[Mob Barley420]

Originally Posted by toohighmf

True organics with guanos and animal product are far more dangerous for your health when smoking/vaping. As is Soil for the most part. Smoking cadmium, nickle, iron, and other trace elements is not healthy. Would you eat a turd? would you smoke one? how about bonemeal? When we eat organic foods our body digests and uptakes the minerals. smoking them is converting them to a toxic carcinogen. I use salt based ferts and a substrate I can fully flush.

Word!!!! Very good point, we might use mineral salts in RW, CoCo or DWC but it's all flushable and ends up higher quality, and more healthy than "Organic" soil bud IMHO.

[Lazyman]

Originally Posted by Snowboardergnu

Hey growers, My buddy and I want to open a hydro shop somewhere in the bay area and I need your help with choosing a location. We're looking for a place that doesn't have a good hydro shop already. If anyone out there has some good suggestions, I'm all ears. I also am looking for suggestions on product lines to carry. I have been growing for years and only know the couple of nutes I've personally used. thanks

Good luck, talk to Hydrofarm and Sunlight Supply, they will both tell you their protected territories already encompass the majority of northern california. You will probably have to be south of San Jose to even have a chance, and most companies are struggling because there is so much competition right now. You will never have lower prices than can be found on the internet, and you will start out much smaller than any other hydro shop in existence.

Basically, I had the same idea, and it took two days of solid legwork to see it dashed to ribbons. I hope you find success where I could not!

[hashberry]

Originally Posted by NiteTiger

As a dirty chem grower, this statement seems dead on to me. Organics is like learning Chinese - Hard to learn, harder to master, and pretty much pointless.

I know this thread is 40 pages and this has nothing to do with organics, but I just thought I would point out that this is a terrible analogy. Chinese is an easy language to learn(really, it is), and it is far from pointless... Linguists are thinking that it will be one of the next global languages since it is based on pictures, which are much more easily learned by those who cannot read.

just sayin.

[h.h.]

Originally Posted by Snowboardergnu

Hey growers, My buddy and I want to open a hydro shop somewhere in the bay area and I need your help with choosing a location. We're looking for a place that doesn't have a good hydro shop already. If anyone out there has some good suggestions, I'm all ears. I also am looking for suggestions on product lines to carry. I have been growing for years and only know the couple of nutes I've personally used. thanks

Why sell nutes that you haven't used? Why all the redundancy at the shops?
You have soil, hydro, organic, non organic and combinations of all four, but that's it. Just sell what you know works and comes at a decent price. Just sell the good shit and don't stock 30 brands just to make you look big or to trick people into buying those with the biggest mark up. When your customer succeeds, so will you.
Lots of start ups. Lots of competition from shops who are starting to get big. Ones who can outstock you as well as outprice you. What you have to sell is your expertise. Your personal involvement in each and every grow and your honesty. Fill a nitche the big boys can't.
Seriously though, I'd do a lot of market research first. Living in a small town, we had 2 shops open a block apart within a week of each other. There was barely a market for 1. The one that survived had the cash to stay open with few customers to support them until they gained all the customers. Tee shirt give aways and discounts helped with the process. You gotta have the cash.

[jeffie]

I will not agree with a lot said here. So I just state and be done with it. to me:

Chemical gardening is primitive and boring. 20 elements or so? u gotta be kidding me...

Organic does taste better from my cherries, pears and indoor basil with tomatoes and strawberries. My neighbors' organically fed chicken eggs are waaay superior to anything out there. I have ponds with trout don't get me started on that.. WHAT U FEED IS IN TASTE AND SMELL OF EVERYTHING YOU HARVEST (one way or another).

Organics has so many possibilities and variables...
Organic gardening does not yield less - in fact it yields better. Organics are totally capable of producing most proffered elements plants can uptake to their very limit and then some more to provide an even higher boost. Healthy, live micro-herd is the key.

With organics you can find that golden recipe for your plant - with chemicals you'll be smelling and tasting just like everyone else's weed - flushed... doh

It is all in the balance of things, not in imaginable "purity"
The best smelling hash I've ever smoked was mine and it was grown on some finest shit nature had given me ...cow shit, chicken poo, garden fruit compost, complex natural hays, fish, deer bones and soil from that ditch up the hill

Give me a break with that modern undeveloped chemi shit marketed as scientific breakthrough cos it ain't.

haha peace

[bearded1]

I tried the chem way, had some trials and tribulations. Growing organic and its so much better. Less time looking for signs of trouble and more watching healthy plants grow. I spent my life with complicated shit studing constantly to keep up with technology. with an organic grow its symplfied. I mix my soil, i transplant my babby girls and I watch them grow. No metters nothing to mix but worm shit, watter, and mollasses. don't get any better n dat.

[Strainhunter]

Just for starters you will need around 150k (better 200).

You will need exclusive wholesale contracts which are pretty much impossible to get due to your desired location - that fact alone should tell you how hard it is to get started.

My recommendation:

Start out by finding yourself small wholesalers who are willing to work with you.
You will need a physical store address (and evidence for that) or most wholesalers will NOT be willing to work with you, in other words just online sales is not going to work, neither. And don't think you are going to get around that because they do check.

There is a whole lot more to say about starting a Hydro store but the above already should give you enough to get sorted out before you move on.


Wishing you good luck with your task!

