It's across the board, you ask 100 growers what to use and you'll get 200 answers no matter what you ask about, which always boils down to only using dirt that is taken from prime, untouched Himalayaan mountains, only buy seeds that have passed through the intestinal tract of some tropical mammal no bugger's ever heard about, only use lights that cost an arm, a leg AND both testicles, and only use water that's made from distilled virgin unicorn piss.
It's minefield, and it's little wonder some don't ask "What's wrong" until it's WAY too late.
Me? Home made light costing under $50, universal compost and some perlite, nutrients are a liquid universal flowering house plant mix which has copper, etc, in it which gets added at a "yeah, about that much" quantity every 4 days, water comes from the tap because our water is neither "soft" nor "hard" but somewhere in the middle and, well, you see the results so far. What helps is that I've grown all sorts of things on the window and so on for a LONG time so "basics" are already there and the plant will tell you what it needs if you keep a good eye on it. Sure, I've made mistakes, I freely admit to that in the hope that it stops someone else bollocking it up like I have (Light, light, light) but sometimes you have to ignore what others say as it is just contradictory information overload and newbies are likely to get so confused they just give up and, in all honesty, I think that's the last thing anyone really wants.
Oh, the back's a funny thing, something wrong where it joins your "tail bone", the sacrum, can manifest itself as pain up at L2, all depends on what puts pressure on where and you'll know yourself that you go nuts at times as you start questioning your sanity over whether the pain is "real" or just something in your head.
