Thanks, I'll look into that book. Good title!
I mainly grow plants that produce crops at the moment, picking and eating the ripe fruit of any plant is very satisfying. Pests can do some pretty horrible things to plants. I grew some corn some years back and they weren't developing properly so I took a closer look and broke off a cob in the middle, there was this fat caterpillar munching away at the heart with a busted! look on it's face. The thing looked like Jabba the hut
I agree on what you said about the nutrients. The widest range will cover all the plants needs and allow it to express it's fullest potential. This also included trace metals like iron, magnesium etc which are important for flower development and color. I happen to be on site when they were drilling for water at my parents new house. Tons of ground bedrock came out on top like fine powder in the process. I grabbed as much of it as I could and mix it in the soil along with birch ash, blood meal and bat guano. That covers the plants basic needs. Then I use dutch organic fertilizer to cover the rest, the complete BioBizz line and the supplemental BioNova line, along with liquid humus. That's something like 15 bottles of nutrients. If one wants buds with great taste and scent, organic is definitely the way to go. I have tried using synthetic fertilizers and the organic grows kick ass in every way. The synthetic ones are just too strong and hard for the plant to break down.
I use them outdoors though in combination with compost. Usually I fertilize the spot some months earlier so that other native plants have time to buffer out the nutrients in the soil. Cannabis does put up a strong fight against other plants. What I have observed is that it grows fast trying to push away the competition and it often succeeds. Planting cannabis next to say raspberry bushes or other similar plant-pioneers is good idea, that way the plants have a "neighbour" to fight with.
Another thing that is important to remember is mycorrhiza, the symbiotic root fungus. It increases root size, improves on resistance as well as nutrient uptake. It also works as a buffer between the plant and the soil. I read a study made by french scientist where they grew pine trees in two different locations. One site was heavily occupied by mycorrhiza and the other was not. The trees that formed a symbiotic relationship with the fungus grew twice as big twice as fast and were overall more healthy. This fungus has had a relationship with plants for over 400 million years so I'm sure it works. There are hundreds of different types of mycorrrhiza that target different plants but I read somewhere that cannabis can form a symbiotic relationship with most of them since it's a weed (again one more things that it does better than most plants). You can buy regular garden mycorrhiza in big buckets that will last you a long time. I mainly reuse the soil I had during my last grow, just adding more basic nutrients. That way the mycorrhiza is already firmly established in the soil and will get boosted by the availability of new nutrients. Then I feed the plants nutrients when needed. The size and color of the leaves pretty much tell the story of how the plant is doing.
Sometimes I even bring earth worms to my indoors soil. They tunnel and munch on the soil, effectively improving on it without hurting the plants. It's good to think outside the box.
I guess that in environments where a lesser variety of nutrients are available, the plant conforms to using the readily available compound to a greater extent, but I still believe that it suffers from "malnutrition". How this and stress in general affects potency can be disputed, but by comparison to humans, the individual that is put under stress is also most likely to reach it's full potential, while the "lazy" one might not "bother".
Now we come to the thing that I ponder the most. This is to what extent indoor plants are capable of synthesizing fully realized THC without the presence of the sun and it's uv-b rays. I believe potency is the sum of two things, mainly it's genetically encoded but the synthesis is also affected by environmental factors. Say "how much" correlating with "how good". Cannabis synthesis goes like this if I remember correctly:
Lesser cannabinoids --> CBG (cannabigerol) from here it is independently processed into either:
1. CBC (Cannabichromene), non psycho active "energy-storage" compound which is readily converted back to CBG if needed.
2. CBD (Cannabidiol), the body stone effect, which is the precursor of THC. It also affects how the THC hits us, effectively improving on the high. (So high THC low CBD isn't necessarily a good thing).
CBD --> THC
THC is quite a complex compound that binds to several cannabinoid receptors in the brain in various ways depending on the presence of other cannabinoids. The rate and quality the synthesized THC is also dependent on the availability of nutrients, environmental factors like humidity etc.. I like to keep a very dry environment during flowering because I believe that promotes THC synthesis.
THC has many uses for the plant, including fighting off pests (pesticide), prevention of dessication either by the means of reflecting away solar radiation (mirrors) or was it that thc trichomes actually bind solar energy so that it will not harm or cause mutations in the plant, and to some degree keep the buds dry due to the fact that THC oils are hydrophobic.
Now, the reason why many scientist have proclaimed that uv-b radiation is important is because it fully activates the CBG --> THC synthesis. Not only that, but it can also activate a secondary metabolic pathway, which means that the road to THC synthesis becomes a "dual-lane" one. Twice the production that is. No matter how you twist it, I bet that cannabis grown on the top of the Himalayas is always more potent than indoor bud.
CBD --> THC --> CBD, in late flowering and with trichome age, THC is converted back to CBD. This also means that the THC on buds sitting in a jar will also eventually degrade into CBD. It might taste great and be smooth smoke but probably less potent than when it was harvested.
The whole process of THC synthesis is naturally heavily dependent on the sum of all the factors, but providing optimal soil goes a long way, so I think it's always wise to give the plant a good start.
I know that's bit of a read, but I take this stuff more seriously than my job
-Kodiak-