What is hydroponic cannabis?
"Hydroponics" is a term that you can sometimes find to describe cbd cannabis. Here we will explain what this means and the impact this method of cultivation has on cannabis.
What is hydroponics?
Hydroponics is a special method of cultivation which, unlike traditional cultivation, does not use soil as a substrate but an inert medium such as clay balls or rock wool.
What does inert mean?
The earth is made up of a certain mixture of clay, limestone, sand and decaying organic matter. To feed themselves, plants take advantage of the decomposition of organic matter by bacteria, which transform it into mineral elements that can be assimilated by the plant.
In hydroponics, the soil is replaced by an environment less favorable to bacteria, so you have to give your plants a mixture of mineral fertilizers that can be directly assimilated by the plant without having to go through the decomposition box.
Advantages of hydroponics
Thanks to this ingenious process, hydroponics makes it possible to grow plants on a substrate that is less soggy than the earth while allowing oxygen to circulate better around the roots.
In addition, hydroponics allows you to greatly optimize the chemical parameters around your roots by constantly offering the plant a nutrient solution that is 100% assimilable and has ideal chemical properties to deliver nutrients to the plant.
With hydroponics you are entirely in control of the nutrition of your plants where the earth requires you to trust microlife to decompose organic matter with all the imbalances that this causes.
Disadvantages of hydroponics
Obviously there is also a downside with this method of cultivation and the fact that you are the only pilot in the plane entails the need to be even more vigilant than with a cultivation in the ground where this substrate and microbial life are sort of your co-pilots.
To properly manage a hydroponic culture, you need some experience and you have to be constantly present to compensate for the slightest imbalance in your nutrient solution.
Difference between hydroponics and soil
In the end, if we had to make a comparison between hydroponics and soil, the most decisive parameter is surely that of yield. As we specified above, hydroponics allows a better assimilation of plants which results in an accelerated development which necessarily has a certain impact on the yield. This difference can go from simple to quadruple with two same plants in the same conditions but one in hydro and the other in soil.
On the other hand, growing in hydroponics requires more care and experience than soil; they are two different schools...
The difference in the finished product
The cannabinoid level
In hydroponics, the fact that the plant has more energy thanks to an increased assimilation of nutrients also leads to an increase in cannabinoid levels in the finished product. Indeed the plant will focus more on the production of trichomes in hydroponics since it has more potential and since the cannabinoids are mainly contained in these resin glands they are found in greater quantities in the plant.</p >
The flavor of cannabis
On the other hand, one of the advantages of soil over hydroponics is that of the complexity of the flavor. Indeed, thanks to the microlife and the complexity of the substrate that the soil presents, it is found in cannabis in the form of an intensity and an organoleptic depth that hydroponics cannot match.
Hydroponia, on the other hand, respects the original genetics better in terms of flavor since its nature is less influenced by the organic and complex composition of the soil.