So, you’ve probably never heard of silicate/ silicon use in plants. It’s included in no fertiliser I know of, and “only” semi-essential.

I grow pretty much all of my plants hydroponically, and the fertiliser I use has all nutrients (micro and macro) included. All of them grow healthy and fast, without any signs of deficiencies, probably even twice as fast as in soil.

But I often had the feeling that “something” is missing.
They get hugely stressed when drying out (including nutrient burn), get light or heat stress, and I had to fight pests all the damn time I couldn’t get rid of, even with systemic pesticides.
This may sound more hard on paper than it is in reality, but it still was a bit annoying. They grow well, but are physically weak.

This also isn’t some obscure hydro issue, soil plants have it as well. Most soils are lacking silicon as well.

Silicon (in form of silicates) is known to fix that. It reinforces cell walls, both in the leaves/ stem and the root system. It makes them tougher and therefore more resistant to wind, heat, pests, drought, nutrient burn, light, pathogens, and so on. It also improves nutrient absorption, and can be just as powerful against powdery mildew or other fungal infections as fungicides according to a study I read.

If it is THAT great, why isn’t it used everywhere?!

Simple. Because it’s chemically unstable and hard to include in your standard fertiliser. And even if it already is in soil, or applied via plant extracts like nettle tea, it’s not that bioavailable.

The benefits have been known to commercial growers for ages.

The most widely used form is potassium silicate. Which is shit imo. It’s highly alkaline, so even a bit throws off the pH and hinders nutrient absorption, so you have to adjust the pH all the time, adding junk into your nutrient solution. It also degrades very quickly, so you have to apply it multiple times a week, preferably via foliar application.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to use it for hobbyists.

So, what’s the solution? Another form!
Tetraethyl silicate (TEOS).

I’ve been using Grow Genius Mono-silicic for a few weeks now, and the results are phenomenal. But I have to say, this product is overpriced for what it’s made out of. You can get TEOS way cheaper, it’s wide spread in chemical industry.

Compared to potassium silicate, it

• doesn’t alter the pH
• doesn’t polymerise as fast, making it way more stable in solution, and
• is more concentrated

I currently use the recommended dose in my nutrient solution, and apply it via foliar spray weekly for now.

I noticed its effects most strongly on my cannabis plants.
The leaves got very rough, almost like velcro at this point.

When I bend a stem now, it really cracks, which it didn’t before.

And it grows more compact, tolerating almost double the light intensity than my last grows, resulting in WAY faster growth.

My living sphagnum moss also got more robust. It can tolerate more fertiliser and doesn’t instantly die when dry. Before silicate, it felt spongy, and now more like wet steel wool.

And most of my houseplants now look like fake plastic plants. Especially my calatheas just shrivelled up and got crispy before when I forgot to water them. The leaves are thicker and glossy.

It also helped to get rid of the powdery mildew that plagued my mums’ zucchini plant.

All in all, I’m really pleasantly surprised that it works THAT well. 10/10, would recommend :)

In my use case, examples are KDE Connect (phone and Linux laptop communication), FMD (remote locate or control lost degoogled phone) and Kvaesitso (amazing homescreen).

Some of them ask “hard” permissions like accessibility, read notifications, extensive device control, and so on.
I definitely understand why they need them, it’s not like some Play Store calculator app that somehow needs access to my GPS and contacts ;)

Also, only popular apps get some privileges from me, because there is more code monitoring in bigger projects I guess.

But I also see them as possible attack vector, especially stuff like remote factory reset via SMS (I didn’t activate that feature btw).

I’m a bit torn apart.
Physical phone security is important of course. If I lose my phone somewhere, or it gets stolen, locating and ringing it could be extremely useful.
Same with amazing features that make my life easier.
On the other hand, this much power can escalate quickly (haxxor pushing malicious code in an update for example) and leaves me a bit vulnerable.

How do you handle this?

How much can we trust in good faith, checks and balances of software?

It’s not a nutrient issue, I tested the pH and EC.

I also doubt it’s dehydration or suffocation, because it’s in an optimal hydroponic environment.

So, there’s only three options left I guess.

Option 1: wind damage.
It was quite stormy about one or two weeks ago. Maybe it got root damage (unlikely, small plant), or it bend too much?

Option 2: temperature fluctuations.
At the same time of the storm, the night temperatures dropped quite a bit (lowest: 12°C). And now, it raised to 40°C just a few days after.
Or,

Option 3: sunburn.
It’s under a shaded cloth, and gets direct sun only at afternoon, if at all.
All other plants (e.g. pepino) do very well and have no light stress.

Or is it something different?

It also lost a few pollinated buds. Is that a very bad sign?

New growth this week has appeared wrinkled as well.

Cross post from !hydroponics@slrpnk.net

I made a guide on how to pre-treat coco coir to avoid nutrient lockout or toxicity issues.

Moss gardens (balcony)

I had to cat proof my balcony, and for that, I filled containers with cement and put a rod into them. They are solid 3/4 and had about 10 cm air space.

I initially put stones in them, but they always filled up with rain water and were a breeding ground for algae and mosquitoes.

They used to look like this:

Then, I decided to do something more useful and less labour intensive with them.

I put lots of leftover hydro substrate in them, mostly LECA, lava rock, pumice, zeolith, and so on, as well as a small net cup as filter, to pump out the water in case it’s needed.

Most were left as is, with no organic layer on top.

Then, I went outside and collected all different kinds of mosses I could find. Only small patches of course, both for sustainability and the sake of the experiment.

The goal is to establish a living, organic top surface, and a very airy moist environment below with lots of air gaps, where puddled up water from below gets drawn up and evaporates.

