This is just my opinion:
I believe that hydro plants grow big root mass faster than soil plants. It may take 2-3 weeks for a soil plant to grow enough roots to fill a 1 gallon pot and hold all the dirt together. A plant in a dwc setup might grow that many roots in a few days.
I think that...
Forest "humus" (the dark, crumbly well broken down, lower layer stuff) is like great, aged, ready to go compost. You can mix it into your soil, use it like top dress or mulch top layer. Little twigs and sticks and things are OK. They help with the structure and texture of your soil mix.
Leave...
Molasses is acidic. If you use too much you can temporarily throw off the soil pH, causing lock out issues. The lock out can bring on dark purple stems and yellow leaves really fast.
This can cause more trouble if you misread the lock out as a dificency and start getting crazy dying to feed...
Start growing in the 4 x 4. When your plants are filling up about 2/3 of the tent cut some clones from the lower branches and flip to flower.
Root your clones in the 2 x 2. Then put those clones in some pots and veg them in the 2 x 2 until your plants finish flowering in the 4 x 4.
You don't...
Alfalfa meal (2.5-1-2.5) top dress. Or alfalfa meal soaked in water, then poured over the soil.
Neem meal (6-1-2) top dress. Insects Frass (3-1-1) top dress.
Bat Guano (7-1-2) top dress or soaked in water for a tea.
Some kind of high nitrogen all-in-one like Happy Frog All Purpose, or Roots...
In my opinion some 2-4-1 fish Hydrolysate and worm castings will Not provide enough nitrogen for the "stretch" or early flower period.
Based on the lime green color of his plants, in his pictures, they have not been getting enough nitrogen lately. They are already behind!
Nitrogen needs are...
In my opinion, the original 2 value on the bag for nitrogen was probably B.S. and the actual N value has been around .17% the entire time.
I don't believe you could grow a plant in a 2% nitrogen medium. Straight Alfalfa Meal that people use as fertilizer is 2.5 N. Can anybody grow in straight...
I think Ocean Forest with some more castings and perlite, and maybe even a little coco would be fine. Once the nutrients in the Ocean Forest are used up it's basically just peat and perlite again anyway and you can add whatever you want to make it "your soil."
Building your own from scratch is...
Some people are still down with Super Soil. But lots of dudes use one, milder soil mix ("cornell mix"/coot's mix") for all stages of growth and then top dress or use teas later.
Organic foods like All-In-One mixes? Happy Frog and Dr Earth have already been mentioned. They are both easy to...
I guess it's just a rough guideline. Whatever is going to cover the top of your soil a couple inches deep, without making a big mess. 2 cups of compost may not be enough for a 7 gallon pot and 4 cups might be too much for a 10 gallon pot.