I have won BOM’s with both MG products and Fox Farm. The same issue’s people complain about with FF, such as too hot and ph crashing, apply to MG but without the negative backlash that new growers have to deal with when they stumble across their first Forum.
Currently I’m recycling my soils and adding homemade compost teas and whatnot to further my growing experiences and to save cash. Cannabis friendly soils have an extremely high (lol) markup compared to other soils in hardware stores. I’m definitely on a grow journey and have proven over and over with great success that there are many paths to growing plants. Cannabis is just a weed and doesn’t need anything different than you’d throw at any other quality garden projects.
I apologize if my text tone came off combative, it’s just over and over people telling others what they can’t do when it’s easily proven you can
Sure happy to elaborate. I’d say on my first run or 2 I had really no clue what I was doing. I’ll get to that… Im always still learning too btw. Not trying to be that know it all guy. I do not know everything. I am certainly not trying to come across that way so I apologize in advance if I’m causing problems for anyone.
I have more experience with miracle grow soil than anything else as that’s all I have ever done until about a yr or 2 ago. It wasn’t until I walked into a grow here in Denver and saw in person what the plant should look like in its full glory. You think you know until you know. One look at that and I knew mg was my biggest limitation and why I never got the plant to do what I though it should. I had literally everything perfect. my environment, my lighting etc. the only thing I never changed was the miracle grow soil. Once I changed that I started to see the plant do things it never did b4. I always wondered why my plants never really faded like some of the others I see do when I would grow in miracle grow. That’s got a lot to do with excess of nitrogen in the soil and late flower due to the time release nutes. Once I transitioned to good soil now my plants do what they’re supposed to do.
here is something to consider …Nobody and I mean not one ever who does this for a living would even think about planting in mg as it will not produce the quality customers and myself are looking for. Mg soil is absolutely not right for this plant. It works great for houseplants. And for the record a home grower can use mg and get a harvest. Im not arguing that fact and I don’t think anyone here is. What im arguing is that the quality will never compare to the flower produced in better soil meant for this plant. You do not want soil with time released nutes when talking about cannabis. Find me one commercial grower using mg and I will concede. The plant will never express itself fully like it could in mg soil and I’ll bet you anything if you grew in better soil you would agree. Have you tried it?
To your question I will say this was in 1997-1998 I was curious about the plant. I think that’s why a lot of us start growing in the first place. So I popped a few seeds in some miracle Gro that was in my dad’s garage. I also think this is how the mg cannabis thing gets started in the first place. People get a couple of bag seeds and they happen to have a bag of miracle grow in the garage because I believe there’s probably one of those in every garage in the country and they decide to start growing.
Anyway, I’m sure everyone can imagine how that first mg run of mine turned turned out. I was probably the first thing I ever planted in my life at the time. I don’t think the plant lived for more than a mo before I killed the poor leggy thing. It never had a chance. Was this miracle Gro soils fault? absolutely not. On my 2nd attempt I was able to grow a plant all the way to the end of flower. I harvested, Hung the plant in my garage for a handful of days if I recall at who knows what temperature and humidity. I had no idea that even mattered at the time. I was 18 yrs old. I’m sure everyone can imagine what that smoke was like. I must say I was pretty damn proud of myself and so were all of my friends. We had never seen a marijuana plant in full flower in person before. And since I really had nothing to compare it to I was pretty impressed and continued on growing in miracle Gro. Pretty much every grow after that produced about the same results. My mg results later on looked like all the other plants I see grown in that. It’s not what I’m trying to grow. I’m trying to grow quality artisan type stuff here with heavy smelling terpenes. I smoke for the entire entourage effect. Mg never once gave me the results I am looking for. Results yes. High quality results no.
