro sour d ) all said the white widdow was better ( known strain ) even though both were the same strain , the ones i told 1 was cured vs non cured the results still didnt show where people could tell any difference in anything.

I repeated these tests only that time i told them which joint was soil & hydro , every person picked the ones i said were soil , even the people i lied to a marked a soil joint as hydro & vice versa they picked the j marked soil , even though they were not smoking soil grown .

In the end i learned alot about name brand recognition, pre disposition, placebo effect , growers skill is what makes kick ass buds not the medium the plants grown in .

panhead said:

Long post comming but i put alot of effort into testing hydro vs soil & cured vs non cured , i owned a dispensary & needed to know for real which was the best .

In the end i learned alot about name brand recognition, pre disposition, placebo effect , growers skill is what makes kick ass buds not the medium the plants grown in .

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Awesome experiment, thanks for the post. I have no doubts about the quality hydro will produce and that's not quite the comparison I'm referring to. I'm looking at the physical characteristics of the plant itself in soil or in nutrients. Great post however!

hbbum said:

On my first hydro run I had a real problem with stretch. They went from 8" to 36" when I harvested, and this was a heavy Indica. I ran the same strain again a second time (first time was RDWC, second was ebb&Flo) and kept the MH in for the first two weeks and they went from 8" to 16" and the buds are much bigger. I have not harvested the second run yet, they are 58 days into flowering, but it looks like I will get a bigger harvest of buds, but not as much of the popcorn buds I use to make edibles/hash.

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Thank you hbbum, I have followed your RDWC and have been following your ebb flow grow and there are a lot of similarities in the stretch. I've been running an induction light (inda-gro par-420) which is suppose to equal a 1000watt MH) from rooted clone to current. I have an 8' high tent and my light is already at 7' with about 40 more days left. I'm also trying ebb flow and have some 2 week olds in my veg closet and am contemplating running them out to the end as ebb flow.

Do you think there is a possibility that the method of hydo is responsible for the reduction in your stretch between your ebb flow and RDWC batch?

Hard to say, but there are 3 variables. Rwdc vs ebb and flow, keeping the MH light in for the first 2 weeks after flip and modified my screen to 2" squares. My gut says it has more to do with the light, but would need to run again to see. I might try a different strain in rdwc and see if keeping the MH in helps stretch.

this is real simple so I will give you the answer.

Soil is for the grower who wants mother nature to naturally grow the plan(most used in outdoor growing) and for environments where the root zone can be cool or not, also for the lazy grower who doesn't have time to check on the plants every couple of days.

Hydroponics is for indoor growing and for environments that are cool to the root zone and where the grower needs to check on the plants frequently.

twistedwords said:

this is real simple so I will give you the answer.

Soil is for the grower who wants mother nature to naturally grow the plan(most used in outdoor growing) and for environments where the root zone can be cool or not, also for the lazy grower who doesn't have time to check on the plants every couple of days.

Hydroponics is for indoor growing and for environments that are cool to the root zone and where the grower needs to check on the plants frequently.

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Thanks for your reply - the thread title may be a bit misleading. I'm comparing the physical characteristics of a plant grown in soil to the one in hydro not why one would choose hydro over soil or visa versa. There are definitely major differences in stretch and growth and even bud formation.