How factual are your facts? Biased information and tips for success

[bobrown14]

I may as well chime in my .02.

IN MY OPINION:

ProMix is made for outdoor use for professional LANDSCAPERS.

If you want to use a peat based product, why not use 100% Canadian Sphagnum Peat Moss? Premier Tech makes one that I use for $10 a 3 cubic foot bail. Sold and the local hardware or garden center. Actually my local garden center sells pre-bagged and bulk CSPM for CHEAP - with no additives.

The main ingredient in ProMix is peat moss. I don't want any of the extra fillers and junk they add to the ProMix and certainly dont want to spend 4x the money for less of what I really want in my soil mix which is PEAT MOSS.

ProMix is made for landscapers to go to a home or what have you, spread it around plants as a top dress (making it look pretty) without killing the plants.

Why anyone uses this product in a container for growing plants doesn't even make any sense. In my opinion.

Try this product instead, its 100% CSPM for a FRACTION of the cost and it the EXACT SAME PEAT MOSS they put in ProMix.

Premier is a good company. I use the 100% CSPM and also use Mykes-pro Mycorrhizae but purchase separately @ $15 enough for a years gardening easily.


And yup - CSPM is acidic. And nope I dont PH anything cept get a soil test done after I mix up a batch. I dont worry about PH. I don't even have a way to test it.
I do use RO water in my containers but not outdoors.

The next question should be what we gardeners can add to CSPM to raise PH or more technically correct term should be BUFFER the PH, and how can we make it absorb and hold water.

If you use straight peat moss without anything else, you need to add a saponin to your water so that the peat will start absorbing water instead of repelling it. They add a chemical form of Saponin to the ProMix. Not even sure its organic but they somehow got a OMRI label on there?? Organic form of saponin is Soap Nuts - WAY WAY cheaper than any chemical version.

Soap Nuts plays well with plants since it's from a plant. You can clean your house & your clothes with it and pour the dirty water in your garden. If that's your thing.

You'd have a tough time selling me ProMix. That stuff is WAY too pricey even for landscaping work. My opinion.

 

[FoNz]

Lime is traditionally used as the alkaline component to raise pH (or buffer). This is actually what's already mixed in to promix to balance the overall medium's pH.

Kind of off-topic since the point of the thread is that any marketer or marketing would be considered a biased source. If someone were to submit an article for peer-review with a promix rep as their source they'd get a chuckle and their work would get tossed in the bin.

Even .edu links or seemingly reputable scientific articles should be read with caution as poorly designed trials that are designed to prove something as good are rampant due to private interest money.

This is all common knowledge in the academic community so it is routine to scrutinize sources. Could help individuals here be able to sift all the shit information people are exposed to every day, if they so choose.

 

[TheFertilizer]

Lime is traditionally used as the alkaline component to raise pH (or buffer). This is actually what's already mixed in to promix to balance the overall medium's pH.

Kind of off-topic since the point of the thread is that any marketer or marketing would be considered a biased source. If someone were to submit an article for peer-review with a promix rep as their source they'd get a chuckle and their work would get tossed in the bin.

Even .edu links or seemingly reputable scientific articles should be read with caution as poorly designed trials that are designed to prove something as good are rampant due to private interest money.

This is all common knowledge in the academic community so it is routine to scrutinize sources. Could help individuals here be able to sift all the shit information people are exposed to every day, if they so choose.

I'm slightly familiar with the world of academic research, and isn't bias typically just disclosed?

Bias is very hard to avoid entirely because it comes along as baggage with basically any agenda. The ProMix guy's agenda is to sell you peat moss; extremely simple, easy to see the bias there. What's Emilya in it for? To try to instill her values as a grower into other new growers. Okay that's more noble than trying to make money, but does her intent remove bias? She probably is still going to stick pretty hard to her values, and that is what bias really is. It has little to do with an ulterior motive ( trying to sell you stuff, trying to make the world full of better weed growers, etc. ) it's just the manifestation of how your own experiences, opinions and beliefs color the facts that you convey to others. I think the term "bias" tends to carry a negative stigma, but negativity is not a requisite for bias.

