PadawanWarrior
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the great advice. There is one real dumbass at the hydro store that keeps trying to sell me chemicals even though I'm growing organically. I actually had some words with him once when he made a smart ass comment, but he's been extra nice since. I can actually get a lot of the stuff cheaper from them than Amazon or online somewhere else, but things like flex hose and fans are more expensive from them. And the fact that I just found out they can order stuff for me from BAS and save me a little makes me pretty happy with them at the moment.Regardless, they're both good products that have higher P levels than N so they'll both be fine for flower whichever you decide to use.
Most hydro store people are shills unfortunately. There are some good guys/stores out there, sure, but most are crap. They don't make money on growers succeeding, they make money on selling superfluous garbage to people that don't do their due diligence. Most hydro store "discounts" aren't actually discounts either. They mark up their prices super high and when they give you their "discount" it's similar in price to Amazon at best. I had the same "discount" at the hydro store I used to frequent way back in the day. They stopped being friendly to me when I was buying the same products over and over again and not falling for their upselling.
BAS is legit though. The guy not only knows what he's talking about (studied from Coots if I recall), but he provides a good quality product to boot. The only reason I don't use BAS is because the shipping costs are too high for me, likely because I'm too far from his headquarters or something. If you're getting good prices from BAS AND good shipping, definitely give the guy your business. A wise man once told me that each dollar bill in our wallets should be considered as a vote. With our dollar bills, we vote toward who we want to keep in business. Jeremy at BAS is much more worthy of our business than any hydro store or even Amazon.
A key takeaway for the living soil thing isn't just sustainability, but affordability. Use whatever is local and cheap to you. Crab Meal may be legit, but if you get a better price on guano and it's more local then by all means use it instead! The idea is to do it on the cheap and sustainably.
I actually have 3 types of guano that I haven't used on my cannabis plants yet. I did try experimenting with the 9-3-1 with some house plants and they kinda had some burn, so I was hesitant to add it on my plants. I have Indonesian 9-3-1, Mexican 8-1-1, and Madagascan 0-13-0. I'm just worried that it's a little too hot, but there is guano in the Earth Juice I've been using. I just don't want to kill my mycorrhizae fungi, and don't know how that would affect them. What are your thoughts. Thanks again.