Grower Blog: Biostimulants Explained

The Silicon Research Behind Thicker Stems Was Run on Grasses. Cannabis Isn’t One

Cannabis & Indoor Hydro / Bloom Yellow Bottles

Silicon supplements have a strong reputation in cannabis growing — thicker stems, stronger cell walls, better stress tolerance. Most of that reputation was built on crops that have almost nothing in common with cannabis botanically: rice, sugarcane, wheat, turf grass. Before assuming the same effect size carries over, it’s worth asking a basic question —

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Horsetail Tea Promises 5–8% Silica. The One Study That Measured a Boil Found Less Than Half

Specialty Niche Growers / Bloom Yellow Bottles

Walk through any bonsai forum, succulent-collector group, or terrarium swap, and sooner or later someone recommends horsetail tea. The logic sounds solid: Equisetum arvense, the common field horsetail, has a centuries-old reputation as the “silica plant,” and silicon has a real, well-documented role in strengthening cell walls and helping plants cope with stress. So growers

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What “Fish-Derived” Actually Means for a Reservoir Sitting on Your Kitchen Counter

Semi-Hydro & Houseplant / Bloom Yellow Bottles

What “Fish-Derived” Actually Means for a Reservoir Sitting on Your Kitchen Counter A semi-hydro setup lives in your living room, not a greenhouse. When an input’s ingredient list includes fish hydrolysate, it’s a fair question whether that changes anything about having it around pets and kids. Semi-hydro and LECA growers keep their reservoirs somewhere a

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The Jar of Willow Water on Your Windowsill Isn’t the Same Jar It Was Last Week

Home & Backyard Garden / Bloom Yellow Bottles

The Jar of Willow Water on Your Windowsill Isn’t the Same Jar It Was Last Week We’ve written about which willow species has more salicin, and about the dose where that compound helps rooting instead of hurting it. There’s a third variable gardeners rarely account for: time on the shelf. Soaking willow cuttings in water

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Which Part of the Cutting Did You Steep? A Willow Trial Found It Changes the Answer

Specialty Niche Growers / Bloom Yellow Bottles

Which Part of the Cutting Did You Steep? A Willow Trial Found It Changes the Answer For a bonsai bench with one root-zone volume and no room for a failed strike, “willow water” turns out to depend on which part of the tree ended up in the jar. A bonsai pot never gets bigger. We’ve

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Two Hydrolysates That Actually Worked, From a Review Built to Report the Ones That Didn’t

Cannabis & Indoor Hydro / Bloom Yellow Bottles

Two Hydrolysates That Actually Worked, From a Review Built to Report the Ones That Didn’t A 2020 review of fish-derived biostimulants went looking for the full picture — the failures as well as the wins. Two of the wins are worth a hydro grower’s attention. Most of what gets written about fish-derived plant inputs on

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The Seaweed Species With a 99.8% Yield Jump Isn’t the One in Our Bottle

Cannabis & Indoor Hydro / Bloom Yellow Bottles

The Seaweed Species With a 99.8% Yield Jump Isn’t the One in Our Bottle If you spend enough time in the seaweed-biostimulant literature, you eventually run into a number that stops you: one species, in the largest meta-analysis of the field to date, is associated with a 99.8% yield increase. That’s not a typo and

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Why Mixing Your Own Cal-Mag Can Leave Chalk at the Bottom of the Bucket

Home & Backyard Garden / Bloom Yellow Bottles

Why Mixing Your Own Cal-Mag Can Leave Chalk at the Bottom of the Bucket Calcium and magnesium deficiency is a common fall problem in containers and raised beds, and the home-garden fix a lot of people reach for is the same one: calcium nitrate plus Epsom salt, stirred into one concentrate. It’s cheap, the two

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The Best Published Root Data for Our Declared Seaweed Species Isn’t Ours to Claim

Floriculture & Ornamental / Bloom Yellow Bottles

The Best Published Root Data for Our Declared Seaweed Species Isn’t Ours to Claim Bloom Seaweed’s label declares one input: Durvillaea potatorum, a brown seaweed harvested off southern Australia, at 0.17-0.027-3.278 and a 1 ml/L rate. It’s a real, useful piece of brand honesty to sit with the fact that the best field trial data

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What a Soil Test Has to Show Before a Silicon Amendment Is Worth Spreading

Commercial & Broadacre Ag / Bloom Yellow Bottles

What a Soil Test Has to Show Before a Silicon Amendment Is Worth Spreading Pre-season planning season is when a lot of broadacre decisions get made on paper before anything goes in the spreader — which inputs pencil out at field scale, and which ones don’t earn their freight. Silicon amendments come up in that

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