Hi Growmies !! I am brand new here and just want to introduce myself. I’ve been a member on ILGM for the last few months and picked up a fair amount of info there. I’ve got a single plant grow under my belt Blueberry CBD. Managed to get 7oz and it’s nearing 4 weeks of cure 
. I’m looking to learn a lot more and this seems like the forum to help me. I’m a chemist by trade by now a product manager, love gardening and moved to the US in 2020 from the U.K. Can’t wait to start my next grow. Don’t even smoke that much, it’s just that cannabis is such an interesting plant to work with.
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Hi @lostplotter
Welcome to GN and great to have a chemist on board. If you think smoking weed is addictive, try growing it. Love that you dont really smoke that much, and just get the pleasure and passion for growing the plant. With over 500 potential useful compounds, its an interesting plant that no one seems to understand fully. Exciting times ahead and looking forward to seeing your next grow. Shout if you have questions.
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Show us the blueberry!!! Welcome!
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Now with pictures 
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Juicy looking little auto.
Tip for future grows, most autos don’t need a trellis, the timeframe just isn’t there, anchor/tie em the pot and hit em with silica early, it’ll tighten em up
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It’s a photo bud
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Wow, no stretch… 12/12 from clone drop? That’s a real oompah loompah of a photo if not.
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I messed with the plant alot LST, FIMing and some severe branch cutting - all in the name of scientific research. V for nearly 7 weeks at 18/6 then flipped to 12/12. Could be a short pheno from the seeds maybe ? Started three seeds from the ten but killed one due to overwatering at seedling stage, the other didn’t pop. Growing under heavy blue light at start HLG 260 B to keep node spacing short then ViparS 3000 during flower. Next grow I’ll be using 2 x HLG 350 during flower in the same space with UVA supplement. Looking to push things hard. Given my scientific background I’m looking at strain dev and breeding and terp profile manipulation. I have access to the hardware the measure potency THC,CBD and isomers etc. and the individual terp levels
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Hey @Dog_Fart1
hit em with silica early, it’ll tighten em up
Can you elaborate on this, how much silica, and should the silica be in the soil composition or can you add it later on? I need fat ladies.
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Chris,
I will expand on what I know, its early and the brain is still fuzzyzyz << see.
I should add, I am not an agronomist - this is from reading, researching, bro science - so its a good little rabbit hole of research to form a basis of knowledge for your specific grow methodology/style.
To simply answer that Q tho, Yes and if you’re soil and organic, its likely already there for the plant, it is , I believe the most prevalent element on earth (2nd to O) so it is in damn near everything we commonly use (vermiculite, pumice, DE, perlite etc). Now obviously lots of $$$ products out there for Mono silicic, which claims to be “ready bioavailable”, I do use 2 brands (E91 and GG) and I revert to simple/cheap Potassium Silicate (Agsil16) until flower begins, then I let the residual ride. Some microbes help with the solubility, like Amyloliquefaciens. Adding extra late into flower is dissuaded against as it can make the buds become too hard. Even Bugbee points out in many of his talks that while it is not a “Necessary” element for growth, he feels the benefits are necessary for many reasons aside from cellular strength in combination with calcium etc. Which equates to strong branches and limbs. We’ve all grown that plant with golf-ball buds and its too wimpy to support its weight & the damn thing wants to lay on its side. Silica early (After any mainline, manifold, LST) helps to strengthen those stems, also helps toughen the outer surfaces to protect from bugs and abiotic stresses.
I’ll come back to this when I awaken a bit and edit.
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That is more than I imagined, you nailed it. Thank you for that info, i have been reading up on it, found out I had a sealed 1 litre bottle of liquid silica on the shelf and you explained it perfectly, even a bit to much like an agronomist. Everything is a rabbit hole in cannabis, growing cannabis is the milky way of knowledge and learning. It hurts my brain sometimes. But thank you again for the reply.
I am on to silica now and going to meet with a guy on Friday who first introduced me to using silica in soil, I asked him for help.
Apologies for hijacking your thread @lostplotter , very bad of me. Love the detail you go into your grow, and you do have a wonderful looking plant. Good growing.
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Silica is a hardening agent i use in construction alot too. Its in concrete and my other bags of bonding agents.
7 oz for your first is awesome. That is the beginning of a great obsession.
I rewrote that because i was repeating Mr Farts. Lol
So whats the gameplan @lostplotter ?
You want a jungle or one at a time to do mad tests on them?
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I’m not sure yet to be honest. I kind of want to play with a mix of plants and their different traits in one tent but also with the predictability of clones in another tent. I don’t think it’ll be single plant ever again though.
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Ahh, you are addicted to this drug called ganja growing. Looking forward to seeing your garden!
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I use Bloom City Silica Boost and feed foliar starting day 7 until about 3 days after first sign of flower (only have run autos so far). Then do once weekly applied to soil during flower. None of my plants have needed support, even the weakest branches that should’ve been pruned stay upright and I have an oscillating fan on the ground and pole fan above the canopy in a small 2 x 2 x 4 tent.
That’s gonna be some firepower…and welcome to GN! Given that you’re interested in the science you should look into trying to find the right mix of UV-A and UV-B supplement for indoors. Research has shown either alone has no affect, I don’t save my research and the only one I could recall was a UV-B study (just Google “uvb cannabis” and it’s the first one, peer reviewed in Front. Sci…my own weirdness I don’t click or post links so you gotta do a lil leg work). But the fact that cannabis plants have UV receptors, even for UV-B (UVR8), hints they’re there for a reason. One thing I don’t like about the study though, and most i’ve seen, is they blast their plants the entire lights on (or just shy). The UV emission from the sun that a plant in nature receives varies and a concentrated laser diode strip feet above blasting away doesn’t capture that.
Both of these things though I can’t tell you if adding silica or my UV-A / UV-B doses work. Only running a controlled clone comparison or someone who has a long time staring at plants and adds those things in could tell the real answer 
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Welcome homie… You’re in the right place. 
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