Soil vs. Hydro

Hey everybody, this is my first post and I'm hoping to start my first grow within the next few weeks. My first decision is between a hydroponic system and soil. My friend told me that "soil is more forgiving. you can lose a hydro crop in a day if it's not taken care of". Is this true? After lurking around on the forums, I'm leaning towards hydro, but I also don't want to lose a crop if I fuck up one day. Thanks

soil is definatly easier for the unexperienced grower, untill you can read the problems your plants are having just by looking at there leaves, and yes in hydro you can fuck up an entire crop over night. but once you get the hang of it, it really isn't that hard just have to get used to how your system reacts with the plants and nute's your using, like my 40 gal res goes up by .5 ph point every 12 hrs for two days when i refill my res and mix my nutes, but after the second day i don't think i really even needed to fuck with my ph or nutes for the rest of the week.

hey - I actually think that hydro can be forgiving too if you catch it in time, cause I messed up my first hydro by putting nuts on too young of plants and burned them(best to wait till about three weeks before you start light nutes) - generally, if you see something wrong, fix it immediately... and you will see pretty quickly if you did the right thing or not. I am still basically a stranger here too mainly just because I didn't post much .. but I read a LOT of threads and the FAQ several times over the last 6 months. if you haven't yet, read and learn what to do, cause everything you need to know to get started is here. Also, you can get by on the cheap, so put your money in the lights. Lastly, I got like a $20+ PH meter and it worked just fine, you def need one of those... I didn't use a TDS meter, but might have benefited some if I had. Good luck and keep us posted on how things go.

Veer

Thanks for the help guys. I'd like to go with hydro, but maybe I should start with soil since I've never done this before...is there a big difference in yield if you choose soil over hydro?

not really, if you think about it plants were made to grow in soil and some claim soil grows can be just as fast as hydro, but from what i've seen the best quality is grown in soil but takes the longest, hydro is fastest and your not loosing enough quality to matter.

go with hydro! i inept at everything my first time thru it, lol. It's true, but i am new to growing and went with growing because frankly i looks a whole of a lot cooler and i am happy as hell. Not a lot can go wrong with a bubbler and i made all kinds of errors but the hydro forgives all, just drain the water and start over. A lot easier than dirt plus i like the fact i have that much control over the plants homes. I hear its mostly spped of yeaild that increase, which is cool, but it seems all around more productive. This is my first time, so i could be talking out my ass, but for my next experienced grow i already wanna build a aero system, hydro teach you a lot.