hi welcome back to the micro YouTube channel in this video we're going to
look at the conclusion of our grow experiment with our soil and hydro side
and our comparison of both it's not a definitive test of which is better one
or the other it's really just look at how we got on over the few weeks and
using each of the systems the pros and cons of each and of course we do have an
outcome as well we got a flowering fruit here with chilies so
we're gonna see which one did better so yeah first we're gonna look at the time
lapse and just watch the two grows side-by-side and then we're gonna look
at the plants closely
looking at the soil side first very easy to manage being a real simple set up
we've got four pots down here about 25 litre plots with a soil mix and just a
water feed that's all really we've been hand feeding the nutrients
and once per week using the carretera range Cala Terra bio range and yeah
plants are being lovely and healthy to have produced tons and tons of flowers
and proof know if you can see there but it's nice dense growth very good canopy
on top and just tons and tons and tons of fruit so we're gonna take one of the
plants and we'll compare side-by-side you'll see how many chilies are over
here on this side then we have the hydro side the or DWC deep water culture and
the system it's for Pakistan from alien hydroponics 50 liters each and yeah had
some problems with this not a very I'm not only very experienced or dwc grower
and I hadn't done it before through a full row and had a few issues we're
getting a plant started and just having them moist in the early stages before
the drops that ruin the roots had dropped right down into the nutrients
then the second thing was during the course to grow them became obvious that
there were some deficiencies in the nutrients so using the general
hydroponics mix flora mix but the plants turned out quite weak stretched quite a
lot more than the soil side but also turned out quite weak or snap bending
over and snapping and yeah causing quite a lot of problems probably a silicon
deficiency and possibly other things but a bit of a
disappointment really that the general hydroponics nutrients don't cover the
whole basis and you have to supplement with other things however we managed the
pH the soil temperature or enjoyed the water temperature all that sort of stuff
right through well we got a decent outcome in terms of size but there are
some differences in particular less flowering and less fruiting on this side
again we'll pull the plants out and do a side-by-side and let's look at that a
bit closer with the two plants at now we can see the differences between them and
structure and size over on this side we have the soil side it's quite large
dense plants lots of growth lots of and flowers lots and lots of chilies so
really really heavy with fruit and this side however we have the or DWC side a
lot more Negi you can see that not too stretched up around the lights not as
dense broke not as many flowers and not as much fruit so definitely less
impressive over on the Ora TWC side unfortunately a nicer solid performance
over the soil we're gonna whip mate the soil side and the hydro and just have a
look at the root balls looking at the root balls here taking the soil out of
the pot and you can see it's got a nice structure roots all the way around not
root bound but nice and consistent all the way through you can see the little
hairy lines of mycelium or fungus growing in it the nice healthy roots
there no sign of rotting or Sodom this so yeah pretty happy with that on the
hydro side we've got a reasonable root ball growing it it grew about this size
within the first four or five weeks didn't seem to generate much bigger
again dan - my lack of experience and not really getting the system in the
process right look nice to see it anyway next step we're gonna pull out all the
other plants and they're just gonna stack them up and see how they did yield
and comparison one side to the other or so on one measure which is the mass of
plant produced the DWC site did much better I was very surprised at this
because the hydro side they look more dense look more hump sorry the soil side
they look more dense and compact possibly like there was greater mass
there and they're more woody put on the hydro side there was just a lot more
plant you can see here to the bike so chop it all up and put it into a bag and
weighed it and on the hydro side it's four and a half kilos of plant mass the
both sides so I'll be 2.3 so only just over half well in theory the nutrition
was better if the methodology was better it would have had a lot larger plants on
the dwc site which should have translated into yield in terms of fruit
that's where the soil did hugely better and so to flip over here we didn't
regard to fruit the flowers and fruit the soil side did much much better
waited here
see here we've got a big box of peppers and on the soil side you got 1.7
kilograms 1.78 1786 grams which is pretty electric the or WC side are hydro
side you got 440 grams so when you quarter the yield on the hydro side but
really not that the plant wrote not really dead into the system most likely
doing to me not managing it very well missin aids and vital parts of nutrition
that was needed to develop the plant fully and yeah I'm gonna do a little
taste test the soil versus hydro let's see though starting on the hydro side
the traditional wisdom says that these are not going to be mr. Gerson but let's
see so yeah just gonna try out the flash of them first before we go into the
seeds just to see what they're like so this is the hydro side very crunchy nice
green flavor
slightly bitter but very nice taste nice you see the color is overly thick skin
very healthy looking nice and dark so no issues Aaron let's try the sewing inside
get the oldest oldest ones I can so here we go very similar they were a bit
bigger on the soil side in general but then again they were just a lot older it
flowered earlier and it was more fruit that's come to taste in this done crunch
you're gonna tougher very similar flavor not as much of a bitter twang to them as
there was with the hydro side so maybe a little bit sweeter back to the hydro
side now
lots of seeds in there let's see what they taste like
whoo-hoo okay da not burn the merit off you have butter too noticeable not
lasting too much so nice in this field heat bit like a jalapeno so you get that
nice initial burn but it doesn't stay with you like the you know birds eye's
and chilies like that wood that's kind of fading away now already myself let's
try the soil side see what the chilies like there see if it's more intense
oh yeah oh yeah yeah not to cease Koopa to eat again not the strongest eat it's
quite delicate quite solo and has the advantage I suppose of fading away which
is quite nice for tricky for salads and things like that you know it's not gonna
totally put you off the rest of the nail to get a bite into the seat yeah pretty
nice don't think there's a huge difference between the hydro and the
soil side I think this other side are a bit
tougher but I could because they're older they said a tiny bit sweeter but
from a chilly point of view I think they're pretty much the same no yeah
yeah I said earlier on that the chili taste doesn't last very long but I just
had 10 minutes sweating crying a little and trying to get rid of that chili
flavor don't use coffee by the way reacts badly
but yeah they're a little bit harder than I thought I've got to mention
earlier as well they the variety so these are chili Tokyo hot F ones they do
go red after a while I didn't leave them up that long I don't have to go more
spicy as they go rad not sure but yeah they were a little bit hotter than I
thought they were when I was doing the taste tester your honor can be a little
bit hotter anyway so soil versus hydro what would I choose what are my thoughts
the hydro is very expensive to set up this alien pro system for a bucket
system as bed hasn't euros it's a lot of money I need to do some serious you need
to get a serious benefit from it to cover that outlay I think it's possible
that it will give you that increase in growth versus soil that would cover that
I like particularly if your harvest is valuable and
you value the harvest it's gonna be a benefit how much I don't know
I've looked out online to see if there's any good videos doing a direct
comparison one to the other I haven't seen any if anybody knows any
please leave them in the link in the description below and you know we can
follow and have a look what I would say is you know if you want more yield and
you don't want the complexity in cast simpler answer is just to have a larger
grow area if you are restricted in space and you're a high-performance grower
then I guess hydro is an interesting way to go to push your limits wouldn't be my
personal chosen one because I'm not as interested in yield paucity of others
I'd like to sprawl explore it a little bit more though and I'm gonna do dwc
versus soil versus cocoa tests the next time three four by twos same lighting
setup same plant variety same environment all that's definitely going
to check three against each other and be hopefully a bit more complete and the
way I do the DWC though that series will be coming up shortly be starting a tune
and yeah look forward to that so any questions or queries or comments please
leave them below otherwise take care please subscribe