i always heard mg will mess your plants all up? then again i am a newbie....
It *can*.
MG is a broad term. They have soils and nutes.
The soils ain't so bad, but they have the nutes in them that last for close to 3 months. People start feeding their plants and get burn. Plus the nutes in the soil are time released. Which makes it uncontrollable. You *can* get burn at anytime. And flushing can make the burn worse.
MG soils of choice seem to be Moisture Control and Organic. You probably will wind up with fungus gnats. They really don't do much harm, just kinda annoying. No pest strips can clear them up with a few strips of fly paper to catch 'em too.
Now for nutes. MG has water soluble and time released. We covered what effects the time released have. The water soluble ones should be safe to use. I can't see why the high priced (non-organic) nutes are SO much better. The 3 main elements are that, natural elements.
I plan on doing a MG only (or waly-world) grow soon to see.
I think MG gets the HUGE bad rap because its what all newbies go for (it has a great rep in gardening, so it kinda makes sense to use it) And most newbies seem to have various problems and some have failures. I think MG is an easy target as to the probs and failures, and most overlook the inexperience of the grower.