You can't really just disqualify something because it is biased. Do you know about flat earthers? They think the world is flat. No I'm not joking, they think it's a big conspiracy. Suppose you were the CEO of Carnival cruise line, and you were trying to convince tourists that NO, the world is indeed round, and they won't fall off the edge of it if they take one of your tours. Some flat earther could come along and say, "Well hey, that guy is just trying to sell cruise tickets, he's biased, of course he's going to say the Earth is round." If we were going to dismiss things because they were biased, then clearly we shouldn't listen to the cruise line CEO that the world was round, and we'd be wrong to do so.

The ProMix guy is obviously doing his job: Trying to sell you ProMix or their related products. Does that necessarily invalidate what he's saying? If it does, tell me how you know that, but SHOW me as well. Otherwise how do I know that like the ProMix guy, you're not just conveying information to me with accuracy influenced by your own bias? On the other hand, if the ProMix guy had said everything and included white papers to substantiate each of his points, I wouldn't have to question it. I very much doubt that if someone handed in a paper with the ProMix rep as a source, but with all his facts individually cited out of a botanical reference, that you'd throw it in the bin. Just saying that as an A+ research-writing student; I might be wrong, I only went to a community college

Anyway I'm not supporting either side of this debate, but what I'm getting at is that the presence of bias should not be an immediate disqualifying factor for any person's position. The idea that he's just a shill trying to sell stuff is an obvious conclusion to reach, but I am not so sure that you're really promoting critical thinking by asserting bias should be disregarded out of hand. Because if we're going to dismiss things that have clear bias behind them, that would mean dismissing things that might have a lot of merit behind them as well, and I don't think the weed growing community would have become what it is now operating like that.

That last point should be considered especially profound in regards to what we're actually discussing here. We're talking about growing a plant that for generations has been cultivated in clandestine conditions, with the knowledge surrounding it passed down through mostly oral tradition. The advent of books teaching growers how to do it in the late 20th century and then the internet shortly afterwards ushered in a new era of widespread knowledge of how to grow cannabis, but scientifically speaking, we are just now coming out of the dark ages. It's hard to find a white paper to go cite what you might know anecdotally about cannabis because those white papers are still in the process of being written. Disregarding the anecdote would be shooting ourselves in the foot though; instead, as a world-wide community of growers, those anecdotes get digested, tested, and validated or debunked, and then empirical evidence formed; it's just never written into any white paper, and seldom even peer reviewed. A lot of weed growers still hold proprietary knowledge, i.e. their "secrets". Long story short though, there's a lot of heavily biased information out there that would take academia too long to absorb if you were disqualifying bias. Especially because growers don't really communicate this knowledge with each other in the way academics like. Put it another way: If you talk to ExtremeCocoGrower420 he's obviously going to tell you coco is the best thing since sliced bread, but if you disregard him because he's biased, you might not get to hear the other information he has about growing in coco that is sound.

There are plenty of botanical references regarding other plants, and even a lot regarding cannabis, which can be cited, but they seldom are. It's still far more common to see something the author prefaces with, "Trust me, I'm a biologist," and then expects the reader to trust them as an authority (I'm not picking on you, I've seen this done a lot). In my view that is not promoting critical thinking, since we should not be willing to regard someone as an expert unless they're willing and able to SHOW us they're an expert. I can see why it would be tempting to think, "Well the weed growing community doesn't hold themselves to the same standards as academics, so I'm not going to bother citing these facts, they should just trust my authority," but that in itself is moving away from promoting critical thinking. I am by no means trying to insult your experience or intelligence, but right now I don't know that you're an expert any more than I know you're some keyboard warrior who is chatty off a couple of bowls (like myself). I'm not demanding credentials or anything so confrontational... But in a way I think you're kind of guilty of asking for more reverence than you've earned.

