0 Cart
Added to Cart
    You have items in your cart
    You have 1 item in your cart
    Total
    Check Out Continue Shopping

    The Friday Finisher

    Michigan Proposition 1 - Part 2

    After nearly a decade of legalized medical cannabis, it’s fairly obvious the medical system here in Michigan has been plagued with issues.  Thankfully, with Proposition 1 on the horizon things are looking to get much better for the people of this fine state. In the first installment of this blog I went over some but not all possible negative issues with Proposition 1, in part two I want to cover the bright side.

    So the the bright side of Prop 1 is that recreational use of cannabis will be legal in the state of Michigan, and another state will benefit from the funds the cannabis industry provides.  The first thing that comes to mind is access. Should Prop. 1 pass, adults aged 21 and above will have access to cannabis and will be able to possess 2.5 ounces of dried product at a time.  Additionally, the Proposition will allow those same adults to grow/possess up to 12 “mature” cannabis plants, though what constitutes “mature” is yet to be legally defined. Perhaps most importantly, home growers in Michigan will be allowed to possess 10 ounces in their residences, in locked containers.  Access is key, and every cannabis user should be aware of their local laws.

    PotGuide.com - Michigan

    I would like to point out that the limit home growers may store in their house is extremely low.  You might say “but 10 ounces is a lot of cannabis, why is this an issue?” Well it comes down to what in general can be produced from 12 plants in your home grows.  On average, I can reliably produce 4 ounces a plant indoors, and outdoors I can routinely produce 2 pounds per plant. Therefore, in an indoor grow with my 12 allotted  plants, I’d yield an average of 48 ounces of dried product putting me over the limit by 38 ounces. It’s worse for an outdoor setup: 24 pounds after curing, putting me over my limit by 374 ounces.  Clearly, many home growers will run into significant overage problems, but it’ll be even more difficult for those that prefer a single outdoor grow to cover their needs for the year. In my opinion, this decision was driven by one of two factors.  On the one hand, the lawmakers were making decisions based on the idea that people would be buying this product from suppliers. On the other hand, simple ignorance and lack of experience in the growth or production of cannabis could just as easily cause such arbitrary limits.


    Next, the proposition calls for a 10% excise task, which should be a much more direct benefit to the state. The first cut from the tax will be used, understandably,  direct match to cost to fund the administration of the state’s cannabis program. Second, 20 million will be earmarked for research. Third, 35% of the remainder will go to schools, 35% will go to roads and infrastructure, 15% will go to local municipalities that do not restrict cannabis sales, and 15% will go to counties that have cannabis businesses located within their boundaries.  Michigan needs all the financial help it can get so the tax as a whole should be very beneficial to us, but this assumes funds that match those dedicated from the excise tax won’t be pulled out of their respective categories to be spent elsewhere. It will be the task of ordinary citizens to make sure that we hold our politicians accountable for the use of this tax money.

    Image result for cannabis michigan

     

    Unfortunately, enacting Prop. 1 won’t pardon anyone who’s been convicted of past cannabis possession charges.  In most other states, legalization measures either included provisions for clemency or such provisions followed closely thereafter.  In Michigan, we’ll have to wait and see. Its extremely important to keep this in mind in the days leading up to the vote and beyond.  To wrap up this two part blog I would like to take a moment and say a few things. For people here in Michigan this is huge, it's yet another step towards freedom as an adult and the ability for us all to have open access to product that can be really beneficial.  I hope Michigan is one of many dominoes to fall, one can hope this will be a great step towards national legalization for adult recreational use.

    Silica Strong

    Silica Strong

    Silicon usually isn’t directly ranked among the micro nutrients required for plant health.  As a major inorganic component of all soils, adding it is often seen as unnecessary. However, most cannabis nutrient lines contain a silica compound.  Is this just because these lines focus on hydroponic grow methods or is there another reason to care about silicon?

     

    It turns out, supplementing silicon has been widely studied and plant specific testing has been conducted for many crops.  According to this research, there are numerous benefits to boosting silicon in plants. Early studies focused on drought resistance and the increase in dry harvest weights of corn, rice, and wheat.  Researchers found that increasing silicon increased plants’ water uptake efficiency by 30%, which provided broad, if difficult to quantify, resistance to drought. They also noticed that plants were better able to handle both heat and cold stress without showing signs of damage for moderate exposure.  Given the heat stress potential of most indoor grows, this last benefit alone puts silicon on the top of my nutrient list.

