I've seen side by side grows, what matters most is the grower. That person in the OG article said off the bat they are used to hydro....hmmm I wonder why the hydro came out so much better. I've seen side by side with a soil grower, his soil came out much better than the dro (even though I would've expected the yield on the hydro to outdo the soil).

Hydro is faster and will yield more. Potency should be mainly genetically determined trait.

zandor,
I think with these liquid organic ferts people should still flush because it almost defeats the purpose of organic (using soluble fert). In nature organic material is decomposed in the soil, there are bacteria that fix the nitrogen into a source that can be taken up by the plant and other minerals and elements are available from the decaying matter. This is a process and takes a long time so the plant takes what it needs gradually. You can overfert, overfeed and make a plant taste gross by pumping up the fert levels. I believe that growing should be about nurturing a plant rather than trying to kick it's ass into growing by pumping water and ferts (chem or organic).

I think hydro is harder to deal with since small problems can kill everything so fast. Some root rot (which isn't hard to get at all) is devestating. I was trying a DWC but it caught the root rot (I think my water quality is horrible here) and within 3days from being completely healthy (after H2O2 treatment about 6 days before) it was completely dead. The soil ones looked 100% healthy. Plants grown in soil have at least some buffering capability due to soil, they tend to be able to take more abuse. Plus I live in an apartment and the bubbling noise was making me paranoid, and if a pump goes out while you're at work or out for the weekend...they will die.

I do think that sometimes hydro just doesn't seem as tasty, then again, I don't know what kind of nutes the person who grew it was using.

The science of modern day hydro came about in a minimalistic manner. This was when they were determining what the different elements a plant needed. They would give a plant no N....and it'd die, so they knew N was essential, then they gave it everything but P, it'd die, so P is essential. If you take a plant in nature and have it studied they will find thousands of stuff in the plant, they just take up whatever is in the environ. Plants found near gold mines actually have Au mineral within them because they just take it up from the ground. So it's not hard for me to imagine that there are things available in organic matter that make a difference in the terpene chemistry of the plant which would be lacking in hydroponics due to the method in which hydroponic nutrient solutions came about (through minimalistic science).

An example would be, we've known for years that veggies and fruits were good for us because of vitamins that they had. But more recently (not that recent anymore) they've studied phytochemicals and have found that these help a person to avoid cancer and they have synergistic health benefits. To this day, a vitamin still isn't as good as mother natures fruits and vegetables, I have no reason to believe it isn't the same as with cannabis. Sure a scientist can grow a whopping tomato bigger than what mother nature can, but I'll give quality to mother nature.

But it's american philosophy, bigger is better. Bigger, faster, cheaper, richer, less effort, instant gratification.....it's the cause of all our health problems and probably a fair portion of our other problems. I'm actually more a science guy than a hippie but I will give 2 opposable thumbs up to mother nature...now I just need to find somewhere to grow outside lol.