Hydroponic Growing Medium's

So many choices, Which one is right for you?

The most common issue I see when it comes to someone choosing the right medium is just plain education. Most people tend to go with the he said-she said choice. It is important that you find what works best for you and your situation.

Soil less Mixes will  include some if not all of the following - Coco fibers, Rice hulls, Peat Moss, Perlite, and barks. A lot of companies will also throw in some humic acids, compost, endomycorhizae, castings, and other natural fertilizers or stabilizers in the mix. I prefer to have the least amount in my medium so I can control everything my plant gets. It makes it easier to break down problems when they arise.

Lets go over some of your choices

ROCKWOOL:

Rockwool comes from the basalt rock. It is mined, heated down, made into long fibers, spun like cotton candy, and chopped down to size. Rockwool can put off some itchy dust but once it is soaked in water it is a lot easier to handle. Rockwool must be pre-soaked, the Acidity of the product must be neutralized prior to use.

EXPANDED CLAY:

Clay Rock or Hydtroton/Hydrocorn/hydrokorrels All of these are going to be very closely related. The difference is where they are mined. You will see different shapes, sizes, color, and even dust content will be different. Clay rock doesn't need to be soaked but it does need to have the dust washed off as well as possible.  For those companies that claim you don't have to wash their rock, just wash it. I can not imagine how precise they can possibly be in such large productions, I've hand washed cup fulls and still have residue but its your call. You can use this rock in many different ways. I have seen flood tables filled up with them but once they get rooted in there you can no move them! They work well in any aeroponic or DWC systems in net pots.

               
COCO COIR:

Coco Coir comes from the husk of a coconut. It has many other applications other than gardening but thats the most important right? It also comes in many forms; bricks you can expand, loose bags, chips, or chunks.

PERLITE: 

Volcanic glass that is heated and expanded to create a foam like appearance. It comes in various sizes depending on what you need. You can use perlite on its own or in other mixes. Perlite provides room for both air and water to pass.

PEAT MOSS:

Exactly what it sound like, Moss. It can hold large amounts of water and retain nutrients. You will mostly see this as an additive to other mixes and not necessarily being used on its own.


Each choice will give you a different level of Moisture retention and vary in size and shape. Ideally you dont want a heavy soil that will compact and suffocate your root system. You want to make sure you have sufficient drainage. Those of you who would like to find a happy medium (no pun intended), can mix your soils with any of the aerating products above to increase oxygen levels and space for your roots. Every plant is different and requires a different environment. Customizing your mixes is the best way to go to ensure the plant reaches its maximum potential.

Different methods of growing will require a different options for a mediums.

UPDATE: Top Colorado court rules against medical pot use

Brandon Coats, a quadriplegic man who used medical marijuana off-duty to control muscle spasms, was fired in 2010 by Dish after failing a random drug test.

By Alicia Wallace, The Denver Post

The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday affirmed lower courts’ rulings that businesses can fire employees for the use of medical marijuana — even if it’s off-duty.

The 6-0 decision comes nine months after the state’s highest court heard oral arguments in Brandon Coats’ case against Dish Network. Coats, who had a medical marijuana card and consumed pot off-duty to control muscle spasms, was fired in 2010 after failing a random drug test.

Read more on this story at http://www.thecannabist.co/2015/06/15/colorado-drug-testing-laws-marijuana-use-coats-vs-dish-network/36110/

HIGH TIMES Rescinds Two Cup Awards

For the first time in its 28-year history of producing Cannabis Cups, HIGH TIMES has rescinded two of its Cannabis Cup awards due to a self-reported violation of Cup rules and regulations. In a move that shows integrity and dedication to the cannabis industry, the initial winner of two Sativa Concentrate awards alerted Cannabis Cup officials to the potential violations. The rules infractions involved the addition of non-cannabis materials derived from fruit into the concentrate entries.

The new award winners in the Sativa Concentrate category are as follows:

1st Place – Gold Coast Extracts, “Tangie #17”

2nd Place – Top Shelf Terps with Greenwolf L.A. by Nature’s Lab Extracts, “Top Shelf Terps Tangie”

3rd Place – AU Extracts, “Tangie Shatter”

HIGH TIMES extends its congratulations to the new winners while also applauding the honesty of the earlier winners in the Sativa Concentrate category.