Anyway I hope I didn't come off as insulting, but that's just my $.02 about bias and the world of research and academia in relation to cannabis.

 

[Marzbadrock]

Damn fert, well said! I've never really listened to anyone that just talks the talk but not walk the walk. I want credentials! I'll never tell anyone they are wrong but will push people towards doing side by side experiment for themselves.

 

[FoNz]

I'd encourage someone to be skeptical of my shit too, just to be respectful about it as you were in your post. I also made it clear it is not the fault of the rep or the company for trying to do what their existence is necessitated upon

That is not to say that in general there isn't an epidemic of people blindly believing anything that is fed to them. In some of the removed content I mentioned explicitly that biased information doesn't mean it is a lie.

There is a connotation to bias, as well as their is apparently a knee-jerk reaction leading to assuming someone stating their ethos and personal credentials means they are trying to use that as a platform to insist they are exclusively right.

Many people have good points but they are seldom the only good points. In short - stay skeptical, aware and have an open (and thoughtful) mind.

This would have not been my closing comment if I wouldn't encourage someone to question me just as I would encourage them to question anyone else.

Additionally there seems to be a bit of a case of mass confusion that the point is to make a statement of value about ProMix, which is nowhere near what the post states by any stretch. This has proven to be kind of an imaginary tangent.

Just believing something because it's been said will never be as good as doing your own secondary (or primary) research. Many people here already do very well with this regard, seeking information from multiple sources.

 

[FoNz]

Damn fert, well said! I've never really listened to anyone that just talks the talk but not walk the walk. I want credentials! I'll never tell anyone they are wrong but will push people towards doing side by side experiment for themselves.

This is good, that means you are doing exactly what the OP is meant to encourage someone to do. Think critically, take multiple sources and/or do your own research.

 

[FoNz]

Also, citations and sources can and are frequently shit. So just having them is not a sign that a piece of information is reputable, especially not when it comes to any business.

People who want easy money in research get gigs for providing marketers the research they want. In relation to cannabis I'm sure many are familiar with the numerous private-interest funded 'reefer madness' research papers that were carried out and published for years.

 

[Strainyourbrain]

Also, citations and sources can and are frequently shit. So just having them is not a sign that a piece of information is reputable, especially not when it comes to any business.

People who want easy money in research get gigs for providing marketers the research they want. In relation to cannabis I'm sure many are familiar with the numerous private-interest funded 'reefer madness' research papers that were carried out and published for years.

There is an ancient saying " out of the mouths of two or three witnesses ".
People who have actually witnessed an event.
Even witnesses have their own version of the same event. Witnessed from a different angle and colored with their own bias, can give slightly different versions. But the event still occurred.
Pedigree may give more knowledge on the subject matter but pedigree without documented, and in our day and age, recorded process and results, does not mean to me that it is the only truth on on any matter.
This why i enjoy these forums so much. Color is added to what may have been a one sided stereotypical view.
This is my 10cents worth. ( the exchange rate changes my value from $0.02c to R0.10c ) and that is not even an accurate rate of exchange. It's a saying.

 

[LiberalThinker]

