I was explaining to dewayne about how regular soil grown tomatoes in the store have pretty close to 400 units of vitamin A per/pound. Hydro maters have 4,000 units per/pound.
That however is because of the amount of fertilizer that's used on the giant fields that the commercial growers have. The ferts translate into millions of dollars for these guys and they aren't putting any more on them than the law MAKES them put on them. The FDA requires that a pound of soil grown tomatoes have a minimum of 400 units of vitamin A, and that's what they calculate their ferts for.
With a MJ crop, soil growers tend to want to put as much ferts on them as they can. This causes the difference between growing characteristics to be more closely related.
I firmly believe that hydro weed grows faster, matures faster and flowers to completion faster. An 8 week flowering crop takes me 6 in hydro. It takes 8 weeks for a 10-12 week flowering plant in hydro.
The point being, hydro will provide the absolute maximum conditions for an MJ plant, where to do so with soil, you'd have to treat it like a hydro plant and let it get root bound in a perlite rich soil and feed it hydro nutes 4 times a day. Essentially, it's a hydro plant at that point.
When using only soil with soil type nutes, I believe that hydro will consistently outgrow soil.
I've proven this with many side by side grows.
As far as taste, and other criteria, I think the outcome is pretty much the same with the exception that hydro plants seem to me to have a much higher resin content when compared to soil grown.
Both are great. If it gets you to a 9 out of 10 in soil, and a 10 in hydro, will you be aware of the difference or be too stoned for it to matter?
by better, I mean more and tastier and potentcy-wise...
