That's the truth I gave my homie a chemdog cut of mind his chemdog is the best I tasted with just ionic grow and bloom and cal mag I,ve had better yields but I couldn't tell the different between the chem or DNA,S og 18 witch is my favorite strain even tho 18 has chem in it my chem cut is dr greenthumb chem 4 and its fire been running since 06 but most of my grows the og 18 is better I wish I could make the 18 yield like doc,s chem 4 both are a beast if you like fuelnp, anything to help out a liar like you!
having worked at the shops I've seen some terrible stuff come from the most expensive stuff out there so i went on a quest to find the lowest cost highest concentration products i could find. thats one of the big games is concentration. a lot of times the cheaper products just arnt as concentrated so you just use more. just gotta keep growing and find what works!
i like using multiple derived sources too. like in bloom i feed P thats from 3 different sources (not full dose of each, a full dose when combined) and K from 4 different sources. cal from 3 and magnesium i get from 4 sources. i look at it like this if your cupboards are just only filled with doritos i bet your gonna jump at a nice pizza or anythings else really. i just try to give my babies a diverse pantry and they seem to keep me happy! its kinda annoying mixing it all together but whats another few seconds of thought when i gotta do it every day anyway. especially when that few seconds saves me all the headache of trying to fix deficiencies and from finishing with inferior product.
some of the best smoke I've ever had was grown with straight up ionic and cal mag + by botanicare so you really don't neeeeeed to do all this per se but i bet the guy who grew that ionic stuff felt pretty lucky to have that batch of tree. You are definitely on the right path and it sounds like you got a decent shop your going too if they are suggesting things like that humus. any shop that doesn't try to sell you something is on the right path!
I'm still sort of new here...Whats Gc3? and what does HGK stand for bro? It sounds like what i'm looking for...ya i got a low yielding 18 pheno too. probably the same one you got if you got it at the Gc3. My hgk pulls in 5-6 of a normal size plant in a 5 gallon squat pot. nothing special in the topping department or anything. HGK is a killer if you like 18. most people don't want it cause "it taste to much like og18" but thats not a bad thing in my book. I'm an og18 fanatic so the subtle differences where easy to find for me. i love the kosher kush too and the HGK is a lot like that too. My pheno any way is a nice blending of the 2 maybe a lil heavy on the chem side of the equation. its delicious. like AMAZINGLY delicious. watch for HGK babies up at the Gc3 a little birdie told me some might find their way there