Why some still Don't grow Organically?

MickFoster said:

I have no desire to grow in dirt with shit in it.

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McShnutz said:

To each their own. I'm 100% organic, tho I strive for veganic. At the end of the day what it all comes down to is preferences. Both salts and organics if grown properly are undistinguishable from each other.
The only cudos I can give to organics vs salts is this, organics forced me to dive in deeper and educate myself about HOW and WHY. Salts just come with a feeding and mixing schedule and I had no desire to know more. Just my experience and 2 cents. Keeping in mind.... everyone is different and have different situational circumstances that leans them one way or the other. To each their own.

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Wastei said:

I'm very impressed by people who grow successfully with 100% organics. What I don't understand is the "Veganic" argument. Why leave out nutrients from decomposed animals if you strive to be environmental friendly? I see no reason to compost potatoes but throw away crustacean, chicken and animal bones straight in the trash?

My best friend is in the same boat, afraid of any animal input. Throwing any animal product in the trash instead of the compost pile! I don't see the logic. Is it better to fill the landfills or burn the trash as fuel then letting it naturally decompose and be brought back to be used by nature?

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Dancydancer said:

This is very curious to me.
Since Cannabis Culture and everything with it is tied up with nature and us human beings enjoying and healing ourselves with what nature gave us, I still find upsetting and disgusting when some Growers buy trillion commercial non-organic fertilizers with WHAT NAMES? BLOOMBASTIC, Big Bud Liquid, Bud CANDY, etc. to be hooked up to product and Hobby (growing) they do.

Isn't being close as possible to nature everybody's goal?
When I see some Growdiaries where some of us list alllll bottle products they use, the list will be infinite in next decade!

Since I started growing Cannabis (5years ago) I knew I want to go Bio from day one.
Not mentioning that growing Bio is MUCH Less time consuming - no need to measure PH - you have living soil, no need to mix trillion bottles every watering - top dress feeding + tea once a while is enough.

Flame me, throw rocks on me, but at the end of the day, Bio Growers will be the ones, who will have it's purest Earth gift.

After expressing my anger, now I calmly and with love asking you who are not Bio growing - why?

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

because it's a big pain in the dick, and doesn't produce any better weed than responsible use of dry salt fertilizers does.
The plants are absorbing EXACTLY the same Ions of nutrients, whether derived from kelp extract and chicken manure, or from mined minerals combined with salts...look at the chemistry involved...Feels lie to you, facts never do...
and as far as "gift"...i work for that shit, i earn it, it isn't a gift, it's the product of my toil....

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Rurumo said:

Organic grows are almost always higher in heavy metals, especially if any rock dusts are used. There are some really bad offending products out there. I have a friend who is a commercial grower in WA and we traced his failed heavy metals test to his diatomaceous earth use, that stuff is off the charts high in Arsenic. I just checked the CA Fertilizer heavy metals database for it out of curiosity, and there is only one Diatomaceous earth brand listed, and it's not what my friend used. Just go here https://apps1.cdfa.ca.gov/fertilizerproducts/ and type "diatomaceous" into the product line and it will pop up, crazy arsenic levels in that brand too. If you type "rock dust" or Azomite in the product line, then just look at the arsenic, lead, and cadmium levels, it's pretty scary.

I went into detail about a bunch of brands in another heavy metals thread, but if you want to avoid them, you have to look at third party results for every single product/soil/media/amendment etc you use in your grow. That includes things like "fabric" pots, some of which have been found to be contaminated with lead. Perlite is another big offender in the past with high levels of lead contamination. Even Coco Coir varies greatly particularly in lead and cadmium levels, due to the machinery used to process it in other countries. It is mostly being contaminated during processing in tainted Chinese machinery. A lot of herbs and spices from India and Indonesia are likewise contaminated during processing. Whole sea kelp is also very high in arsenic to the point it can fail a heavy metal test all on it's own, if someone uses large amounts of it.

I love organic gardening, it's all I do outside, but I'm always careful about what I put into my soil and I never use any rock dusts. It was actually hard for me when I realized how tainted a lot of the organic stuff for indoor cannabis gardening is compared to coco coir/mineral salts. Maxibloom usually tests BDL "below detectable limit" for arsenic, cadmium and lead. These days I'm always looking for deals on coco coir, but I ALWAYS check that database before buying a cheaper option. One of the most popular brands of pre-bagged mixed Coco/perlite was responsible for a commercial grower's entire crop being lost due to heavy metal content recently-I forgot if this was in WA or Or.

This is a good topic to bring up once in a while for the new growers!

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Wastei said:

You seem to got this the complete other way around. Have you tried both styles of growing so you have some personal experience or references to share?

Commercial organic fertilizer is often less environmental friendly and dirtier than salt based minerals, this is hard for newcomers to understand. You have to look at the manufacturing process and what chemicals they use to break down all the organic matter, they don't have enough time to do it naturally and they would never make profit.

You seem to have bought in to all the marketing. I use three different products in my nutrient solution. If I'm running true organics I need to add 10 different amendments, cook the soil and feed the micro herd to even be close to get the same result as with mineral salt based nutrients.

There's Gaia green 4-4-4 you could use from start to finish but there's more variables to keep in check running organics not the other way around, if you want to grow topshelf that is. Keeping optimal temperatures and feeding at optimal timings, you have to calculate the release rate of the slow released amendmendts and this is mostly controlled by the microbial life in the soil.

It takes me 15 minutes to do a rez change while it would take me months to cook an organic soil, and you somehow think it's easier with less work?

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greentree420 said:

We call it soil not dirt... I'm just glad laws changed and people are growing out this wonderful plant and not getting their door kicked in for it! The 70s, 80s and 90s were a paranoid time to even possess weed... One love

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conor c said:

Bio bizz is decent stuff and fairly available clean and low in heavy metals il grant u there arent many organic bottles id trust tho to be so

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Dancydancer said:

Mr. Canucks, Kevin Jodrey, Swami Chaitanya, Derek Gilman say otherwise. Their results are public.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

most of the major brands won't be bad for heavy metals, but why pay for water?
Buy Jack's 5-11-26, some epsom salts, and a bag of Southern Ag calcium nitrate and run the 3-2-1 formula, for pennies on the dollar compared to premixed...Peters and Southern Ag are both good companies, that supply good quality and consistency, and epsom salts are readily available at any hardware or drug store, most grocery stores will have it in their H&BA, just make sure you get stuff that doesn't have lavender or some shit in it, just plain epsom salts.

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lusidghost said:

Jack's is loaded with heavy metals. I could see flakes every time I mixed up a batch. I switched to Floraflex because of it.

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