Organics vs Synthetics - Controlled Study?

[LA LUNA]

9 hours ago, buddy13 said:

are you all seriously trying to compare allotment grown food with  supermarket crap?

I would 100% say organic food tastes better, but I reckon smoking will kill the difference in taste.

[Dodgee]

I've done both and have to admit after years of being an organic "snob" some of my best tasting weed was grown using mineral /chemical ferts.. 

 

 

One thing I will say, ime (so limited tbf) it's alot easier to overdo things with mineral/chem fert than organic. 

 

If anything, with organic I often struggled with underfed plants coz of the delay between applying said fert and the plants taking them up. 

 

And yeah, badly grown is badly grown whichever way. And the majority of the flavour etc isn't so much in the growing as the harvest /drying /curing process imho.

[ratdog]

19 hours ago, furious fred said:

Organic carrots definitely tase better but intensively farmed ones get MASSIVE! I'm guessing the same applies to weed. 

 

 

 

have left the carrots in for 8 months and seen huge carrots, i did some suttons seed tape carrots one year and not sure if it was the extra spacing or the length of time in the ground but i have never seen carrots that big in the shops, easily 4-5 inches in diameter and really dark orange, grown organically still tasted lovely

 

used to grow blueberry years ago, around 99' and used salts, was the best tasting weed i remember tbh

Edited May 2, 2021 by ratdog

[OneMorePuff]

1 hour ago, Dodgee said:

One thing I will say, ime (so limited tbf) it's alot easier to overdo things with mineral/chem fert than organic. 

 

I've heard this, and seen some AWFUL pics of nute burn posted with comments like 'this happened overnight' and it blows me away.  As someone who's only grown organic so far, I could never imagine anything turning so quickly!

 

But it's a double edged sword - when you do overdo it with organics (which I know is harder to do but still very much possible), and then you have to fix heavy over/under feeding or root issues, it's a MUCH slower process to turn things around and see a proper response from the plants.  I find I don't really see them respond to anything I add for around a week, sometimes longer, and this can make issues really tricky to diagnose. More often than not you end up chasing your own tail, or I do at least.   Unless you're willing to go nuclear with a really heavy flush or h202 and risk destroying your carefully cultivated 'microherd', then you have to just take it slow and adjust things little by little, and if you're mid stretch trying to fix a stunting issue in an organic grow it can be a real pain - by the time it's fixed the stretch is over and you missed it.  That's been my experience anyway.  (edit - just noticed you actually already made this point in you post @Dodgee - I'll leave in my comments anyway).

 

It's one of the things that's led me to try coco/perlite hempies for my next run with hydro nutes.  I like the idea that I can flush the whole pot clean in 5 minutes, and alter the nutrient content of the 'res' very easily.  As someone who's still inexperienced and learning to read the plants, I think I'll benefit a lot from this.  It's actually a pack of your #1 F2's @VRG, planted them in coco less than 48 hrs ago and most of them have popped already - very excited about having them stink my shed out in a few months  looking for a nice cheesy keeper.

Edited May 2, 2021 by OneMorePuff

[OneMorePuff]

5 hours ago, Oldbear said:

Worth noting, all respondents and the OP are all smokers.  Do not underestimate the negative impact of that on taste buds. 

 

Very fair point.  I feel I should point out too that I actually have the palette of an absolute philistine when it comes to food  But I would say that I have good nose/taste for weed.  That's purely subjective though I know.

 

The truest test I suppose would be take the same cut, same environment, synthetic and organic... but then give them both to someone who exclusively vapes weed and really knows their shit, and see if they could tell the difference in a blind vape test. 

 

I suspect that @VRG is correct and the answer is no.  But even if our hypothetical master vaper could tell them apart, if you have to take it that far to really discern a difference then it probably doesn't matter anyway.  For someone like myself who smokes with baccy, it REALLY doesn't matter. 

 

I was mainly checking here about this on the off chance that someone was going to say 'yes I tested it side by side with same cut, and the synthetic nutes made it super harsh, or lose all it's flavour'.  I wasn't expecting to hear that, but you never know.

 

Lots of interesting discussion here with a lot of heavyweights on this forum weighing in.  Thanks all.

[Guest]

 

Its a nice narrative that nature wins, but skills pay the bills, not the media. I have seen amazing things done in both.

 

For my personal situation its Rockwool or coco all day, but I am moving back to Rockwool shortly because of pests.

 

I would love a blindfolded taste test on thousands of strains, because once you know what you are smoking, you open yourself up to bias. 

 

  

 

 

[FarmerPalmersNT]

I've grown organic soil clones at the same time as nft and bubblers. They did taste different, completely indisputably so. Note different not 'better'. I've lined up both blind and some of us at the time preferred the hydro, some organic. I preferred the organic. Can I say it was the soil and not some other variable caused indirectly by soil (water availability for one)? Of course no.

 

Not sure how comparable organic food is to organic weed and a lot depends on whether you're smoking, vaping, pressing rosin etc etc.

 

There is absolutely 100% a difference in how soil imparts molecular constituents and so flavour to foods, wines etc. Same would apply to weed, but how much I suppose is debateable. Whilst I don't eat my buds, and whether it's noticeabley better/worse as a smoke?  I'd have to say that depends on your tastes, how your consuming and the strain among a million billion other things.

 

You'll struggle to find any quantitative answers to this because of the nature of the question and the impossibility of eliminating other variables in any practically significant trial.

