Soil vs. Hydroponic Costs

[Jill D]

Currently a soil grower. Using the Fox Farms line of soil and nutrients. I buy new dirt every cycle (I try to baby 'em as much as possible and yes I am a bit of a newb).
This is getting expensive. I'm thinking about making the switch to a hydroponic drip setup using hydroton. Aside from the initial expense of the hydroponic equipment, will the hydroton setup be cheaper in the long run to operate? Or is there another type of setup (maybe aero) that will be cheaper? Not sure that it matters but I'm flowering about 20-30 plants at a time.

 

[brick20]

good question i been trying to go hydro myself for the longest but every way i look at it it gets real complicated

 

[choempi]

Currently a soil grower. Using the Fox Farms line of soil and nutrients. I buy new dirt every cycle (I try to baby 'em as much as possible and yes I am a bit of a newb).
This is getting expensive. I'm thinking about making the switch to a hydroponic drip setup using hydroton. Aside from the initial expense of the hydroponic equipment, will the hydroton setup be cheaper in the long run to operate? Or is there another type of setup (maybe aero) that will be cheaper? Not sure that it matters but I'm flowering about 20-30 plants at a time.

I use rockwool/STG and it is cheap, clean and disposable. Hydro is more equipment (pumps, tubeing, timers, res, trays, ec and ph meters) and more maintainance (checking ph and ec, cleaning res, making sure drip or spray emitters are clean). You have to work more then with soil, but growth rate is much faster.

 

[ekho5lima]

I'm doing both right now at the same time, and I have to admit, Hydro is a bit faster (i'm using a dwc...probably the cheapest way) than soil by about 1 week or so. The only down side is the hydro requires way more attention than soil. I've made really cheap hydro setups using anything from storage tubs, buckets to even large yogurt containers. Since you're already a soil grower I assume you already have some sort of grow tent or area, so for you the most expensive thing will be the air pump with tubing and air stones which you can find at any pet store or on ebay or something (~20 dollars dependent on quality). Also, you may have to purchase meters for ppm, and pH which can be a bit expensive depending on if you choose to go the electronic route. For a growth medium hydroton is great and can be used over and over so that's a plus. In my opinion, you should try a really inexpensive DWC system with maybe 6 plants or so and get an idea of all the maintenance and attention required for hydro, and after harvest....decide if its worth it to switch and purchase equipment for a more advanced and or complicated system....Hope this helped and good luck.

 

[r3dn3ck]

use coco. It's just exactly like growing dirt (I mean exactly). You feed once a day to every few days depending on your bucket size and you get all the benefits of hydro without having to buy pumps and meters and all that BS.

EDIT: Having said that, the better a setup you use to begin with the better. CO2 + good nutes + straight coco coir + HID lights usually = good production. I get twice as much growing in coco as I did in dirt and it didn't change the "how" of the grow. Now that I'm figuring out more, I'm hoping to do even better... 3x - 4x.