Hello all I am on my first grow and my plants are just about done with veg and I have been reading about all the benefits of organics. Problem is I have been using the chemical base nutrients from AN since the start. My plants look great, but doing the math, going organic will save me more money in the long run.
So my question is, since I have been using the chemical nutes, do you think it would be more beneficial to just keep using the AN base nutes and go organic on the next run? Since apparently the chemical fertilizers kill the microbes, or so I read.
definitely wait until next grow, but as project said, start planning and getting stuff together ASAP. it takes 4 weeks to properly compost an organic, water only soil. There are sometimes decent locally made soils in the grow shops if you shop around, but you never know until you try them and even though the grow shop worker might think they're good... they usually don't know much about growing organically (that's the case for shops around me anyway)
you could start with the clacamus cootz recipe to get your feet wet. it's easy to gather all the inputs and put together. I've modified the recipe a bit myself, for my own personal liking, but that's where i started as well. Good Luck!
it's not always necessarily the nutrients that kill the microbes but typically the concentrations they are applied at. when you have a ton of solute in a water solution, and a microbial cell is mostly water, water flows from high to low concentration naturally (osmosis). so when applied, that high solute stresses populations because water will flow out of their cells and stress them, sometimes to the point of death due to too low of water content in the cell. All about osmosis and diffusion
