I've grown chilis and cannabis without really knowing what I am doing, now I wanted to learn to grow any veggies, but finally learn about soil and prepare it well myself.
I naively tried to use coco substrate with tap water and killed off my tomato seedlings pretty fast. Then I've did some research into soil and learned about more organic approaches, and also that pure coco is a bit like dry hydroponics and needs a lot of understanding, and that I probably both over-fertilized and starved them at the same time.
I'm going to start from seeds in Mel's mix with 1/3 coco 1/3 perlite/vernaculite 1/3 compost. Is this kind of substrate to be treated as organic or as mineral approach? The compost probably adds the typical soil properties including the buffering of pH and EC and taking care of fertilization.
But I do not want to re-pot all the time, it is messy and inconvenient. I don't really like working with soil. Instead I want to use mineral fertilizers. Once the compost is depleted, can I consider it to be like a non-soil grow? I got a pH/EC sensor to check my water and the drain coming out, diluted a pH- down based on diluted citric acid to normalize my water to 6,5pH, which seems like a good starting point for any situation.
Does it make sense to follow some generic approach (like keeping pH/EC in certain ranges in certain growth stages)? I do not want to use commercial fertilization formula schemes. I want to work with standard off the shelf mineral fertilizers. Is it possible to get decent results with that?
And where can I find that kind of information for general vegetables, like tomatoes or cucumbers etc.?
The whole soil business is pretty overwhelming, but I want to learn enough (without getting a degree in agriculture) so that I can do this not blindly but improvise with available substrates and fertilizer. How to get this knowledge?
Interesting discussion, I kind of understand both of your stances.
One stance is driven by fear of the slippery slope and the frog not noticing being boiled until it's too late. The fear of normalizing fascist parties and views until they dominate, which is a fully rational fear given existing history.
The other stance is driven by fear of ever increasing polarization and hostility, which is another slippery slope, to fragmentation of society into parts that live in different realities, inability to agree on almost anything, causing alienation and opposition, leading to stagnation and possibly violence, when the other side is so abstract they cannot be emphasized with anymore. That again is also a fully rational fear to have, watching what happens in societies in the last years.
I don't even know who of you is more "right", if that notion even applies. Truth is, nobody will know until we see the consequences. In hindsight (a pretty privileged vantage point) many wrong decisions look obvious.
That said, if you care about your friends and think they really do value you and your opinions and truly have no general prejudices (and you are not some "exception from the rule" to them), you maybe should try to understand what makes them vote the way they do and explain how this could have bad long term consequences on you and whether they would want that or find taking that risk acceptable.
Because, if they truly are your friends and have something called empathy and heart, they might reconsider, and otherwise, maybe they are not really your friends and would drop you the moment you become outlawed.
I don't know your friends, but I hope you do.