I have to weigh in on this now. I am also in the camp that believes that the rep from Promix was wrong and if you remember my comments in the thread, he couldn't give a straight answer if his life depended on it. I got chased off for that comment by the way and no longer felt welcome commenting in the thread.
Fonz is correct that in a soil such as this with positive and negative buffers, much like FFOF, many people can get by without adjusting their pH. Some people just have good water or have found a successful mix of rain and tap water, and the nutrient line that they have chosen to use and at the levels they use it, they manage to keep the pH within the range of the buffers. Good for them. These people are lucky.
Fonz did explain the science behind his opinion above, but apparently it was lost or ignored in the translation. I agree with his conclusions... that as long as you are using the promix system, you can get away with ignoring the pH, provided your water is not terribly out of the range and the rep admitted that this would break down the soil's ability to do this consistently over time.
As soon as you start mixing and matching... using different soils or different nutrient lines, it will be very easy to get in trouble by following his terrible advice to ignore the pH. Using different soils and trying not to adjust pH, or trying to use other nutrients with specific pH levels necessary to break apart the bonds, without adjusting the pH is just asking for trouble... yet there was a thread telling anyone who reads it, including newbies that can not understand the science yet, that it was OK to not pH. Not just OK, but not necessary. This bad advice could be harmful to grows other than the specific example spoken to in this thread and because of that, it needed to be debated.
There is a lot of opinion being promoted as fact out here in the growing world. Some of it is more harmful than others. Telling people not to flush, not to adjust pH, to never use nutes at their full potential, to never uppot... all of these common pieces of bad advice are contrary to known horticultural science and I will argue against these practices every time I hear them. There are as many ways to grow this weed as there are grow experts. If it works for you, by all means, do what you will. Be very careful however when you offer advice intended for the entire growing community to be sure that what you are advising is applicable in all cases. Those newbies you are leading down your rosy path may not get the same results that you did because of some minor difference between your working grow and theirs.... such as the base soil that you are using or a different nutrient line.
I spoke up too on that original thread as well as the flushing thing and I got shouted down. My knowledge and my opinions were not being heard nor did they seem welcome. When I realized the political climate in both of those threads, I gave up.
Kudos to Fonz for standing up and stating his learned opinion on this matter. In my opinion he, nor I, was trying to be insulting, we just simply can see through the marketing hype that was being promulgated in this original thread and know that pH is usually important for a successful grow. If you have a system that allows you to ignore it, good.... but lets not promote this as a method that will work for everyone... it simply will not.
If saying this offends certain members to the point that they have to take it personally, that is sad, but such is the nature of debate in this PC society we have found ourselves in. I have been blocked, attacked, been complained about to moderators and had members quit simply because I strongly stated my opinion in their threads. Such is the nature of online forums in the 21st century. If you want to cite controversial subjects, expect to be challenged. If my facts don't match yours, you will need to defend your position if I see you putting out nonsense. I apologize in advance, but I am not PC. I clearly state my opinions and don't care if that triggers someone. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Until someone invents an infallible buffer, not minding pH will be the cause of most peoples problems.

 

[bobrown14]

Kind of off-topic since the point of the thread is

Ok thought you were talking about ProMix - not for indoor.... wait for indoor containers?

I'm sorry I missed your point. Marketing.... ??

I'm in sales, marketing and production. High - I'm Bob

 

[Jackalope]

I pretty much am going to stay away from the first debate LOL.

There is another debate here. People just need to be smart shoppers. You can't blame a company for painting their products in good light. No one product is going to work for and make everyone happy but you can't tell customers that. You need to market your product to sell.

Yes there will be false advertisements. Companies playing with the info to make their product look better is nothing new. We all have to be smart shoppers and know what we need. Every light, soil, and nutrients you find is going to be the best ever. In some cases they are. Only in that situation though. Nothing out there does everything for everybody.

We can learn a lot from others. Just because something works or doesn't work for one person doesn't mean the outcome will be the same for others. To many factors to figure in. If you want the same outcome as others EVERYTHING needs to be exactly the same.

 

[bowanawana]

I have artisan well water it has 179ppm of something and sits at 7.0ph. When I ran a aeroponic system in my backyard it was easy to keep it around 7.0 keeping my nutrient levels running 400 to 600 ppm adding in the beginning 179ppm. I would monitor everyday and when I saw my ph going down or up, 6.8 to 7.2 I knew it was time to change my reservoir. Around every two weeks, mind you that the plants were drinking an average of 5 gallons a day at full flower, my theory is keep it nuetral soil or soil-less, plants do crap toxins that are toxic to them. Love you all and keep on token!

 

[FoNz]

I pretty much am going to stay away from the first debate LOL.

There is another debate here. People just need to be smart shoppers. You can't blame a company for painting their products in good light. No one product is going to work for and make everyone happy but you can't tell customers that. You need to market your product to sell.

