Hollow Stems?

I wouldn’t worry about boron. I don’t think it’s ever deficient without another deficiency being responsible…

Boy, I wouldn’t worry. Gypsum is an old tried and true ingredient for tasty pot. I’ve used a whole bag in a 5 by 10 outdoor plot. The powdered gypsum coats heavy clay soil clumps so it doesn’t stick together. Like rolling sticky dough in flour kinda. It also makes weed tasty used( topdress) a couple weeks before harvest.
I never had an issue in all sorts of soil. The calcium is a bonus.
Main thing is, gypsum raises soil ph, so you need to go easy or time its use.

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Thank you for your tip, less doubts on it with yoir input, will definitely use some.

This is Mulder’s Chart. I would imagine most of you have come across this but posting it for those that have not.
According to this there is a direct correlation between Calcium and Boron. It also shows correlation between Boron and Nitrogen & Potassium.

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These 2 points seem to agree with each other.

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I wasn’t exactly trying to experiment on this… but it looks like I did anyway. My last run, I finally ponied up for a bottle of OAC Cal-Mag from TPS. I couldn’t find any other organic cal-mags, so that’s why I chose this one. It states it also contains “a full array of micros including iron, sulfur, manganese, boron, and copper,” but doesn’t give ratios on them; guaranteed analysis on calcium is 4.5%, mag 1.1%.

Before starting to use this, I ran my Frankenstein and GG4 once or twice. I ran into deficiencies as soon as I started flowering them, and using standard fertilizers didn’t help. I also had hollow stems. Clones frequently failed to root. All-around bad, basically. When I added this to my water, the deficiencies largely cleared up and clones started rooting more easily. I wasn’t paying attention to the stems because I didn’t care - but a few days ago, I took clones of each and noticed that they have thick, solid stems now rather than hollow ones.

I’m planning to continue experimenting and see whether liming the soil between runs helps as much, and whether I still need the cal-mag with it. Should’ve been a no-brainer, since I have a rather large bag of garden lime in the garage for use on the lawn anyway, but my brain simply failed to engage and make the connection. Oddly enough, three days after I decided to try this, @Dirt_Wizard was kind enough to post this and validate my idea. :slight_smile:

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I’m happy to take the thanks for posting it, but credit goes to @HolyAngel for telling me that the book existed in the first place to find! Tiedjens is a fascinating guy who I want to learn more about, a really influential figure in American agriculture and especially home gardening for subsistence.

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I look at the stalks after harvest and most are at least 1/2 diamater hollow with 50%amber -50% milky trichomes BUT when I run a plant longer that the recommended harvest times I get all hollow stalk and most of the trichomes are amber

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That is what I noticed so far, this NLA that I cutted down had a solid base and on 6th node was like 50% hollow and about 50% ambar trics.

Will harvest another in a few days and will check it out.

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There’s the General Organics Cal-Mag but I didn’t really like that one, too weak overall and I blew through it. I switched at the advice of some users here to using Botanicare Cal-Mag Plus, which is awesome and pretty cheap especially in the big jug, also nice and clear and not very smelly which is nice too. Probably one of the only things I still want to have around on the shelf for emergency pep ups, but I’ve been experimenting with Nectar liquid calcium and Epsom instead and that seems to be working well, I can make a similar product to the Nectar at home with a fulvic fermentation/digestion thing like they do. Shit stinks though, which has me thinking sometimes that I miss Botanicare. In general that looks like a pretty nice line of products that I’d consider for hydro or coco if I wasn’t cheap as hell and looking at dry salts instead.

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Botanicare seems to be synthetic salts, but for the same price as the TPS organic cal-mag. Think I’ll pass on that one… General Organics is slightly less expensive for the quart size, but contains nitrogen as well. Not sure whether I want to be supplementing with that in flower anyway. It also specifies on the back that it’s “not for use in organic crop and organic food production in the state of California,” presumably because of the nitrates. I guess Cali’s stricter than other states on that, but since I’m not exactly following state law anyway it’s all about personal preference, and I prefer one that doesn’t have a non-organic warning right under the name.

That’s why I’m also gonna try liming the soil and leave it at that. :wink: Less cost + less work = happy grower.

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Just be cautious of raising your pH with too much lime. Gypsum may be a better solution if you are already above 7.0 pH.

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@RoryBorealis posted this in another thread but i thought it would be interesting to get everyones take in here.



plot thicken???

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What’s a cannabis again ?

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Is there a way to know if your stems are hollow without cutting them or x-rays or something? Forgive me if I missed it

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Sure. Thumb index squish

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If it’s hollow it pops? If not it ‘squishes’?

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Well it will cave in, sometimes with a crunch. If it’s not hollow, it won’t budge.

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If its hollow it will crush. If its not it won’t crush. Crushing the stem won’t stop the plant from growing. Just stake it up with a bamboo cane.

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They all ‘budge’ tho, bent necks and bumpy knuckles… I’ve always ‘pinch and roll’ to tenderize before I make a bend, so as to avoid splitting and cracking, but breaking the apical dominanc…I don’t think I’ve ever broken a branch that was hollow. I dunno I’m rambling

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