All pots do have different environments. Some are in bright sun all day, some very shaded. Some get fertilizer leeched in from flower pots above, some are very nutrient poor.

This means, quite a lot of species lost the “natural” selection game and got outcompeted or died, while others thrive in this environment and cover big areas.

They are all getting drained from time to time to prevent nutrient buildup, or in case the cement below leeches out. In dry times, they get a small shower with RO water, especially my bog pots.

How they look now, after about a year

Here’s the first one. Very bright light and quite nutrient dense. 100% inorganic substrate.
I put a bit of osmocote in it, and it stays relatively dry.

There are lots if “weeds”/ grasses in it, which have formed a dense sheet of rhizomes and roots. I trim the grass from time to time.

Second one. 100% inorganic substrate, very bright, very nutrient poor.

I put some “random” moss, as well as living sphagnum in it. There’s also a sarracenia in there, but it’s not looking very happy.

My goal was to simulate the natural formation of bogs. In theory, the sphagnum moss will acidify the environment extremely, which makes it inhospitable for most other mosses and plants.

Initially, the random moss got a great jump start from the decomposing other mosses around, releasing nutrients. It covered most of it.

But it seems like, due to the constant flooding and lack of nutrients, that the sphagnum now strikes back and takes its place.

The third one is the exact same as the one before, but a bit drier maybe.

It took lots of living sphagnum to decompose itself and turn the habitat livable for other living sphagnum. I also put a sarracenia in there last year, but it sadly died. There’s also a hand full of (used) peat on top to give the spagnum a jump start.

Then, the fourth one. This one is very shaded and nutrient rich. It gets lots of synthetic fertiliser by surrounding plants leaching into it.

It’s very similar to a forest environment.

Here’s my newest one. It has got a base layer of lava rock, followed by coco coir, and finished with some used peat I got from a fellow gardener. It’s somewhat flooded most of the time and is a 100% bog environment (very bright, acidic, nutrient poor).

I put the sphagnum and sarracenia into it about two months ago, and they’re already thriving!

Then, there’s my Drosera binata. Peat as substrate, and some freshly planted sphagnum as top layer.

And the final one. Shallow bowl, filled with a few cm of LECA, nothing else, and quite a lot of living sphagnum. There’s a venus flytrap and a Drosera rotundifolia in it, as well as some seeds (either weeds, or carnivorous plants).

After that one or two years, the moss garden transformed my “sterile” balcony into an oasis for life. It’s like living in a forest!

There are SO many critters in there. Beetles, arthropods, springtails, nematodes, snails, you name it.

Indoor Sphagnum cultivation

I’m also growing some sphagnum indoors for further use.

The outdoor stuff in the bog containers is mainly for habitat formation and contaminated with weeds and bugs.

Right now, the amount harvested is insufficient. I mostly use it for making even more sphagnum 😅 You can easily propagate it by sprinkling small chunks on other substrate.

It took a while for me to get the hang of it. I’ve killed lots if it, mostly by overfertilizing or letting it dry out too much.

But now, it grows very fast and I already got my first harvest.

Some of it uses a few cm of LECA as substrate, and others have peat as base layer. I noticed that peat works way better, mostly due to the inherent low pH and nutrient buffering capabilities.

I’m also testing coco coir as a substitute for peat right now.

The moss is in plastic deli containers without drainage inside my grow tent. I’m growing weed there, and the boxes get lots of very bright light because of that.

They are getting flooded regularly and are then allowed to dry out a bit. Sometimes, I add a splash of hydroponic fertilizer to them when flooded. This makes it grow extremely quickly.

As soon as I notice the moss is getting too dark green, I flush it and stop fertilizing for a while. If I don’t do this, it will get nutrient burn as soon as it dries out a bit and die.

Here you can see different shades of green:

My goal is to get regular big amounts for harvest. I wanna use it as a sustainable replacement for peat, because many carnivorous plants NEED those specific conditions to survive.

It’s also very decay resistant and holds on to water like a sponge. I could use it for propagation, e.g. cuttings or air layering. It has so many uses!

I also have some growing in front of my window in a glass vase. It started with a few cm of LECA and now colonized the whole jar. I use it in this case as substrate for my Nepenthes and Drosera.

I’m thinking about buying a few fabric pots and would like to hear some user experiences.

But my main concern is sustainability.

Does anyone have experience using them outside at harsh conditions, e.g. UV radiation, freezing temperatures, all year around?

1. Can you wash them in the washing machine? Are they hard to clean?
2. How well do they work for perennial plants in winter? They are pretty airy after all, does this insulate the cold, or makes it even more destructive for the hibernating roots?
3. How long do they last under those conditions? Will they disintegrate after some time and shed microplastics?
4. Do they dry out significantly faster than regular pots? How is the water consumption?
5. When using coco coir, should I use less perlite?

Thanks a lot!

I have literally zero experience with creating audio, but I want to try something new for me.

I know most people who are “properly” into music production are just using a Mac, because it just works and where a lot of the software is available.

Thing is, I have zero expectations.
I don’t need a lot of features, plug-ins, and whatever. Most stuff will probably just be fine for me.

Heck, I don’t even know what I need in the first place to get a full “stack” of audio production software.

For the start, I’d prefer something simple. Mostly just something where I can arrange a few recorded audio tracks onto each other and maybe edit them a bit. Something where I can record the tracks with my microphone (and some time later maybe an input device like a piano keyboard, e-guitar, etc.) and listen them at the same time, preferably in the same program.

What are your experiences with making music on Linux?
What software would you recommend?