Yes there will be false advertisements. Companies playing with the info to make their product look better is nothing new. We all have to be smart shoppers and know what we need. Every light, soil, and nutrients you find is going to be the best ever. In some cases they are. Only in that situation though. Nothing out there does everything for everybody.

We can learn a lot from others. Just because something works or doesn't work for one person doesn't mean the outcome will be the same for others. To many factors to figure in. If you want the same outcome as others EVERYTHING needs to be exactly the same.

Really well put, Jack.

 

[bobrown14]

For soil-less medium I don't think Pro-Mix is the proper tool. Due to the added chems and amendments they add to the medium so that it can be used as a TOP DRESSING (aka mulch to some), without repelling water and temporarily lowering PH for the plants that live with it.

The name PRO-mix implies "to me" that it's a product for PRO-fessional landscapers. How its marketed and how it used by 99% of their market.

Nothing wrong with using it as a soil-less base media or even in container soil with flowers but it's not made for that and it's price point reflects a different market.

PURE 100% CSPM - made by the same company for 1/4 the price is a better choice in my opinion, for BOTH soil-less and soil grown flowers in containers.

 

[Novadawg]

my head hurts

 

[mojuan]

Unfortunately no grow journal on my side, with getting my new facility operational I just don't have the time to put forth. Once things quite back down I'll be firing one up, lots of breeding, trying qb's, showing off the new grow. For now I just hop around to others journals n visit, try help newb out here n there, shit like that!

and thanks for helping the newb's because ALL this went right over my head lol, but i'm learning

 

[Van Stank]

10 different people will give you 27.5 different ideas

Lol

That is life and free thinking humans

But very good info you posted my friend

Thats why I stress to people to experiment and see what works in one's own setup. Too many times we just do stuff without ever understanding the why's or why nots and even more seldom do we understand the hows.

 

[Van Stank]

I'm slightly familiar with the world of academic research, and isn't bias typically just disclosed?

Bias is very hard to avoid entirely because it comes along as baggage with basically any agenda. The ProMix guy's agenda is to sell you peat moss; extremely simple, easy to see the bias there. What's Emilya in it for? To try to instill her values as a grower into other new growers. Okay that's more noble than trying to make money, but does her intent remove bias? She probably is still going to stick pretty hard to her values, and that is what bias really is. It has little to do with an ulterior motive ( trying to sell you stuff, trying to make the world full of better weed growers, etc. ) it's just the manifestation of how your own experiences, opinions and beliefs color the facts that you convey to others. I think the term "bias" tends to carry a negative stigma, but negativity is not a requisite for bias.

You can't really just disqualify something because it is biased. Do you know about flat earthers? They think the world is flat. No I'm not joking, they think it's a big conspiracy. Suppose you were the CEO of Carnival cruise line, and you were trying to convince tourists that NO, the world is indeed round, and they won't fall off the edge of it if they take one of your tours. Some flat earther could come along and say, "Well hey, that guy is just trying to sell cruise tickets, he's biased, of course he's going to say the Earth is round." If we were going to dismiss things because they were biased, then clearly we shouldn't listen to the cruise line CEO that the world was round, and we'd be wrong to do so.

The ProMix guy is obviously doing his job: Trying to sell you ProMix or their related products. Does that necessarily invalidate what he's saying? If it does, tell me how you know that, but SHOW me as well. Otherwise how do I know that like the ProMix guy, you're not just conveying information to me with accuracy influenced by your own bias? On the other hand, if the ProMix guy had said everything and included white papers to substantiate each of his points, I wouldn't have to question it. I very much doubt that if someone handed in a paper with the ProMix rep as a source, but with all his facts individually cited out of a botanical reference, that you'd throw it in the bin. Just saying that as an A+ research-writing student; I might be wrong, I only went to a community college

Anyway I'm not supporting either side of this debate, but what I'm getting at is that the presence of bias should not be an immediate disqualifying factor for any person's position. The idea that he's just a shill trying to sell stuff is an obvious conclusion to reach, but I am not so sure that you're really promoting critical thinking by asserting bias should be disregarded out of hand. Because if we're going to dismiss things that have clear bias behind them, that would mean dismissing things that might have a lot of merit behind them as well, and I don't think the weed growing community would have become what it is now operating like that.

