Successful cultivation of medical marijuana is neither a mystical
pursuit nor a haphazard operation; furthermore, grow rooms themselves
require no attention from high priests and shamans.
In fact, the application of direct and simple scientific methods is
the road to exemplary and cost efficient results. For decades many
growers have been misled by erroneous information and even today few
gardeners have a working knowledge of basic cultivation methods.
Intense and comprehensive marketing campaigns have developed a huge
industry of unneeded product lines.
That these lines flourish is evidence of how successful these
strategies have been.
Certainly the promise of innovation and technological break-through is
attractive to novice and professional growers alike.
However, marketing often makes it difficult to discern useful
innovation from costly hype.
A typical trip to the grow shop reveals aisle upon aisle of products
adorned with flashy labeling designed to appeal to the eye rather than
the intellect.
By 1947 the nutrient requirements for plant growth were already widely
known, and the practice of using N-P-K fertilizers with chelating
agents had long been established.
Today, the trend is to employ twelve to fifteen products during a grow
cycle when, in reality, all necessary elements can be combined into a
one or two-part fertilizer.
A major consideration when purchasing fertilizers should be the degree
of the nutrient concentration within the solution.
Unfortunately, the majority of available fertilizers are overly
dilute; and some fertilizer companies use wetting agents to
artificially increase nutrient concentration and often add plant
extracts that inflate cost but are not proven to effect yield.
Moreover, many elements in today’s fertilizers are not entirely in
ionic form, making them unusable by the plant.