     

    Another study focused on the synergistic effects between silicon and nutrients in soil.  When looking at the soil substrate, there’s a direct correlation between silicon content and plants’ ability to uptake ionic compounds.  In short, having beneficial levels of silicon in the soil helps plants absorb necessary minerals. However, the benefit has a great deal to do with available nutrients in the growth medium to begin with.  So, we can assume that the greater the health of your growth medium and nutrient mix, the greater impact silicon can have on nutrient uptake.


    Next, the plant specific studies mentioned earlier overwhelming conclude that fertilizing with silicon increases dry yields of field crops.  On average, corn yields increased 18%, and other crops such as rice and soybean showed yield increases 20 to 30%. The exact function by which silica improves yields is yet known, and further study is needed.  The takeaway for cannabis growers is that, given the varying types of plants that produce more when fed, there’s good reason to believe using it in our grows will likewise increase our yields. At the very least, we need to begin independent testing of our own to study these effects.
     

    Finally, silicon provides increased overall structural rigidity and strength throughout the whole plant and this effect is directly linked to pest and disease resistance.  As with crop yields above, plant specific studies have been conducted to prove this phenomenon. However, plants differ in the ways they transfer materials once past the root zone.  Therefore, we don’t have an exact model for how much silicon increases strength and resistance in Cannabis.  What we do know is that in all the plants tested, adding silicon led to stronger cell walls and inter-cellular connections within the plant as a whole, as opposed to just in a specific portion of the plant.  This total plant hardening leads us to why it helps with pest mitigation. Silicon helps create a thicker exterior cell wall making the plant far more difficult to penetrate either through plant rust or pests.  If an insect can’t bite through the leaf, stem, or stalk of the plant it can’t harm the plant.

     

    Unlike many nutrients that seem to be mysterious or and lacking science to back up their efficacy, silica compounds are proven drivers of greater plant health and higher yields. What i hope you've taken away from this blog today is simple, silica is awesome.  Go out do some research and find the right silica nutrient line for your particular grow medium.

    Great things on the horizon

    Great things on the horizon

    Hello from Joel at Hayes Park Hydroponics.  It’s now late 2018, and we’re coming close to midterm elections here in the U.S.  This usually brings high drama from all sides of the political arena, often drowning out smaller topics on the national stage.  Knowing this, everyone in the cannabis industry needs to be aware of and focused on the coming votes in each of our states. We’ve been growing, but we need to do what we can to support pro-cannabis legislators and initiatives.


    In the coming weeks, I’ll be writing here on numerous topics concerning our industry.  Expect discussions on new research, grow methodology, <add another category?>, and what’s on the horizon for us politically.  Some of the topics will need a bit of a primer to help with vocabulary attached to different scientific and manufacturing fields, and the more complex topics may take a little longer to get through.  However, I’ll do my best to keep it manageable and interesting without losing what’s important. Here’s a peek at some topics you’ll likely see:

    • CBD and research results linking it to non anecdotal medical results in humans

    • Unwrapping the mystery surrounding humate

    • Maintaining long and short term focus and how this can greatly affect your grow


    My goal is for readers to walk away each week with small but applicable bits of information that can improve their knowledge base.   With so much information out there it’s become increasingly difficult to be able to decipher what is credible science backed information in contrast to speculative research.  I want to what I can to lift the curtain on these issues. A perfect example of how confusing our industry can be starts with the seemingly simple subject of names, of strains or even of C. Sativa itself.

     

     

    Taxonomically speaking what we call cannabis is the species Sativa, in the genus Cannabis, and the family Cannabaceae.  The differences we note when looking at strains are at the “variety” or even “form” level, so well below the species ranking. The issue of truly identifying a strain begins to rear its ugly head when we take a look at the consumer experience, and ask the question “how do we know the girl scout cookie is really the strain?”  In this case we tend to take the budtender at their word, but the hard question is: is this a healthy practice for the industry? When state regulations requires that batches be segregated by strain, how exactly does the state define a strain? What testing and protocols are in place to enforce the laws? The scary truth is it depends on what state you’re in, and the definitions may be absurdly vague.  This leeds back to the true difference between cannabis strains coming down to slight genetic differences that can only be illuminated with the proper testing.


    To add to this already muddy topic, even if testing can identify traits, that's only one part.  The next question is whether the plant is a stable variety in terms of the traits it displays, such as cannabinoid content, color, taste, etc.  A single high-producing mutant doesn’t make a strain, but what then defines a stable strain? How do we track and Identify this when dealing with the vast number of cultivators and states they grow in?  And why does any of this matter? Ultimately, understanding these factors helps cultivators ensure healthy genetics moving forward. Inbreeding and non-diverse populations can be very dangerous and costly, mainly because a single type of outbreak, be it pest or other vector could completely wipe out a grow.

     

    Stay Tuned to the next installment of Friday Finisher