Your 'craft ' would improve dramatically if you were to move away from pre-packaged solutions and towards devising a program that fits the unique needs of your strain and your situation. It sounds like you do that to a certain extent, then why not start from the beginning without paying a premium for the MG soil? Defending MG isn't really helping anyone except MG.Someone in hydro would say all soil is garbage,any real growers can grow in any kind of medium,i could veg a plant in tissue if i wanted to,you're saying a soil is bad because
you had a bad experience,with bad experience. I get premium buds cause I'm good at my craft.
PS In the times that I was forced by circumstances to use MG products I wouldn't say that the experiences were bad, just really disappointing.