how to get dense buds?

wakeNbaker46 said:

i just harvested and cured my first four plants. smoke report is better than i thought it would be. buds are sticky, smell like a skunk got dipped in gasoline. pretty happy with it, honestly.
however, during the trim job, i realized that the buds were fluffy AF. like, when i trimmed back leaves there was very little flower to be found. curing helped a bit with compacting it down, but still...i feel like i grew cannabis leaves vs cannabis flowers.
what are the tricks to dense, thick colas and buds?
my first grow was all auto from RQS, 3 indica dominant and 1 cbd. i ran them in FFHF with Dr Earth dry amendments, fed every 2-3 wks. lighting is ES300 x 2 in a 4x4 tent.
is it genetics? is it grow medium? will photos have denser buds?
i'm open to all advice and suggestions.

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I think genetics will help. And yes a photo period plant. I don't have experience growing auto's, but I have bought a few ounces of different stuff from the dispensary, and every time I can always usually tell it's weed from an auto plant because they never seem very dense, they are usually fluffier, the trichs are smaller and feel like sand, and there is a certain way the bud and stem looks to me. I would try to get a strain that is a heavy yielder, see from the breeders seedbank photo a bud structure that looks solid to you, read if in the description it says anything about "packing on so much weight they need to be staked up in flower", or if they say "the buds are so dense flowering time is crucial to watch for mold with this variety as the buds tend to get pretty dense". I feel like with a photo period, you will be able to take it longer if you want to fill the buds out more. Also another thing that helped me, I would use fox farm ocean forest and it was real thick like mud, it would take forever to dry out so I would automatically from the beginning mix the soil 50/50 half fox farm and half perlite. And it made my plants get better drainage to dry out faster, making the plants able to absorb the water or food they need faster and more often, Instead of watering once a week, it made me water every other night, but the plants grew faster, thicker, denser, way better quality and my buds went from looking like larfy popcorn homegrown to actual solid, frosty dank nugs... I'm not sure how well that would work with using dry amendments though. I was using Flora Nova veg and Flora Nova bloom depending on the cycle.