Via HIGHTIMES.COM
http://www.hightimes.com/read/high-times-rescinds-two-cup-awards

Modern Marijuana Is Often Laced With Heavy Metals and Fungus

By Brian Handwerk
smithsonian.com
March 23, 2015



In the U.S., legal hurdles have long hampered research into marijuana. But as more states approve medical and even recreational marijuana, scientific inquiries have spiked, especially studies aimed at finding out what exactly is in today's weed—and what it does to our bodies.

In Colorado, which made marijuana legal in November 2012, the latest results show that the pot lining store shelves is much more potent than the weed of 30 years ago. But the boost in power comes at a cost—modern marijuana mostly lacks the components touted as beneficial by medical marijuana advocates, and it is often contaminated with fungi, pesticides and heavy metals.

There's a stereotype, a hippy kind of mentality, that leads people to assume that growers are using natural cultivation methods and growing organically," says Andy LaFrate, founder of Charas Scientific, one of eight Colorado labs certified to test cannabis. "That's not necessarily the case at all." LaFrate presented his results this week at a meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in Denver.

LaFrate says he's been surprised at just how strong most of today's marijuana has become. His group has tested more than 600 strains of marijuana from dozens of producers. Potency tests, the only ones Colorado currently requires, looked at tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound that produces the plant's famous high. They found that modern weed contains THC levels of 18 to 30 percent—double to triple the levels that were common in buds from the 1980s. That's because growers have cross-bred plants over the years to create more powerful strains, which today tout colorful names like Bruce Banner, Skunkberry and Blue Cookies.


Those thinking that stronger pot is always better pot might think again. Breeding for more powerful marijuana has led to the virtual absence of cannabidol (CBD), a compound being investigated for treatments to a range of ills, from anxiety and depression to schizophrenia, Huntington's disease and Alzheimer's. Much of the commercially available marijuana LaFrate's lab tested packs very little of this particular cannabinoid. “A lot of the time it's below the detection level of our equipment, or it's there at a very low concentration that we just categorize as a trace amount,” he says. Consumers specifically seeking medical benefits from cannabis-derived oils or other products may have a tough time determining how much, if any, CBD they contain, because Colorado doesn't currently require testing.

“I've heard a lot of complaints from medical patients because somebody claims that a product has a high level of CBD, and it turns out that it actually doesn't,” LaFrate says. Colorado also does not yet require testing of marijuana for contaminants. Washington, the second state to legalize recreational marijuana, does require such testing for microbial agents like E. coli, salmonella and yeast mold, and officials there rejected about 13 percent of the marijuana products offered for sale in 2014.

"It's pretty startling just how dirty a lot of this stuff is," LaFrate says. His team commonly found fungi and bacteria in the marijuana products they tested. But for now it's unclear just how much marijuana growers need to clean up their product. "Like ourselves, this plant is living with bacteria that are essential to its survival. In terms of microbial contamination, it's kind of hard to say what's harmful and what's not," he adds. "So the questions become: What's a safe threshold, and which contaminants do we need to be concerned about?"

At the top of that list would be chemical contaminants in products such as concentrates, like the hard, amber-colored Shatter, which contains more than 90 percent THC, LaFrate suggests. Concentrates and edibles (think brownies) make up perhaps half of the current Colorado market. Their makers sometimes suggest that their chosen products are healthier than standard weed because they don't involve frequent smoking. But some manufacturers employ potentially harmful compounds like butane to strip the plant of most everything but THC. Tests also show that marijuana plants can draw in heavy metals from the soil in which they are grown, and concentrating THC can increase the amounts of heavy metals, pesticides or other substances that end up in a product. That means regulations for their production still need to be hammered out, LaFrate says.

“People use all kinds of different methods to produce concentrates,” LaFrate says. “They allow people to use rubbing alcohol and heptane. But what grade of solvents are they using? Are they buying heptane on eBay, and if so, what exactly is in there? There are a whole bunch of issues to figure out, and right now there are not enough resources and really no watchdog.”

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/modern-marijuana-more-potent-often-laced-heavy-metals-and-fungus-180954696/#4kwkoYMY63Vq1geC.99
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DENVER CITY COUNCIL APPROVES 36-PLANT LIMIT ON UNREGULATED POT GROWS

BY THOMAS MITCHELL - WESTWORD

The Denver City Council approved a plant limitation on non-licensed marijuana grows Monday night that could force many cultivating operations within city limits to shut down.

