I used to have several sagging shelves in my grow op supplies closet stacked with bottles of hydroponics base nutrients and supplements, along with so-called organic and natural fertilizers and supplements.

One reason I had dozens of fertilizer bottles is I was competing different brands against each other in test grows so I could write about what works best for you.

Another reason is I naively believed hydroponics nutrients and fertilizer company hype about the need for all these products.

I spent way too much time studying manufacturer feed charts and carefully adjusting pH while monitoring parts per million and EC.

I spent a huge amount of money on every new product that came out, seeking the miraculous potion that would make my harvests worth gold.

But after years of testing every nutrients brand I could get my hands on, I hadn’t seen any significant difference in growth rate, yield, or potency between identical clone crops using different brands of fertilizer, except in cases when a brand was crap so it ruined my plants.

When cannabis prices dropped due to legalization and I was earning less money selling, I cut grow op costs by scaling back on the number of hydroponic nutrients products I was using.

I’d been so programmed by manufacturer advertising that I anticipated an acute crash in plant health, productivity and yield as I cut out all but the essentials.

What I mean by “essentials” is that I cut back to using only base nutrients, one P-K bloom booster, a resin booster, and a little molasses.

I grow in soil, coco coir, rockwool, perlite, soilless mix, and deep water culture, depending on season and my goals, and there are adjustments needed to maximize root feeding in each of those root media.

For example, soil and peat-based soilless mix tend to store nutrients elements, so I had to feed way less than the manufacturer’s feed charts recommend, and had to flush frequently. If I failed to do that, nutrients overload burns plants and locks out some nutrient elements.

With deep water culture and other pure hydroponics such as rockwool, it’s easy to overfeed because those systems are so efficient at transferring nutrients into roots, so I work off a reduced concentration feed program for those plants too.

I kept seeing the same results over and over: crops grown with only base nutrients and a bloom booster performed as well if not better than crops grown with all of those extra components that hydroponics nutrients companies and organic fertilizer companies push on growers.

The reason I kept doing the testing is I didn’t want to admit I’d been brainwashed by advertising and marketing all those years, that I’d wasted at least $250 per season on bottles I didn’t need to use. I was sure that eventually a crop test would prove that using all those extra bottles translated into way more than $250 worth of increased harvest weight and potency…but I was wrong.

My formerly sagging fertilizer and hydroponic nutrients shelves are now a lot lighter, because the multi-product, complicated, painstaking, time-consuming, technology-assisted, costly fertigation programs we used to use are used by us no more.

It only takes me a minute or two to mix the feed program, the program works well, I rarely if ever have to flush, leaf tip burn indicating overfeeding has disappeared. I don’t have calcium/magnesium problems, I save money and time, I get fantastic yield per watt of tasty, sticky, potent buds.

Be aware that as with the grow lights industry, most nutrients and fertilizer companies selling to the marijuana growing community are scammers. They do no original research, their raw materials are cheap, and they don’t have any scientific expertise. Your plants might grow, and you’ll harvest some buds, but these generic feed programs are not giving you maximal gardening rewards.

Growers who embark on the same fertigation downsizing as I have first use up their existing feed program, then convert to the simpler program, are rewarded for making the switch.

One big problem that has come up recently is the cost of hydroponic nutrients, reverse osmosis filters, pH meters, and other gear necessary for hydroponic gardening has gone way up. We’ve tried what’s called the “living soil” approach, which uses natural and organic soil and soil amendments rather than synthetic fertilizers.

The living soil approach is theoretically way easier and less technical than hydroponics. In hydroponics, one mistake with pH, or a technical glitch like a pump failure, can wreck a crop cycle. With living soil, as long as the soil mix is properly made and you apply quality amendments as needed, you won’t have that kind of disaster.We haven’t had great results from this approach so far, but that’s likely because the brands we tested are not configured properly.

In our relentless quest to find the best cannabis cultivation products, we recently found a company called The Soil Makers, producing”living soil” and other natural and organic feed products. This company looks to be a lot more legit than others it competes with.

We hope to get product test data and sample soil and amendments from The Soil Maker. If we do, we’ll test their products and report to you if they work well. It would be a true blessing if they did.

To paraphrase the legendary Bob Marley from his heartbreaking “Redemption Song,”

“Emancipate yourself from nutrients slavery.”