When an ice storm hit, and thousands of indoor marijuana growers faced life without electricity, my plants survived, but other growers lost their crops. What made the difference?
The big question for every marijuana grower is: how do you make your marijuana plants stronger so they resist stress, pests, drought, disease, and other bad things?
I found the answer a few years ago when I got into the science of armoring marijuana plants.
And it sure paid off for me one horrible winter in Michigan, when a massive ice storm swept in and eliminated electricity service for thousands of marijuana growers.
The storm blew in early on a Saturday morning. The electrical grid failed for tens of thousands of homes. Marijuana growers all over the state realized their cannabis plants were in deep trouble.
Unless you had a generator, or the ability to safely move your marijuana plants to a location that had electricity, it was a marijuana plant disaster in the making.
My grow room temperatures quickly plummeted. The electricity companies predicted 2-8 days before service was restored. I was scared.
The good news for me is that although most of my grower friends growing the same strains lost their crops, I didn’t. Here’s how I got the edge that protected my marijuana plants:
• I feed salicylic acid to my marijuana plants to stimulate their immune system. This is another name for pure aspirin, but you can’t grind up aspirin and put it into the nutrients water and have it work. I use a marijuana hydroponics product called Bud Factor X.
This product makes plants stronger so they are more resistant to cold and other hardship. It also stimulates THC production.
• I install beneficial bacteria and fungi in my root zone. Marijuana roots are more resistant to stress and attackers when they’re symbiotically protected by beneficial microbes.
Using beneficial microbes products such as Voodoo Juice and Tarantula, and feeding crops with carbohydrates such as Earth Juice molasses, my marijuana roots are stronger and more resilient than roots grown without these components.
• I use a strengthening hydroponics nutrient called potassium silicate. I’m including a link to an article that explains how this important material is used as a root and foliar feed to armor plants.
It’s especially helpful in situations of extreme hot or cold temperature, drought, and when insect attacks are prevalent. That’s because potassium silicate armors cell walls to make plants more rigid and sturdy.
• When you have a lot of stress, a cold, or some other hardship, doctors advise you to take Vitamin B. The same thing works for marijuana plants.
When you provide Vitamin B to marijuana plants, it helps their metabolic and immune functions so they’re better resistant to stress. That’s why marijuana growers use Vitamin B during cloning, rooting, and transplanting.
My feed program includes either Organic B or B-52, depending on whether I’m growing in soil or pure hydroponics.
• In grow phase, I foliar spray potassium silicate, and Vitamin B, along with Ancient Earth humic and fulvic acids. This too armors marijuana plants.
Even though I’d armored my plants, I worried, as the electricity outage lasted six days. I tried to find a generator, but they were too expensive and polluting to use.
I considered heating with kerosene or propane, but those generate humidity, air toxins, and danger. Plus, those devices would not take care of my marijuana plants’ lighting needs.
After talking to several other marijuana growers about what to do, I made a weaker than average dose of hydroponics nutrients solution spiked with Connoisseur base nutrients, Vitamin B, Rhino Skin, and beneficial microbes, and gave each plant a very small amount of this nutrients water per day.
I kept them in the dark and slept in the grow room to generate heat. The grow room temperatures dropped to 41F, and I worried constantly that I’d lose my crops.
Across the state, growers who had not run an armoring program on their marijuana plants were seeing their crops slowly die. Mine didn’t.
I am in week two of bloom, and the electricity just came back on. My plants look fine, although the stress, cold, and lack of HID light probably delayed floral development.
You bet I’m grateful my marijuana plants were armored enough to survive yet another Michigan disaster.
