It comes down to how timid or aggressive you want to be. You can go with no nutes in a good soil for several weeks of strong growth, because it is easy to put available nitrogen into a soil as it is built. Everything the plants need to survive is in there and online gurus gain fame by warning people over and over again not to use nutes in the first few weeks. It really is an easy way to grow pot in the beginning stages and with almost no problems since there is really no need to do anything, not even pH the water. The only reason we pH adjust is for the nutes, so they are in the range that they break free of their EDTA bonds, but as long as your water is within human consumption levels, the plants and the soil really don't care what the pH is.
It comes down to how timid or aggressive you want to be. You can go with no nutes in a good soil for several weeks of strong growth, because it is easy to put available nitrogen into a soil as it is built. Everything the plants need to survive is in there and online gurus gain fame by warning people over and over again not to use nutes in the first few weeks. It really is an easy way to grow pot in the beginning stages and with almost no problems since there is really no need to do anything, not even pH the water. The only reason we pH adjust is for the nutes, so they are in the range that they break free of their EDTA bonds, but as long as your water is within human consumption levels, the plants and the soil really don't care what the pH is.
But here is the distinction. You CAN grow your young plants in just soil alone, or you can supercharge them into growing much bigger and stronger than they would have naturally done, by fertilizing them. The term "nutes" fools us into thinking that we should only be giving the exact nutrition that the plants need to have in order to live and like someone on life support, not give too much so as to overload any part of their delicate system. Or, we can choose to think of these formulations as Fertilizer. We can attempt to supercharge our young plants into becoming bigger, better, stronger, by giving them a bit more than just what they need.
This is why I don't stress over burned tips, and why I repeat over and over that burned tips are actually desirable. It is how you know that you are giving just the right amount of extra, pushing your plant as hard as it can be pushed without it getting into trouble.
I start fertilizing early. In an organic grow the plants are pushing to this limit early and constantly. I get burned tips from young veg to the finish. My plants have been told that in my Garden, there are no vacations and no down time... and they all work hard in exchange for being fed well. Tell those water only gurus that theirs is only a mindset... and maybe excessively cautious.