A 36-plant limit in non-residential zone lots was approved 11-0 — meaning any recreational co-op or medical marijuana caregiver over the mark will have to either shut down or scale back. The measure, which was introduced to the Denver Department of Safety and Well-Being on March 4, didn't take long to pass through the ranks of the city's local government thanks to concern over safety issues and illegal sales stemming from non-licensed growing warehouses.

The Denver Fire Department and its head of marijuana policy, Ashley Kilroy, claim some of the unlicensed growing operations they've come across have multiple zoning hazards — including blocked exits, faulty electricity and mold exposure. Non-licensed growing warehouses aren't required to register with the state, so any safety inspections only occur if someone alerts the city or the growers ask for one themselves.

Here's part of the city's reasoning, as seen in an excerpt from the bill:

...This gap in regulation has resulted in a proliferation of large-scale, non-licensed and unregulated marijuana grow operations that present significant health and public safety concerns with multiple and persistent violations of city building, electrical, fire, and environmental safety regulations; and whereas, the marijuana produced by these large-scale, unregulated cultivation operations cannot be tracked, making it virtually impossible to verify that this marijuana is distributed in accordance with all applicable laws.

These safety issues, coupled with the retail pot industry's call for action against black-market sales, have caused an increase in local legislation medical marijuana advocates say is aimed at squeezing out the caregiver system Colorado's pot industry was founded on. Because no more than 36 plants can now be grown per each 3,000 square foot lot, caregivers with multiple patients and extended plant counts may either have to leave town or risk losing their patients.

Many medical marijuana caregivers and their patients have been vocally against the new measure, as well as SB 15-014, a bill requiring all caregivers to register with the state. Christopher Weatherhogg, a Denver caregiver, voiced his displeasure in a letter sent to the City Council. It reads in part:

For the last five years I have poured time, money and energy into complying to the building codes and proper zone permitting that is necessary to get the Certificate of Occupancy for F1 Marijuana growing. My small caregiving operation services patients with high quality medicinal oils and other personal benefits that comply with the statutes under the Colorado Department of Health and Human Services. I would like to state that I do believe that Denver city regulations need to be strengthened so that there is more oversight over any safety or legal concerns. Unfortunately by limiting caregivers to 36 plants that would effectively crush the medicinal market.

You can read his full letter and two others from MMJ patients below.

The change also affects those in Denver taking advantage of the loophole in recreational plant counts. Although there is a twelve-plant limit in Denver residential grows (up to six for each adult), there previously were none for non-residential operations. If John Doe wanted to grow six plants for himself and six plants for each of hundreds of  "friends" 21-and-older, he could legally do so as long as no pot was sold and the lot wasn't residential.

Many local dispensary owners and cannabis cultivators view this approach as bleeding the regulated industry they've worked to legitimize. Although Amendment 64 was partly created in the hope of diminishing pot's black market, unregulated grows can potentially provide tax-free, untested cannabis products in direct competition with licensed retail businesses.

Now that Colorado's biggest hub for legal pot just drastically cut the amount of unregulated marijuana grown within its city limits, count this as a score for the industry and a loss for gray market dealers — though many innocent caregivers and patients may have been caught in the crossfire.

Follow the link to read the letters from caregivers and patients.

http://www.westword.com/news/denver-city-council-approves-36-plant-limit-on-unregulated-pot-grows-6612024

Gavita hires Shane Hutto as Commercial Consultant for the U.S.

Coloroda based greenhouse crop consultant Shane Hutto of Horticultural Solutions Ltd. is now also hired by Gavita on a part time basis. Hutto is working as a commercial consultant for Gavita since this week.

Shane Hutto owns Horticultural Solutions, a consulting firm for cannabis growers based in Colorado, specialised in high-tech and large-scale warehouses.

Horticultural Solutions is available for all kinds of greenhouse retrofits, modelling and layout designs. “We try to offer a full service package, helping with every aspect of the growth, including staffing, nutrition management and even operation management. You name it, we can help,” said Shane Hutto.

For more information;
Shane Hutto (e-mail)
Horticultural Solutions Ltd.
Owner/Lead Consultant
Ph:+1 720-498-5463


Publication date: 1/7/2015