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maryanne3087 said:
Hydroponic vs Soilless or vs Soil?

Soil attributes include:
More forgiving, plants don't suffer as much when over fertilized due to slower delivery of nutrients. When growing in traditional soil with no nutrient solution and just water this attribute is very useful to amateur growers or growers who don't want to mix their own nutrient solution every week. However this is also a con because if you have a slow release fertilizer such as Alfalfa meal in excess it will remain in excess and there isn't much you can do about it other than cut your soil composition down with something like peat or coco coir or a non fortified soil.

Soil is just generally user friendly.

Soil has more chance of pest problems than soilless or hydroponics but at the same time has it's own defenses against pests. (Beneficial fungi, bacteria, and insects)

Soil is also more dense, holds a lot of water, but at the same time doesn't have the ideal air space soilless or hydro has. For this reason growth rate at least in establishing roots is slower.

Soil can also be reused easily by refortifying the soil with amendments and letting it sit for a while to get the nutrients broken down and the bacteria, fungi, etc to flourish.

Soilless attributes include:

Cleaner than soil (less pests)

Doesn't contain significant amounts of nutrients so they must be provided via nutrient solution.

Each soilless medium has different characteristics. Coco coir is inert and has a high lignin and cellulose making it resistant to decomposition so it can be reused for years. Peat moss is slowly decomposed plant matter that once exposed to a moist oxygen rich environment decomposes rather quickly (within the course of your grow) you will notice that after ~3months peat becomes more dense losing about 30% of it's volume due to decomposition.

Both peat and coco are user friendly. Coco is general treated like hydro I'm a coco grower who waters 3-5 times a day with a nutrient solution tweaked for coco coir growing. I've used peat in the past and think it may in fact be easier to grow with than coco just because a lot of amateur growers don't really know how to feed their plants properly and when peat decomposes it releases some amount of nutrients which can help the grower avoid deficiencies. However peat is harder to flush than coco and also a bit harder to water since it becomes water logged when saturated. When coco is saturated it still has plenty of air space providing your roots with the ideal environment for rapid growth.

Hydroponic attributes include:

There's many ways to grow in hydro. Ebb&Flow, DWC, Rockwool, Drip, etc. So each of them has it's pros and cons vs other methods.

Generally speaking growing in hydro is the cleanest most pest free way to grow.

You need to calculate your nutrient solution to provide everything your plant needs in terms of nutrition. This is a blessing if you do it correctly since your plants will receive optimal nutrition, if you don't know how to provide a good balanced diet to your plants this is probably not going to be a benefit to you as a grower.

Hydro is the least forgiving way to grow in some circumstances because unlike watering soilless and the medium containing your oxygen you rely on pumps to add dissolved oxygen to your nutrient solution and other pumps to deliver that solution to your plants. Temperature of your reservoir is also vital  especially in systems where your roots are constantly bathed in nutrient solution, if the temperatures are too high you will have problems with root rot if they're too low your growth will be stunted.

Hydro especially active hydro delivers oxygen, water, and nutrients to your plants at an optimal rate which is excellent for rapid growth but at the same time is the absolute worse when there's a lack of oxygen, nutrients are too strong, or your pH is too high or low. Plants in hydroponics will suffer the most and quickest from any of those problems however they will also recover the quickest too so long as corrections are made to your reservoir.

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maryanne3087 said:
You don't necessarily have to watch hydroponics closely you just need to know how to avoid or when to expect pH drifts. Which requires a good understanding of water chemistry.

I highly recommend soil or coco for a first time grower. Perhaps coco is better for the grower wanting to switch over to hydroponic since they use similar methods.

In my opinion, controlling the environment in a grow tent is fairly easy probably easier than in a larger environment like a basement but at the same time you don't have as much room for dehumidifiers, acs, as many fans, etc. You may need to control the air in the room your tents intake comes from to get your temp and humidity to the ideal levels.

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