from seed to harvest i don't do anything but pour water on my plants when they look dry. i plant the seed in bagged soil, and plant into my own mix a week before flower. there's no ppms to fuss with, no bottles of nutes to buy*, no measuring, no water to change, no loud pumps, just soil and plants. i don't grow them, they grow themselves.
i can fill a 3 gallon pot over 20 times (20 plants) for about 80 bucks, with enough amendments left over to fill 20 more with just an additional $30 investment. that's 40 plants for around a hundred bucks, or about $2.75 per plant on medium and food. i use ordinary tap water and it goes from the faucet right to the plant. it is also free of salt based synthetic ferts, not because i'm anti-synthetics, but because i find that i can be even lazier with my growing without having to treat salt buildup issues.
*i do have a bottle of fish fertilizer (5-1-1) that i occasionally use to prevent yellowing on unfamiliar strains that turn out to be particularly N-hungry in flower. it's preferable to overshooting the available N in my mix.
hydro may generally grow bigger plants faster than soil might, but if someone's soil plant is 1/4th the size of a similar hydro plant, whoever grew it fucked it up. hydro is not going to get the same plant 4x bigger than if vegged for the same time in an adequately sized pot of soil by someone who knows what they're doing.