Anyway, Eventually I learned how to cure a little bit better. Been up to speed on that for a long time. Now I hang whole plants for about 2 weeks or so at 60 degrees and 60 percent rh. When ready I’ll trim and jar them up. I do use boveda packs. I think they work pretty good I have some weed that’s been jarred up for over two years and still really good stuff grown by a friend. Two or 2 1/2 years later those jars are still sitting at 62% humidity. It’s Very easy to maintain good temperatures drying in march in Colorado and I like to start my grow in Nov and harvest and dry in March or April. I find using the outside temperatures to my advantage really helps and it keeps my costs down a bit also as I don’t have to keep my dry room air-conditioned. I do spend quite a bit of money heating my grow room but I find that it’s much easier to keep my room warm than it is to keep it cool when I’m trying to grow in hundred degree days in the summer. Typically I’ll take May June July August September off. I like to start my seeds in October or November. Even when I took my miracle grown cannabis and cured it properly the Smoke was still not good for me personally. Maybe I’d call it tolerable at best if I had nothing else to smoke on. I have tossed more weed in the garbage grown in mg than I care to admit.
I’m totally fine my man I like to debate. Occasionally in the debate process you can learn a thing or two. I think I mentioned this before but I don’t disagree that you can grow in miracle Gro soil. The plant will live in the plant will produce. I think if somebody is recycling miracle Gro soil eventually it will probably become something much better for the plant as all the time released nutrients will be gone and now you’re just basically growing in whatever Peat perlite and compost that was in that bag. I played around with the fox farm products also. I had a little bit better results with Foxfarm but to be honest it wasn’t that much better. During that time when I was using Foxfarm thinking I needed to feed off of their schedule I burned a lot of plants. I have some friends that use Foxfarm to this day and they have grows that are just as good as mine and sometimes even better. I chalk that up as they are just a better grower than I am. I would imagine if I went back to a fox farm run right now with what I know I could do much better with that. That said I’m sure I could grow a better looking plant a miracle Gro right now with what I know. I’m just not willing to go back down that road again. I’m not trying to win the contest for the best weed Grown in mg.
And I also get your point about the markup on designer soils and things. For me personally I don’t like that either but the company I buy from called build a soil here in Colorado spends a lot of time sourcing the ingredients they use to build their soils. I have gotten into it in pretty good depth with the owner of this company. He discloses why he gets ingredients from certain places and why he doesn’t get them from other places. He even talks a lot about that you don’t have to buy the soil from him as it’s kind of expensive and he tells you which ingredients to buy where to get them from and you can build it yourself. Some people do this, I just don’t have the time so I’m paying for a convenience. So I guess my point is I don’t mind or didn’t mind paying A bit more for my soil from my source. Not to mention he’s a local family owned business trying to go all over the country with his product and I would rather support that than these large corporations. He spent the time sourcing the ingredients and I don’t mind paying him for his time to do that. I certainly don’t have the time or the knowledge to determine which ingredients are best and so I will leave that up to him. Although the soil that I grow in currently is quite expensive I feel it’s worth the investment if you can afford it. I don’t even want to add up what I’ve spent on my current set up but I will tell you it’s at least $4500-$5000 not including the shed itself which would cost about $20,000 to build today. I will tell you that by the time I filled 6 20 gallon containers my soil bill was 400+ dollars if I’m not mistaken. I think one of the reasons I was willing to Make this investment was because I should be able to recycle the soil for many grows. they claim that you could reuse the soil pretty much to infinity And never replace the bulk of the media again. In time you’ll have to take some out perhaps once you get to the very top of the container with no more room to top dress and some spillage overtime may cause you to have to buy a bag or two but I’m OK with that. I look at my soil much differently now and when I see some spill out of the bottom of my pot I wanna put it back because I don’t wanna waste it. Its like gold to me lol. It’s documented now with I think 5 seasons of growing in the same soil with the company I purchased from on YouTube. Now I don’t know how it’s going to go for me on my second third and fourth runs with the same soil as I have not done this yet. I’ve only seen it done. Not trying to get ahead of myself here but My confidence level is high that I will be able to pull this