Morning Myco! You will have to excuse me kinda going off on a tangent here for a bit I can't help it, I just had to pop in to share my insane levels of excitement: Walking into my local farmers co-op, I had the most pleasant surprise... They've gone mad on the organics!!!! I just hopped in to get some plant bags, and walking to the shelf I damn near fell over when I saw the new display they'd put up. Mushroom compost at about a dollar a 5 gallon bag, volcanic rock dust, a selection of different kinds of peat moss, my favourite rough grade of Leca I usually have to order from a few hundred miles away... and what really blew me away finding in there was a locally produced product they are calling Vermi-Gyp, earthworm castings with gypsum and zeolite, and another called Gyp-Sea, powdered kelp also with gypsum and zeolite. Hellooooooo microbes, this is bloody awesome. And what got me was the guys that make it clearly are badass organic heads, no plastic bags, all come in hemp bags with organic 'bio-ink' used for the labelling, and attached to the bags are little brochures explaining exactly what trouble plastic bags cause and why they will only use hemp. I was really tickled by their catch-phrase: We don't believe in pollution, so why make a mess when there's a solution? Well now let me just take out my wallet then shall I? LOL... So my soil got some of the mushroom compost and Vermi-Gyp mixed in this morning and is now back to cooking

I can't tell you how hard it has been to find decent organic stuff to build a soil out of mate.
So it seems I'm finally ready to get the organics done PROPA

I will be removing my one 'flow table this afternoon and replacing it with a nice big drip-tray instead. Coolest part is I have tons of the drip-trays, I can use a MUCH bigger area now than before. I can literally double my floor-space this way

Flow tables don't come cheap and I've been limited to their size and shape for quite some time, not exactly something I could go buy more of at the drop of a hat either. But bags with soil, I can have as many of those as I want! HELL YEAH! I've been using it as a drain-to-waste table anyhow, I've been enjoying the coco more than the Hydroton ever since I finally figured out the ideal mix. Now comes the really fun part, running the DTW right next to the organics and A/B comparing. Far as hydro goes, the coco has been kicking every other method's balls in. Phenomenal root development.
But in the soil I can really take care of the mycosphere much better, I can't wait to do the first transplant OUT of the small soil bags into bigger ones so I can see the roots. Mushroom compost plus generous use of mycorrhiza, I have this feeling it's going to be next-level.
Feel like I'm catching up with you guys now LOL. I always thought soil was slow and didn't yield as much as hydro, but you and Gandalf proved me oh so very wrong on that point. Just look at the colas you are getting, and your vegging is also FAST man. This is going to be quite the ride! I'm still just a bit concerned the soil-mix might be a tad too hot, but that is not a problem I will test it using a clone seeing as they are most sensitive, and if it is, I'll just add more straight soil to temper it a bit. Guess it will take a few tweaks but I can see the road ahead... And it looks like the road to Danksville
You guys all have a kickass week!!!
MH