Too right, it's peak "I took acid in highschool brain" but I try learn a lot of my efforts from the forest around me. It's true that idk you'll get a straighter, larger, and more vigorously flowering banksia or something if you feed the shit out of it and plant it in ideal conditions and so on. Yet there's loads of examples of old twisted and gnarled survivors subsiting off whatever nutrients filter through to a crack in a boulder and and whatever sunlight filters down to it through the canopy.

I guess I should be less afraid to mess around with hydro in a similar way. The context I've always run into in is either intensive ag or stoners optimising the shit out of weed to create some plant that comatoses you if you smell it. That's probably biased me to think it has to be really carefully managed or it wont work, and yet outside of like engineering and chemical synthesis I don't think I've encountered much where that's actually true.

You've inspired me to care a bit less and just have a go haha. Thanks :)