off. I am debating on sending in some soil samples to test from my current containers to see if I will have to amend on this next run at all. I know this is not an exact science but the company that makes my soil did this on their last series on YouTube and the report they got back from the soil testing laboratory said that they needed a couple of little things ammended, I don’t remember what it was that was slightly low but the report came back and the lad said that if you were to just re-plant right back in that soil and not amend it with anything the plant would do just fine. With the amount of money I have invested I cannot afford to lose any plants and so I think I’m gonna probably just do the soil test so I’m not guessing. I suppose if I just too dressed with my normal amendments everything would be fine and I wouldn’t have to spend the money on tests but I’m really trying to expand my knowledge so I can be a better grower and maybe provide information to others to help them too. I will no longer have to run to the store and haul home bags of soil anymore and I like that. My money will be spent on amendments to top dress with to keep the soil going. I also like the fact that I don’t feel like I’m being as wasteful by reusing my soil. It takes an ungodly amount of energy to grow this plant indoors so every little bit helps I guess. I’m currently Topped dressed with some worm castings that are produced here in Colorado at Colorado worm company. These are the best worm castings I’ve ever seen in my entire life. This is also another very small family owned farm operation. If you could ever get your hands on a bag of these castings I recommend it.They are very expensive. I think I paid almost 100 bucks for maybe a 40/50 pound bag. My current containers are now of red wigglers, predator mites rove beetles and all kinds of other beneficials. To be honest I don’t know what’s more fun poking around in my soil to look for crawly things or watching the Trichomes develop on the flowers.
I’m curious what your biggest worry is when growing? I guess when I went overboard and invested too much money it kind of got serious for me. it’s still very enjoyable. for me this winter the only thing I worried about was power failure. we got very lucky and I did not have any failures that lasted for more than an hour. I need to invest in a generator but for whatever reason I just can’t bring myself to spend that much money for something I may use once. but I think one of these days if I don’t do it it’s gonna cost me big. This is me cutting corners. The only thing I had at my disposal this winter was a couple propane cylinders with some of those heater attachments to screw on top of the bottle. I figured worst case I could keep them from freezing.
Every grow I’ve attempted seems to have thrown a different challenge at my plants and mediocre skill set but it’s helped me gain valuable experience. Whether it’s been insects (spider mites, caterpillars, leaf hoppers…), learning about WPM & BR, understanding lighting, ph and ppm, or proper watering practices. I think my biggest current concern is what’s coming next or potential for a home invasion. My area is full of crime and I’m sure the word is slowly creeping around as to what I’ve been sharing. People talk.
Old stoners have proven in the 60 70 80s in covert states that you can grow with Mg and similar products. This forum shows that 1000s of recipes produce great cannabis. All kind of lights, soils, non soil mediums, nutes, organic and non organic have and will continue to produce.
Dude we like 5 minutes from each other. I don’t have any social media. Maybe the mods can give us a quick PM chat to exchange info. Would be great to have a growmie close to share ideas.
I used miracle grow last year on a whim on a few of my own clones. It was the herbs and tomato blend I picked up at Home Depot. Fed up to 3 months it said. I remember removing as many of those feed pellets as I could and even still then every plant in that soil stayed dark green the whole grow and the buds were smaller and inferior to the mother plant in fox farms happy frog. Yields were so so as it seemed like the buds never packed on the final swell. I’ve used miracle grow countless of times the first few years because it was the only thing I knew when I first started. Never again, won’t be fooled again. Suspicion confirmed. Every single other medium I’ve tried blows miracle grow out of the water. That being said miracle grow can produce good weed it’s just going to take work
That’s been my experience too. I’ll say it again. You will never know until you try something else. The difference is undeniable every single time. One thing that’s for sure about growing and that stuff is it will teach you about every plant problem that you could possibly run into. It will make you good at plant diagnostics for sure.
This is not even a argument this is facts. About the only thing I could safely feed in MG was molasses. Didn’t get to utilize my moab, tiger bloom or anything because the plants were dark green. At least they never burned I give credit there and ph was never a issue it’s just it isn’t tailored for weed and it showed
