Great White vs Bigfoot Gold Mycorrhizae Fungi Bacteria Inoculums for growing marijuana

[Bandit420]

Titan vs Titan of microherd products on display here then later, an underdog that can likely beat them both and cost way less to do it.

I'm pretty familiar with what these products can and cannot do. When they work, you know it.
If you're unfamiliar with microherds, the rhizosphere of plants, nutrient uptake, plant cell building, and how this all relates I cannot stress enough how good of a read Teeming with Microbes will help you the way it helped me understand this stuff.
I personally would not rely on chatgp or AI to help you here. Go with proven and well known and authored science out there. There's a good chance that book is at your local library and if not it's about $10 digital or paperback.
I have it on my ipad and open it when I'm waiting or need to waste time.

https://www.amazon.com/Teaming-Microbes-Organic-Gardeners-Revised-ebook/dp/B008K8HACU/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0

I won't go into details about each species in a microherd products because it's just too much and I don't have the time.
There's a few certain ones I look for in products and know what they'll do. They're the reasons I use this stuff religiously and am doing this thread.
I'm also intentionally holding back some info here to let the products speak for themselves without me influencing it. I have an idea about what will happen but I'll keep it to myself since I don't know 100% fact and I wanna let these critters do the talking.

Let's get down to the tale of the tape!




Each contender is a 4oz offering.
Both have expiration dates of January 2029
Both cost more than $35 but less than $40
Both can be applied directly to roots
Bigfoot Gold watered in is a ratio of 1tsp per 2 gallons of water
Great White watered in ratio is 1tsp per 10 gallons of water
Both can be mixed into soil or coco dry

For the most part I'd say they're each used in similar and multiple ways.

These pics are the ingredients and this is why I encourage people to read Teeming With Microbes so you know the functions of the species listed.

By reading these ingredients I can get information that will let me compare them to other products to find less expensive copycats but also know which is great for just veg and which can actually help me in flower and get my plants to be more resinous than they would if I did not use an inoculate.

A few of these species can be found in other sources as well. Compost teas, organic or naturally derived meals & sands, and coco all have some of this naturally occurring and doesn't need to be added but adding more also doesn't hurt anything.
It's very hard if not impossible or at least quite unreasonable to try and overdoes a plant with this stuff.
In other words, no reason to use an entire jar or pouch on a single grow. 4oz can last a while if you want it to.

 

[Bandit420]

Time to wake up the armies!

These products are living beings, pretty much dormant in spore form ready to be brought to life by a combination of water, warmth, and living plants.

The water quality here means so much in regards to performance I cannot emphasize that enough. I go back to Teaming with Microbes there.
You don't want chlorinated water so chlorine needs to be removed first if it's there.
You also don't want brackish water so sometimes well water may need to be purged of minerals and gasses like methane and co2.

High NPKs, unrefined salts or dirty nutrients, anaerobic conditions, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting all effect performance.
You want that water as pure as can be. H2O and nothing else. Not H2O + pathogens, nitrates, flouride, limestone, or any other mystery ingredient.

I cut to the chase in that and go bottled. It's so worth the few dollars it costs to have great water than waste $40 worth of inoculate and wonder why it didn't work.
If I have access to RO water, I'd use that.
With no RO water I prefer bottled spring water overall and wish I had access to a natural spring so I could get water that hasn't even run thru a pipe. Spring water may be the only water I hold in higher regard than RO. I don't bother with distilled. Fresh rain is possible but quite nasty so should probably be boiled first then ran thru an unbleached coffee filter would be something I'd do using rain or river/lake/pond water.
So for me there's only two roads here, bottled RO or bottled Spring, no substitutions.
In the world of microbial organics, purified water is pretty much high octane fuel in the engine.

I also take that extra step and aerate the water. Basically, I'm a big believer in stacking every odd in my favor so if there's any detail that can improve performance, I'm taking it. Microbes love some oxygen and purified water so it's a no-brainer for me.

I bring the water to room temp and let it aerate for a couple hours




I've set the stage with the pair using the same water for each. I'm keeping them separate and using 3D printed ID spikes so I know what's what.




First step since I have sprouts, this is for clones too, is do a direct to root application.
Some people apply the powder to the roots dry. Some put dry powder in the hole before the sprout. I like to a do a concentrated slurry and soak the sprout, plant it, then water it in with the rest of the microbial water.
I do the slurry over dry because dry adds the talc or clay used to transport the spores and I like to thin that all out. Each works well and is matter of preference.

For the slurry I add a pinch into each glass.
Even though Great White is concentrated at over double Bigfoot's concentrate, I can't over do it so each glass gets a pinch. It looks equal but in reality it's 5 million spores per capita vs 2 million per capita.
I could try to get super detail and try to mix it so it's equal but folks, I aint dividing shit up when we're talking in the millions. A pinch each it is.





Consistent sprouts are probably the hardest thing to get here for a good side by side versus demo. The vertical germinator's middle name is "Consistency" so I've got that going for me.
I want 3 sprouts of each strain to test...1 for GW, 1 for BF, and 1 with no product.
I think the best example I have will be from the strains Moroccan Peaches and Super Silver Strawberry. I'd love to have more samples and specimens but this is what I have to work with




To inoculate, I simply take a sprout and let it do some hottubbing for a few minutes then plant it.
I chose wine glasses here not to be fancy but because they're about as deep as I like my sprouts long so they fit well



After the slurry bath I dump the slurry back into the bottles, add another pinch each, and shake it up to mix well.
Once it's mixed I water in the sprouts using all of the inoculate mix while it's still fresh. After a couple days the mix will expire and go dead/stink