That last point should be considered especially profound in regards to what we're actually discussing here. We're talking about growing a plant that for generations has been cultivated in clandestine conditions, with the knowledge surrounding it passed down through mostly oral tradition. The advent of books teaching growers how to do it in the late 20th century and then the internet shortly afterwards ushered in a new era of widespread knowledge of how to grow cannabis, but scientifically speaking, we are just now coming out of the dark ages. It's hard to find a white paper to go cite what you might know anecdotally about cannabis because those white papers are still in the process of being written. Disregarding the anecdote would be shooting ourselves in the foot though; instead, as a world-wide community of growers, those anecdotes get digested, tested, and validated or debunked, and then empirical evidence formed; it's just never written into any white paper, and seldom even peer reviewed. A lot of weed growers still hold proprietary knowledge, i.e. their "secrets". Long story short though, there's a lot of heavily biased information out there that would take academia too long to absorb if you were disqualifying bias. Especially because growers don't really communicate this knowledge with each other in the way academics like. Put it another way: If you talk to ExtremeCocoGrower420 he's obviously going to tell you coco is the best thing since sliced bread, but if you disregard him because he's biased, you might not get to hear the other information he has about growing in coco that is sound.

There are plenty of botanical references regarding other plants, and even a lot regarding cannabis, which can be cited, but they seldom are. It's still far more common to see something the author prefaces with, "Trust me, I'm a biologist," and then expects the reader to trust them as an authority (I'm not picking on you, I've seen this done a lot). In my view that is not promoting critical thinking, since we should not be willing to regard someone as an expert unless they're willing and able to SHOW us they're an expert. I can see why it would be tempting to think, "Well the weed growing community doesn't hold themselves to the same standards as academics, so I'm not going to bother citing these facts, they should just trust my authority," but that in itself is moving away from promoting critical thinking. I am by no means trying to insult your experience or intelligence, but right now I don't know that you're an expert any more than I know you're some keyboard warrior who is chatty off a couple of bowls (like myself). I'm not demanding credentials or anything so confrontational... But in a way I think you're kind of guilty of asking for more reverence than you've earned.

Anyway I hope I didn't come off as insulting, but that's just my $.02 about bias and the world of research and academia in relation to cannabis.

Thank you for this Fert.....again one of the reasons you always see me saying "I don't know....but if it was me I would try it to see what happens". I hate, hate, hate, hate....arbitrarily believing anyone that says "you have to do this" or "That doesn't work". I believe in challenging assumptions, especially in a garden. Many times I come back and go "oh shit....guess that was right", but now I know first hand. Kind of like when you tell your kids not to touch the hot stove.....they ain't gonna actually learn until they touch it. Its all just theoretical up until they touch it.

Most of my life's greatest lessons have been screw ups. I learn far more by experimenting and making mistakes than by nailing it on the first go.

 

[Van Stank]

Until someone invents an infallible buffer, not minding pH will be the cause of most peoples problems.

Thats with the assumption that you are growing in a manner that needs to mind the pH. I grow organically with water only, maybe a couple top dressings of various soil inputs at specific times to build the soil's energy and don't touch pH at all. No need to.....a thriving LOS will adjust its pH as the plant needs and if you measured it over the course of a week long period you would be surprised at the swing that it do on its own.

I certainly agree that for most bottled nute growers, pH certainly seems to be their biggest issue and where I generally start those growers on their problem solving.

 

[bowanawana]

Hot soils....man I hate hot soils unless I am transplanting for final stages. I am using Happy Frog, any thoughts? Can I do better? I do find that this soil can be to hot for Clones and seedlings, what is best to use?