Organic vs Synthetic

With what you’ve said and what I’ve looked into myself I feel like I’d be smart to get a few more runs under my belt before trying organic.

I want the results and purity I see from these organic grows but I honestly feel like I’m not experienced enough to head that route. The point you made about having to properly identifying deficiencies is what scares me the most. I am very inexperienced in the grand scheme of things so yeah…

I seriously appreciate you taking the time to explain this a little bit.

It was enough information to make me second guess it.

Perhaps I’ll try doing some organic on the side for a little practice/experience/experiment ?

I’ve learned a lot over the last few months and I still have no fucking clue what I’m doing lol

Thank you Cam!

People like you are the reason forums are so amazing!

There are pros and cons to both methods. Similarly, there are cheap and expensive versions of both styles as well.

Organic growing tends to be more forgiving in my personal experience, but it also has a few drawbacks. Organic growing takes work. Most of the work involved in organic growing can be mitigated by growing in very large containers. The problem is that newer growers are less familiar with what is needed to ammend soils properly, which can lead to deficiencies. Organic growing tends to reduce instances of toxcicity because the plant picks and chooses what it wants through exudate secretion in the root zone (rizosphere). These biochemical reactions signal to the fungi and bacteria present in the medium what the plant wants and the plant essentially trades these ions for sugars.

When using small containers there is a need to ammend soil more frequently. This process must be done in advance to keep the plants from running in to deficiencies. The typical breakdown time for good ammendments is 1-2 weeks depending on the type of inputs you use.

With organic growing you also need to be more familiar with what certain deficiencies are because synthetic formulas already contain everything the plant needs in most cases. If you were to guess wrong and ammend the wrong thing then you will further exacerbate the problem and create another issue to fix.

This too can be rectified by buying soils preammended from a company like build-a-soil. Unfortunatly this comes at a cost of shipping heavy soil mixes, which isn't cheap.

Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that living soil takes time to build properly. It may be several runs before your soil is truly capable of producing top-shelf bud.

You will get the best results growing in large quantities of soil because there will be a larger margin for error. Additionally, there will be less need to move all these heavy pots around if you grow in larger containers since you will essentially chop down your plants, ammend, and then plant. Larger containers too come with a 3 major drawbacks. First, it can be difficult to water seedlings or small clones with the proper amount of water. It's much easier to drown them since there is less surface area of exposed soil when compared to a 5-7 gallon pot. Second, it's very difficult to move around a container filled with hundreds of pounds of soil. Third, pest infestation can render your growing area useless until you fully deal with this issue.

Organic growing is by far the most economical style of growing, but understanding its nuances can be tricky for an inexperienced grower. It can be simpler once you understand things but it has a steeper learning curve than synthetic growing.

There are also practices that don't transfer over from synthetic such as flushing. It's crazy the amount of people I see saying they are flushing their amended soil.

On the other hand, synthetic growing does most of the guess work for you. It's easier to get help with synthetic because often times the issues experienced when using a certain line will be consistent among growers using the same fertilizer. For instance, fox farm trio is renowned for causing plants to suffer from calcium deficiency. Pretty much everyone knows that and it will be reflected in several grows. To some people, mixing up batches of nutrients is a painful experience. It's also worth noting that mixing bottles in the wrong order, or in the wrong ratios can cause nutrients to fall out of solution and become insoluble. It can also be easy to think you've spotted a potential deficiency and accidentially overfeed in an attempt to rectify the problem, which will cause a lockout where the plant is unable to absorb several nutrients at once.

In soil the medium buffers ph so that phing becomes unnecessary in most cases. With synthetics the ph must be maintained within a certain range for proper nutrient absorption.

Synthetic growing requires a larger quantity of water, which means hauling heavy buckets of water around more often. Synthetic growing is also rife with horrible practices of overfeeding and running ppms that are too high to be useful to the plants. Many newer growers use synthetics also, so you get more opinions from people who aren't familiar with plant biology thinking they have it all figured out because they had 1 good run.

Both styles have their positives and negatives and it's really dealers choice to figure out what suits you best. If you were in a region less hospitable to growing these plants then going in and out of your home with soil might look suspicious to observers. In that circumstance synthetics might make more sense. If you are an environmentalist then organics would be preferred. The list goes on and on. There is no clear cut answer to which is right or wrong because the variables vary from person to person. The best way to learn what's right for you is to experiment yourself and judge the results of your own experience. I used to say I'd never grow with synthetics, but here I am in dwc using mineral salts lol.

Hopefully this was more helpful than confusing. There is far more than what I have discussed that differentiate the two styles but I'd be here all day (I usually am anyway) if I attempted to list everything. Watch a couple videos and learn what you can then pursue what your gut tells you is right for you.