Yeah I agree with you 100% on the jack's man. I'm not exactly the "organic" type of guy myself, but probably like a lot of people when I first joined here, all I heard was organic, organic, organic. So, I ended up shelling out about $20 each for a quart of botanicare pro grow and a quart of bloom. Don't get me wrong, my girls are loving it, but it just doesn't go as far as you would think for even a small grow. They aren't even flowering yet and I'm about half way through the quart of grow with only 6 plants. Granted, they pretty big outdoor plants which need a lot, but still. I've actually been mixing in some Schultz All Purpose 10-15-10 ($4 a bottle at the local hardware store) because it contains the micronutrients that the Botanicare doesn't.
Like I've said, I'm no cannabis expert, but I have grown other plants before. I've taken enough biology courses in college to know that a plant doesn't care whether its food is organic or not. A nitrogen molecule is a nitrogen molecule. It doesn't matter if it comes from cow shit, worm shit, bat shit, or whatever. I guess you can make the argument that the organic stuff isn't as strong and is broken down in the soil slower or whatever. Also, they say that the production of the chemical stuff creates more waste, uses more energy, and is just "bad for the environment" in general, but I've never read anything to support that. Not saying it isn't true, I never really researched it very much, but I doubt it. A lot of the time, this "environmentally friendly" business uses more energy and creates more carbon that traditional methods. Not trying to ramble or get political, but I've read some articles on how in some cases recycling, for example, actually uses more energy that creating said material from scratch. Think about it. Let's take plastics for example. They need drive a truck around to pick it up, send it wherever to be cleaned and processed, then it has to get shipped to the plastic bottle facility. Then, they have to go through a lot of other steps and processes just to make it usable. They can still only use 10-20% of recycled plastic when making a bottle. When it's all said and done, they use almost as much energy and spend almost as much money as they would have if they just used virgin plastic to begin with. Not saying recycling is bad, it saves landfill space, but it's something the liberal media doesn't tell you.
Again, sorry for ranting on your thread SmellyTreez. Hopefully I didn't piss too many people off, haha. The point I was getting at is that I don't think there is anything wrong with using the non organic stuff. I'd use Miracle Gro if I had to. When I hear things like "Miracle Gro killed my plants", I tend to believe that either 1) the person used WAY too much. MG is strong stuff, you don't need much. And 2) the person is just starting out and killed the plants by some other means. Now the soil is another story. Personally, I like the physically properties of MG soil, but I don't like the time released fertilizer. Seedlings especially don't need it and I like to be in control of how much the plants get. First time growers almost always over water, so every time they do more and more of the time release pellets are dissolved. Plus, first timers tend to over feed and start feeding too soon as well. THAT is what kills plants, not the "cannabis killer" chemical nutrients.
I think after this botanicare is gone I too am going to switch to Jack's. Not only do I like the ratios, it's a local company. I'm all about supporting local business. It's very inexpensive too. I guess because we are nearby, you can get one of the small tubs around here for like $5.