Soil or Hydro? Which is best?

Bluenoser

Bluenoser

Well-Known Member
I'm still debating which is the best method of growing, soil, or hydroponic RDWC.

My last grow I grew 8 plants, 4 of them in RDWC, and four of them in 5 gal soil pots, hoping to be able to compare which ones turned out the best.

Unfortunately, there were far too many environmental stressors and variables that made it impossible to compare apples to oranges, and all my plants ended up going hermie and pollinating all the plants, lol. It just sucked.

Most of my last grow was spent in damage control mode because the heat was so intense in the grow area last summer, and I had no air conditioning or rez chillers in that outbuilding.

I've since moved my grow tents inside, where the heat and humidity are stable via heatpump, and I am now planning my winter grow.

The plants I had in hydro in my last grow were definitely bigger, but they were a different strain than the ones in soil, and the ones in soil weren't topped as many times so they produced less colas.

There was far more work and expense involved in the hydro to keep things going, and the soil seemed so much more simple in comparison, I just watered the plants, and mixed up nutes for every other watering, I grew in pro-mix.

I want the max yield I can get from my grow space, yet I also want simplicity and not a bunch of stress this time monitoring and administering a hydro system, ........what to do.

So, what do you think, should I go all soil this next winter grow, or, should I do hydro again?
Maybe I should do half in soil and half in hydro again this time, only this time under properly controlled conditions?

I'm only growing 2 strains this next grow, so it should be easier to keep things under control.
 
in my opinion hydro is far better less things we can do wrong and as long as you keep the moving parts moving it's much easier to keep on top of ph ppms the health of your plants and root mass I have found in soil and coco mediums I had nightmare after nightmare with overfeeding under feeding lock outside salt build up stunted growth obviously flipping to water I've been through the same trial and errors trying flood and drain tables then gullies now rdwc and I'm really happy for the future less mess less work less nutes less overheads each cycle but that's the Joy's of horticulture what works for me might not for you and what works for you might not work for me!
 
Side-by-side comparisons are hard because even if you have all clones, so that every plant should be identical, there's really a lot of differences in your grow environment that can lead to different rates of growth and varied health conditions.

For example, say you had 8 plants in a tent, half soil and half in hydro, and the half in soil were not doing as well. That might lead you to believe that hydro was better, but then you find out something like the one side of your tent's ventilation had a deadspot, and so that's why the soil plants didn't do as well. It could be any variability like this from light distribution, differences in air movement, temperature differences, etc.

To do a real proper comparison, you have to have much more than 8 plants so that you can make comparisons of a wider sample group. Say you had 20 plants in a space, half hydro and half soil, then it would be more obvious that the soil plants were drying out faster because of a lack of ventilation if only half of the soil plants were drier than the rest.

The hydro vs soil debate is so endless... But that's not really what you're asking here. It sounds like you're asking what you should do with your particular circumstances, and to me it sounds like you should do a few runs in soil to get your environmental conditions locked down or at least predictable before trying hydro. The reason I say this is because as you found out, keeping environmental conditions in check for hydro is a little more crucial than for soil. Reservoir maintenance, chillers, etc.

You can also take a middle-ground approach like coco or passive hydro. Less upkeep things like reservoir maintenance, but you also get the advantage of hydro in terms of giving the roots direct access to the nutrients they want. Basically hydro growth, in soil simplicity.
 
Thanks for your replies, I appreciate your input and opinions.

I think I might just do what I intended to do in the first place, grow 4 in soil 5 gal pots, and 4 in my RDWC and see what happens.

I know now that from seeds you end up with different pheno-types and they will not be uniform, but at least this way I can take clones form the best plant I have and keep that going for the next grow, which is what I intended to do last time, but the harlequins I thought were the best plants that I took clones from turned out to be the worst producers of the multiple strains I grew.

I've still got a nice phat skunk candy mother going, but I think I'll keep that vegging as a mother and plant my new purple orange CBD, and critical cure CBD plants, I need some CBD :)
 
I’ve always followed the KISS rule:
Keep It Simple, Stoner.

I’ve done all my grows old school, indoors, using soil, buckets, 600w MH & HPS lights and good nutes.
I’ve had good results over the years. I know there’s newer, better lighting systems and hydroponic setups, but for me - “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

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Well...

Hydro hands down when done correctly yields better results. Hydro hands down is significantly harder than many forms of soil. Hydro hands down is easy...if you know what you are doing.

Hydro is a pile more work to learn than learning how to grow which is a handfull in itself.

To run hydro you basically have to know everything about soil growing except how to make soil and you have to learn how to manage hydro. That is again easy but a pile of things.

Soil is almost as fast and I mean darn near almost as fast if you are good.

Soil is much less likely to crash. Hydro can be easily crashed.

Soil can be done in ways that require intense work like hydro or can be done in ways that are extremely lazy. Your choice.

Hydro laziness comes at the cost of money really... automation. Soil is just plain lazy done right.


Newbs over complicate things and crash soil all the time. So it really doesn't matter. If you have a green thumb you can easily start in hydro.

I never recommend it.

Soil is cheaper and faster to pick up. You learn about defficiancy and abundance issues in a medium that is easy to manage and control.

The bottom line is this.

If you are capable of handling the task then the task is easy. But of you are not then you will end up with something almost done.

If one method is easier and higher chance of success...I would choose it...simply because there is a lot more to this than the grow.

You will mold the first weed you try to cure. Why not do that on a training run that was cheap.

Crawl before you walk...hydro is done best once you can look at the plant and know what the problem is. It isnt hard...just takes some experience.

Many people just post pics and get help and get by just fine.

You will too.

Soil 3 runs...then hydro...you will be happy you spent the time learning the craft.
 
And size bla bla bla...canamusic is right. You can get nearly the same weight in soil. The benefit of hydro is a slightly faster veg cycle. A little more weight...But again all of this big plant and fast grow stuff means you are doing a lot if things right to get optimized growth.

Doing side by sides of things you do not know how to do is rather meaningless and has led many stoners to think they have discovered something...only to then do something basic wrong for years...because "they figured something out".

This girl was feed only home brew. Make your own nutes for happy buds.

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That is one monster plant!
Three questions, how long did you veg that for, how many times did you top it and how do you mix your own nutes?
Do you have a recipe to share with us?
:)
 
All in my sig.

1st thing is a link to a thread to help you understand the importance of beneficial bacteria. It is the how and why behind everything. Read that and you should have a thousand questions for Google.

Then there is a link to a standard recipe.

Then after that is a link to a DIY journal I did on request to explain how to do this growing thing in places that don't have access to fancy nutes. So go read the journal as it explains everything about how to grow top notch by yourself...2 ways. On about page 14 I think I explain my tea. I have pictures by the hour showing what you should see and how to make it.

Everything you need to know to grow like that is in there.

Including this gem which was a clone that spent 1 week in soil before hitting the bloom tent.

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Only 1 shot of tea and water from then on. No extra nutes. The soil was complete.
 

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