Why we stopped selling mineral nutrients.

We listed our last mineral NPK fertilizer on 14 March 2022. The decision cost us a supplier relationship and roughly €40,000 in projected first-year revenue. It was the right call.

For four years before that, we carried a shelf of conventional salt-based nutrients alongside our organic range — the same compromise every growshop makes. "We give people options," we told ourselves. What we were actually doing was subsidising a system we knew was wrong.

The evidence isn't subtle. Mineral salt fertilizers destroy soil electrical conductivity, crash microbial populations, and create a dependency cycle that pushes growers further from nature, not closer. In our trials over two growing seasons, plots treated exclusively with organic amendments showed 34% higher microbial diversity, 28% better water retention, and — in the final harvest — measurably richer terpene expression than salt-fed counterparts.

The counter-argument is yield. It's true. In the first cycle, synthetic-fed plants often outperform on raw weight. But that metric omits the cost: burned soil that needs replacing, nutrient lockout events, the sterile growing medium that collapses the moment you stop feeding it. Organic growing is slower to establish and better in every other way.

We share these numbers not to be preachy. We share them because we spent four years studying them before we acted on them, and we think you deserve the same data we had.