Quote Originally Posted by Portzilla
I am hoping a couple of you can sell me on growing indoors in soil vs growing indoors with hydro.
Why not do what you know? If your an experienced gardener the skills you've acquired this far will carry over to Indoor soil better than they will to a new foreign median. Although i would say hydroponics is easier for the beginner, since you have experience with soil you might as well stick to it. I personally prefer the smoke of soil grown herbs, some people prefer hydro-different strokes. Many people value hydro over soil b/c of yield, however if your just growing for your family this should be a negligible factor.

I must emphasize the ease of creating a custom soil mix, i'm sure this board has many different tried and true recipes in the sections the above posters redirected you towards (eg. 2 parts peat, 2 parts perlite, 1 parts compost). If you choose to go the soil route, remember high quality components are key, (especially earth worm castings), your soil can be remineralized and recycled for years- big $$ saver.


Quote Originally Posted by Portzilla
..... Is there any reason I wouldn't want to use the seeds that come from the swag that Ive picked up over the last couple months? Its really low quality compared to professionally grown medical grade ....
Genetics determine the potency of herb, plants with 'bad' genes grown in a perfect environment will almost always be less potent than their more aggressively crossed counterparts grown in sub-optimal environments. Often times people are fortunate to grow out some bomb from bag seed that was due to a chance hermie on an inflorescence, i don't think this sounds like your case, however-i do know most of the 'swag' people smoke are actually really great genetics typically treated poorly and allowed to have the males pollinate the females-but it's not really worth the equipment, light money, and effort to grow out a poor crop indoors (IMO). Also, even if you cull the males, the plants you smoked probably have an affinity to hermie and will spray your room with pollen leaving your harvest with plants that neglected to properly develop their cannabinoids.
I would advice crossing state borders to one of the more friendly Medicinal MJ states near you and scooping some seeds or genetics from a cardholder in those states- if you find people that have serious ailments they are usually down to help other folk that they know are in need of medicine. I mean it takes your soil around a month to 'cook' before its ready for use anyways, maybe you and the wife need to get out for a hiking trip in south colorado in the meanwhile ?
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I realize i have very poor communication skills and most of those paragraphs are rather jumbled, but if you read through them a couple times you'll see what i'm saying. Peace, samkalpa.