 

Best thing to do is grow both ways for a very long time. Smoke it all and decide for yourself which you prefer. Not based on any mindless evangelical devotion to organic or the weird reverse snobbery of so many bores that slag it off. You can grow great weed both ways. 

[buddy13]

not to get into the whole can of worms about "organic" but........

for those of you that can't taste the difference but grow "organically" maybe what you are using(pretty much anything claiming to be organic aimed at canna) its not quite as organic as you might think?

 

 

[KC]

You must remember there are many different organic standards around the world. 

My only experience with so called organic nutrients is Biobizz. I doubt Dutch organic standards are as stringent as ours, we are pretty strict I think. 

 

I know a chap uses PM nutes but he told me he puts everything in there additives wise. He spend about 130 quid on nutes per grow (2 600 hid). That's about what I spend in 3 years. Maybe he thinks because its organic is OK to pile em full of shiite

Each to their own eh. 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, buddy13 said:

not to get into the whole can of worms about "organic" but........

for those of you that can't taste the difference but grow "organically" maybe what you are using(pretty much anything claiming to be organic aimed at canna) its not quite as organic as you might think?

 

 

 

I would say that anyone that has such beliefs should be made to do a scientific based, blinded taste test. In fact hundreds of thousands of people should (if that were possible), and that's where the closest thing to a decent answer to the question would come from. 

 

The opinions on here are way too open to bias, and not science based enough to form any sort of reasonable conclusion.  

 

All I know is amazing things can be done in both, to level of quality that its really isn't worth discussing which is best... IMO.

 

Past a certain level of quality is nothing more than snobbery to me. But again, that's just my opinion. 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Moonstone420

[VRG]

Obviously as natural/organic as possible will always be best for a myriad of reasons but if you do it right it’s impossible to tell any difference in the finished product, IME.

 

If it was actually a thing and anyone out there could really tell the difference I’m pretty sure we would all know about it by now because they would be extremely famous and we would all know their name, they would be judging every weed contest on the planet.

 

The tell tale sign is if it makes you cough or irritates your throat in any way, you probably shouldn’t be smoking it because it’s poisonous no matter how the minerals you fed it were derived. After all an ‘organic mineral’ is the same as ‘inorganic mineral’ but it’s attached to some carbon. 

 

The fact still remains that you most definitely can over feed inorganic minerals much easier than organic ones but when you start playing around with microbes, amino acids and compost teas etc that goes straight out of the window, IME. 

[GSZZ]

17 hours ago, FarmerPalmersNT said:

There is absolutely 100% a difference in how soil imparts molecular constituents and so flavour to foods, wines etc. Same would apply to weed

 

I agree with everything said in this thread, organic or not if its grown properly you can't really tell a difference. The differences that come from growing organically vs salts isn't down to the delivery of the nutrients, as has already been said by @VRG once it is inside the plant its the same thing doing the same job, but rather the presence of bacterial and fungal microlife in the medium and around the roots, its these that promote secondary metabolites that translate to difference aromas, flavours etc that otherwise wouldn't be there when growing in something sterile or none supporting of the same kind of microlife as "soil" does.

 

But its such a small component of a much bigger puzzle, as essentially what we are talking about is a plant being grown to its full genetic potential and thats more than just the delivery of nutrients and soil micro life - what about beneficial bacteria and fungus that lives on the aerial parts of the plant, or the light spectrum?

[ratdog]

On 02/05/2021 at 9:30 AM, OneMorePuff said:

FWIW - If we're talking organic food, I haven't actually noticed a big difference in taste between organic (whether homegrown or local farm shop bought) and non-organic fruits and veggies

 

 

home grown is far superior, not so much because of the nutrients used but the time it takes to get to the plate, the sugars are still high when cooked within 10 mins of picking, supermarket stuff is shite on the whole because it's been sitting around and fucked about

 

try a freshly dug sweet potato/new potato or watermelon from the greenhouse among many other veggies, there's a ton of difference. ratfact!

[FarmerPalmersNT]

There's definitely more in the impact of soil fungi and microbes as GSZZ rightly points out. I am utterly convinced my beds DEFINITELY consistently produce a recognisably different version of a clone strain compared to my friends. This is imparted more than likely by the microbes. But again it's not a better/worse discussion.

 

There's rafts and rafts of conclusive data on this for coffee, wine and fruits. It stands to reason that it would impact flavour, and that one could subjectively tell the difference. Not to say that a) the difference would be dramatic to an unfussy smoker or b) one would be better. I grow tomatoes on my mulch bed in my greenhouse, if I grow them on the other side with my citrus they taste disgusting. To say they wouldn't be recognisably different just isn't a very credible argument unless you're not very discerning and the same goes for different nutrients and media organic or not.

 

Some links to some studies that are about as relevant as you'll find:

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814620305069

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308814620304647

 

https://www.morressier.com/article/chemical-signatures-uplcms-cocoa-provenance-determination/5e73d6ce139645f83c229f69?

 

https://mbio.asm.org/content/7/3/e00631-16.short?cited-by=yes&legid=mbio;7/3/e00631-16

 

 

But as everyone also rightly points out, grow it badly and it will taste wank. Whether organic angel tears or evil chemicals.... Definitely the most influential factor.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by FarmerPalmersNT

[FarmerPalmersNT]

Just realised you might not be able to get to those articles without a uni account but you get the gist from the abstracts. Lots of decent data on hop volatile compounds and terroir. Differences measured with hplc can even be used to verify growing locations for coffee and cocoa.