Originally Posted by Snowboardergnu

Hey growers, My buddy and I want to open a hydro shop somewhere in the bay area and I need your help with choosing a location. We're looking for a place that doesn't have a good hydro shop already. If anyone out there has some good suggestions, I'm all ears. I also am looking for suggestions on product lines to carry. I have been growing for years and only know the couple of nutes I've personally used. thanks

[LadyLargely]

Originally Posted by Lazyman

Also, to the big organic fans, who has not seen the Penn and Teller episode of Bullshit on organics? Real eye-opener that, in all of their blind taste tests people chose the non-organic bananas 90% of the time over organics. When they cut a non-organic banana in half and told people that half was organic, the people preferred the organic side, of the non-organic banana! Just shows you that folks are stupid and will buy what they're told is better.

Yea, I saw that Penn and Teller episode. You know what else I witnessed? A conversation by a PhD in psychology about that episode. I love Penn and Teller, but they used a really fuckin' nasty trick in their organic taste test. Go back and watch it again:

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I AGREE

LOOK AT THE FUCKING PLATES!!!!

The organic samples are ALWAYS on a red plate and the non-organic samples are ALWAYS on a blue plate. You can ask any fucking under-graduate psychology student and he/she'll tell you that the red vs. blue trick is a classic way to influence the results of a test like this. Penn and Teller committed some serious bullshit on this one so they would get the results they wanted for their ever-controversial show. And here you thought that their experiment was actually credible science.

You said it best Lazyman: "Just shows you that folks are stupid"

Here's a nice paper on the subject for those who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon:

www.sjdm.org/~baron/journal/11/10629/jdm10629.pdf

This is the problem with organic vs. inorganic debates!

The comparisons are never fucking fair! Comparing organic to inorganic farming is like comparing apples to water buffalo. They are so completely unrelated to each-other it is nearly a moot point to make. On top of that some asshole, like Penn & Teller in this case, is always harboring a personal agenda in these situations. Its just fucked!

As for organic supporters who used subjective shit like "taste" to defend the merits of organics:

Fucking shame on you! That kindof shit just makes us sound like a bunch of ignorant hippies! That is no way to go about promoting the benefits of our grow style. Why aren't you talking about the real shit like:

-beneficial microbes
-low-maintenance water-only feed schedules
-disease and pest resistance
-the ability to recycle your medium
-no-till grow practices

The list is a hell of a lot longer and more concrete than subjective shit like "better taste" or "a sense of well-being". That stuff is nice and everything, but you are never gonna convince lovable fools like NiteTiger with that kind of bull-pucky.

Oh, and seriously, fuck the Amish. Don't you dare compare those assholes to me just because we both fertilize our crops with organic materials. Their way of life discourages learning and promotes ignorance, of course they where gonna cause some kind of ecological disaster eventually. When you have that kind of glad-handing 'god will take care of it' attitude you are always going to cause problems for yourself and especially those around you. All of my waste gets recycled, composted or is otherwise accounted for.

The benefits of organic gardening don't come out of a fucking bottle. They come from the force that drives all of life. The breathing, crawling, pulsating spirit that fills every living thing. It is our bread. It is our water. It is our sustenance.

It is the best way to grow cannabis!





This is just the beginning... ... ...

-LadyLargely

[al-k-mist]

^^^ Said it better than I could.
The practice of creating base "soils" using peat, worm castings, and pumice or perlite, and then ammending it with such things as rock dust, alfalfa meal( 72 elements, or something, it is a plant nutrient accumulator, like comfrey or stnging nettles), Neem seed meal and karanja seed meal(pest resistance) Kelp (every grower uses kelp products, Im sure, but I mean kelp meal, from the feed store), etcetera
Not all growing organics requires the use of guano, or composted poo, except Earth Worm Castings.
I plan on doing a side by side this spring, maybe before then, with a non-organic line, a bottled organic line, and a home-made line, with what I am learning. (yes, I started on bottled organics, until I found out a lot isn't). I plan on using 2 or 3 clones of 2 different strains, just to make it more fair. It still wont be representative, with a small sample, but hopefully it will give me a TRUE indication whether FOR ME I would yield better/more/etc with bottles, which I still wont do, but still
To each their own, I prefer organic, non gmo, local stuff. Not because its cool or hip, but because "we dont own this world(although we act as if we did) its a loan from the children of our childrens kids..." (-brent)
Thanks for lettin me bee here
(~);}
Alchemist

[mtlakehydro]

Originally Posted by NiteTiger

That's open to debate. Ask a hundred growers and you'll get 100 different answers.

More to the point of the thread, why choose any organic, even if it is "the best organic fert known to man", when chem ferts are, more often than not, cheaper and easier to manage?

Well lets look at this like this. food waste converted to the proper nutrient profile for plant growth would be the best choice. It is reusing the nutrients that come from recycled food waste. The bacteria and fungi have already processed the organic matter into usable minerals that plants can use. I would think this would be best for environment and makes the most sense altogether to me. You could have a organic hydroponic system that you could run sterile. I bet you organic guys are like what is he talking about? Yes organic hydroponics without all the extra stinky crazy additives and all that work. Plants eat minerals. When you grow organic what is your goal, for the organic matter to be broken down by bacteria and fungi and converted into minerals. Basically carbon to usable minerals. The perfect hydroponic nutrient is food scraps broken down into usable minerals in a profile that our plants like. Check it out ! Google food to fertilizer. There are companies that are making hydroponic nutrients now. Its in the beginning stages. This will prevent a lot of food from being dumped in the landfills. We all should help this cause and grow organic to boot. No need to mine minerals if we have the resources that we are wasting now to get those same minerals. What your opinion on this ?