Manic Botanix. Thank you and Goodbye.

Hi, I thought I would leave a statement up on the site as to why it was closed. A few Australian hydroponic industry reprobates from the drug addled bitch club have been spreading a few baseless, slanderous rumours (SOP) so best I myself clarify why I removed Integral Hydroponics (the book) from the market and why manicbotanix.com was closed.  I will be setting up another site under another domain name in the not too distant future, albeit under an extremely different format to manicbotanix.com. The new site will be to promote my upcoming book only.

A Bit of History/Legacy of Integral Hydroponics and Manic Botanix  

In 2002 I published the book ‘Integral Hydroponics, Indoor Growing Principles for Beginners and Intermediates’. Integral Hydroponics was very much a KIS book written to help new growers get off to a flying start. The book was written for Australian growers, who shopped through Australian retail hydroponic stores, but its influence became far reaching via forums etc.

In some ways, Integral Hydroponics was years ahead of its time, and frankly, I look back at it now and realise that most of the information, even to this day, is relevant and accurate.  For example, in Integral Hydroponics I told growers to use silica in hydroponic production due to the important role it plays in plant health and disease suppression. This, over 20 years on, has finally been confirmed in studies where it was shown root applied silica greatly suppressed powdery mildew in hemp. Additionally, because science is typically years behind practice, I also expect they will find silica aids in suppressing Botrytis cinerea and symptomatic disease caused by other fungal pathogens that are commonly occurring in cannabis production (e.g. Fusarium wilt and Penicillium olsonii bud rot).

In Integral Hydroponics I also published on my preferred method of growing (drain to waste cocofibre + perlite mix at 60:40). In the years since, this method of growing has become widely adopted across Australia, Canada, the US etc. At the time of publishing Integral Hydroponics, recycling was the most commonly used method of soilless growing in Australia. Integral Hydroponics changed this and Australia, over the next few years (post publishing), became the coco nation (or more pertinently, the cocofibre perlite mix nation much to the malign of a couple of coir suppliers who ran around slandering me saying I had no idea because I was promoting mixing perlite with cocofibre – how wrong they were:-) In retrospect, if I were to write the book now, I would have also covered recycling growing (likely Deep Water Culture given the book was for beginners) due to the lower environmental impact (less nutrient and water use and less unchecked dumping of nutrient waste). However, keeping in mind who the book was written for (beginners), to this day, drain to waste cocofibre + perlite growing is perhaps the most user friendly and forgiving soilless production method there is.

In Integral hydroponics I also predicted that Bacillus (bacteria) and Trichoderma (fungi) species plant protectant, beneficial microorganisms had a big future in soilless production. Only now – 22 years on – are they realising the potential that beneficial bacteria and fungi offer in sustainable production of medical cannabis re growth and cannabinoid benefits, along with disease prevention. I expect they will find some very interesting things here – things I myself and other growers discovered over 20 years before.

In Integral hydroponics I also countered the hype that was being promulgated by nutrient and additive manufacturers and many retailers, saying things in the book such as all you need to produce at optimum is a good base nutrient program, a little silica and a little PK boost in flower. This was contrary to advice being given by numerous retailers who had commercial interests in flogging as many unneeded additives as they could to growers. I followed up on this information on manicbotanix.com, telling growers they needed to back off on P and K (and other wondrous – I wonder what is in it?) additives . In the end, it turned out I was completely right and that particularly PK additives were being horrendously overused, resulting in calcium lockout and the opportunity for more sales of completely unneeded Cal Mag additives to correct the overuse of potassium during flower. This is sort of ironic, given calcium demand, in many cultivars, tends to drop off shortly after the stretch cycle, if potassium isn’t present at excessive levels. Either way, my anti sales pitch off-sided many with interests in flogging snake oils and bro science, but then I was always about looking out for the consumer.

I didn’t ever really update Integral Hydroponics (at least not in any significant way to keep it contemporary) due to the widespread piracy and counterfeiting of the book, making it a very unpleasant and largely unprofitable/non-viable proposition.  It also placed me in a position of being a high-profile spokesperson for an industry that I came to have no respect for; an industry that has spread more myth and bullshit than any other industry before it and an industry perhaps rightly perceived by Australian authorities to be heavily linked to organised crime (due to far too many OMCG links, at least in Australia). And an industry that to this day rampantly flogs synthetic plant growth regulators – poisoning a medicine and making it patently dangerous for use (due to not only residual PGR in the bud tissue but also mould growth and subsequent mycotoxins… fungal bioburden preceding mycotoxin byproducts).  Integral Hydroponics was removed by myself from the market (through ceasing any future print runs with its Australian distributor) in 2022, largely so I could finally put the industry behind me completely. Additionally, the book after 20 years in the market was outdated, while at the same time, for me, from an economic standpoint there was absolutely no reason to update it.  Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

2009: Opened manicbotanix.com

In 2009 I opened the site manicbotanix.com to provide information to growers, freely.

