@cannabissequoia gave me the tip of tapping the seedings to make the stem stronger. That got me curious of what other odd grow tips are out there
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A little bit of cross air flow, enough to make the plants move a little seems to help stimulate the stem growth.
Cheers
G
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I like to have a fan under the canopy. It’s a potential pocket of dead air.
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Didn’t OleReynard place a fan in the center of his tent, blowing up? It provided air circulation for the plants as well as cooling for the light fixture.
I’m a big advocate of silica to promote strong branches.
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How is silica used? Is it sprayed on the plant or watered in?
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Here I was thinking I was clever and sneaky with the silica knowledge! There are many ways to apply it, there are foliars but I think it has to be a particular salt or complexed somehow. Diatomaceous earth with break down over time and become usable, I have seen many soil recipes use it to help clear out an initial bug problems and long term help support silica absorption.
Stems become noticeably stiffer and more resilient. As mentioned before, having actual windy, forcible air flow pushing plants around can help make them stronger and stimulate stem growth too. I would say it really helps with tall, long flowering plants.
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There are a number of companies that offer some form of silica. When I’m mixing a 5 gallon bucket of nutrient solution, I’ll add 1 TBSP of the silica liquid I currently have.
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I like AgSil16H, it’s a micronized silica that’s more potent than almost anything on the market, and super cheap at Build A Soil or many other places. You can foliar in veg and feed the soil full cycle with it. Just wear a mask to mix it because it’s very very toxic to breathe silica powder.
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No fans hang in the grow areas. Just extraction, 24/7.
Organics/Dr Earth/compost/coco husks/LG perlite is the medium I mix up.
Now I know I place potted females, and either finish them with water or teas…
OR place them in hydro totes, and use salt based fertilizers, or salts and organics with zero differences in the buds.
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Is kissing your plants considered odd? 
Surely I’m not the only one!
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dirt_wizard, you haven’t found agsil to burn your plants any have you? i had watered my plants with a 1/2 tsp in a gallon of water a week or two ago right after transplant and then i noticed that my leaves were starting to yellow. my other hypothesis is that my transplant was super rough and i messed up my plants root systems, so they had to feed on themselves while they recovered. i’m leaning towards the latter right now, as i am a first time grower.
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Catch a fish down at the swamp, bring it home and let it hang out in a tub full of water and my air pump overnight, next day release it back into the swamp and throw everything I need in the tea bag and let it brew for a day
Also blend fresh aloe leaves for a natural source of silica and all aloes amazing benefits and throw that in the tea too
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https://homesteadandchill.com/homemade-aloe-vera-fertilizer/
Imma just leave this here…
This is from another study I found…
Substances Found in Aloe Vera
According to Stanford University of California and the University of Tennessee researchers and other scientists, substances reported to occur in Aloe Vera gel include polysaccharides containing glucose, mannose, tannins, steroids, organic acids, antibiotic principles, glucuronic acid, enzymes, (oxidase,catalase, and amylase), trace sugar, calcium oxalate, a protein containing 18 amino acids, “wound healing hormones”, biogenic stimulators, sapoin, vitamins, and mineral: chloride, sulfate,
iron , calcium copper, sodium, potassium, manganese, magnesium,
silicon, and phosphatide esters.
It’s like a nice organic buffet of all the good stuff
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very cool link, AzSea! thanks, i learned a lot there. she presents the information very simply too.
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No, I haven’t found it to burn plants, even in early veg. I start using it in waterings when they get around six inches tall then every two weeks through flower, at that dosage or higher. It does raise pH to about 10 in the recommended dilution, so if your soil isn’t really well buffered with lime and microbes might throw pH out of wack. Maybe pH down the solution a little bit next time?
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