Your either a bio/organic grower in soil, which means you use a light nutrient soil and add liquid of powdered organic feeds to you soil.
Or you use True Living Organic TLO soil which contains abundant mycorrhizal fungi microbes & beneficial bacteria (microherd) which can be supplemented with organic feeds or you use Supersoil, which by rights should take you plant to the end of it's life as long as a large enough pot is used.
Supersoil was a name coined by "Subcool" and uses organic ingredients and allowable additions such as dolomite lime, to create a soil that provides everything the plants needs
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Or you are a salt based grower, which can be in soil but often, it is in a hydro system and comes in hydro/coco specific bottle. made for just that.
The problems with trying to run organic nutrients in a hydro system are many!
Drip nozzles and feed lines can become easily clogged, bacteria and nasies easily colonise organic nutrients, especially if it gets warm.
Pythium (root rot is a problem too) especially in warm weather.
Let light get to the nutrients and it and it is instantly a lovely place for algae to grow and it just get worse from there.
It will also attract bugs like fungus gnats, especially if it starts to stagnate, which is another problem in of itself as the lack of oxygen leads us back to pythium problems.
There are such things as bio filters where beneficial bacteria live on large surface granular substrates, which convert Nitrites to Nitrates but this is still difficult situation to control.
Then there are still the othe problem mentioned above.
I have in the past and even very recently, looked into and talked about, the use of Biobizz in coco, this is still not recommended and there is very little said about it on other forums, although the question arises here and there. fairly frequently.
There seems to be no clear answers due to the fact no one has made it work!
If they had, it would be a revelation and we would all be doing it!
I love researching and I have yet to find the philosopher stone in this regard, to organic hydro.
So the choice is use organic ferts in soil and if you so desire, you can use salt based fert in soil instead!
Often with organic nutrients you just follow the feed schedule and Ph accordingly for soil grows.
Organic nutrient are as it says on the bottle "organic" in their makeup!
These nutrients can't be accurately measured via electrical conductivity, as the nutrients are contained in organic compounds.
Soils also act as a natural buffer for the nutrients but feed to heavily and you can still over feed!
This differentiates organic fertilizer from salt based fertilizers, which can be easily EC'd/PPM'd (remember, when talking to anyone about PPM's there are 3 main measures of PPM 500 Scale, 650 scale ( see my link in my sig for more details, for a full explanation of PPM's CF,TDS, & EC).
Much greater care is needed as salt based fertilizers are many times stronger than organic nutrients.
They are much less forgiving if you add too much and this is further compounded by the fact that the hydroponic substrates offer very little buffering.
Over feeding is very easy if you not paying attention and not dotting all the "I's and crossing all the T's , so to speak.
There is always work to be done in every grow room, no matter how much you automate it!
For me I avoid DWC, to much measuring and fiddling with PH and EC/PPM daily and there is also the factor, that constantly bubbling nutrients with air, adds CO2 into the water, which turns into Carbonic acid and therefore raises the PH.
This then needs constant adjustment.
Hydropics can be in a recirculating system of such as RDWC, where the nutrient solution is continuously pumped round. then there is hydro where the nutrient is contained in a tank, which is then delivered, as and when the solution level drop at the feed site. This occurs in plant set ups like Auto pots and in drip system.
There is also Ebb and Flow where the nutrient is contained in a tank pump to the plant and then drains back to the tank.
They all require different level of maintenance, some needing more frequent attention than others.
Then there is what I like to use, which is DTW Drain To Waste in coco.
You just mix your nutes and then EC & PH it and feed with 20% - 30% run off, which I then remove.
I do this by hand watering and I also check the plants at the same time!
In my small set up this is very easy and I just use a wet/dry vacuum to remove the excess nutrients.
This is all written from the top of my head, it may not be the best write up but there are far too many variables we could discuss and also further hydro methods not described here!
Organic in soil requires following a feed schedule, with PHing and observation of the plants to know if there is a lack or over feed. (often strong super soil mixes can get a little too hot for seedlings and young plants but after that they tend to race away!
As long as they have a big enough pot.
Salt based in hydro set ups need careful measurement and can be more or less labour intensive depending on the method used.
Certain aspects can be regulated in hydro with probes that keep an eye on PH and EC and then doses the nutrient solution, to create the ideal PH & EC automatically.
Probes however, do need frequent calibrating and cleaning to remain accurate.
These automated PH & EC balancing system are not cheap and not generally for the regular tent or cupboard grower.
Then there are the very simple hydro methods such as hempy buckets and DWC hydro setups, where you PH & EC your nutrient solution and hand water, simple but labor intensive.
If you want better flavor and better terpene profiles then organic is the way to go but remember that heat can destroy terpenes regardless of organic or salt based ferts.
So careful observation still needs to be taken into account, regarding environmental conditions, if you want stanky dank weed.
If your growing for gas extraction extracts such as BHO shatter you will lose a lot of terpenes, in the process.
So growing organic may not be the method you want because you lose so much of what you loving have created.
If your are growing for max flavor and dank AF weed and sifted kief etc, then organic is the way to go.
So much more I could say but I'm tired and this has been a long reply!
Just my thoughts and observations, others may have more to add on the subject!
Now where's my pipe , i have hash to smoke!
. A question to you is, did you really see any difference in terpene profiles of organic and coco grown products?