The site focused on best practice in medical cannabis production, covering material on, among other things, microbial pathogens and their toxic secondary metabolites (mycotoxins and endotoxins), heavy metals, and pesticides and fungicides in cannabis. In 2010 – 11 I blew the lid on the rampant sales of synthetic chemical plant growth regulators (Paclobutrazol, Chlormequat Chloride and Daminozide containing flowering additives) through the hydroponics retail sector in Australia, Britain, Canada and the US. In this article, “The Curious Case of the Flower Dragon”, I exposed key synthetic PGR suppliers (many of whom originated from Australia) such as Dutch Master re Superbud and Phosphoload, among others. This article drew the attention of the Californian Department of Agriculture (CDFA) through Nick Young and they contacted me for more information before pulling numerous products from shelves in California and testing them for synthetic chemical PGRs and finding the information I had published was correct. This led to a domino effect where numerous products were pulled from N American retail shelves and where information went live via forums and other online media, once and for all conclusively demonstrating through lab analysis that products such as Dutch Master Phosphoload and Flower Dragon (a spinoff of Phosphoload) contained long banned for use in any consumable crop Alar/Daminozide. Other products caught out in the PGR sweep by the CDFA were Gravity (Paclobutrazol), Bushmaster (Paclobutrazol), Topload (Alar/Daminozide) and Bloom Ooze (Alar/Daminozide). The rest is history. You can confirm that it was I (because others have taken the credit) who originally blew the story wide open by following the online paper trail such as this https://www.icmag.com/threads/lab-results-for-different-pgr-products.220320/  (lab results provided here) and this https://overgrow.com/t/banned-stretch-reducing-flowering-supplements-pgr/3772/9 (“The Curious Case of the Flower Dragon” which was the article that finally exposed the PGR pedlars, dragging them out of the shadows into the light and leaving them nowhere to hide). Since this time, I have also had several other PGR products removed from the market, most recently, Cyco Nutrients (Australia), Cyco Flower Part A (Paclobutrazol) and Cyco Flower Part B (Chlormequat Chloride). Cyco Nutrients has now been sold to Scotts Miracle-Gro / Hawthorne Gardening Group for 34 million USD (proving crime pays). It is important to note that Scotts Miracle-Gro / Hawthorne Gardening Group has no link to the sales of PGRs and they simply purchased a company with extremely shady origins (rip offs, stand over and lies). One last article I intend to write for manicbotanix.com (and leave online as legacy) will be about the low rent retrograde stains on humanity who poisoned cannabis, and the absolute inadequacy/incompetence of Australian authorities to shut down the PGR sales through the Australian hydroponics industry. I think this story will fascinate many, but it’s aim is to have it act as a press release in order to get media outlets in Australia to begin asking questions as to why Australian regulatory authorities, for more than 20 years, were so inept and incompetent when it came to stopping the sales of synthetic PGRs through 99.9% of hydroponic stores in Australia. Just one significant question being, why did they allow the registration of Cycoflower Part A and B for use in viticulture, and its more than overt off label sales through the Australian hydroponics industry, when grapevines are never grown hydroponically? Yeah duh!? But then I guess as long as they took their tax, never mind the consumer. This article will also ask why Shaun Jones of SJ Enterprises aka Cyco Nutrients Australia has consistently been able to evade serious prosecution by Australian authorities, in spite of overwhelming evidence as to, among other things, highly deceptive marketing (re marketing 100% Pharmaceutical Grade formulas) and millions of dollars made in off label sales of synthetic chemical PGRs through the Australian hydroponics retail sector. It’s almost as if he is untouchable and the real question is why?

Anyway, times change, and the industry has evolved (not necessarily in all good ways but medical consumers are far better off than before) and for this reason I closed manicbotanix.com in 2022 due largely to trading off and copyright issues, along with the fact that as a non-paying project that required great amounts of time in research and writing, it simply wasn’t viable to update material, much of which was written over a decade ago. Additionally, while many benefitted from my work that I gave freely it turned out to be for me a very thankless and very time consuming task, where some parasitically sought to benefit from my work, without putting in the hard yards themselves.

I will in the future be making a book available based on what I have learned over many years of growing and researching medical cannabis.  I think people will be very surprised by what is covered in this book and where I have gone with my research into best practice in cannabis production. I currently have a tentative offer by a publisher to go to print when the book is completed.

Thanks for memories.

For old times sake…. “Go well. Stay safe. Be smart people.” Signing off, Manic Botanix