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Yucca Extracts · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today is going to be of interest to the
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  one listener we've had this month in New Mexico and the one listener we've had this month in Arizona.
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  And that's because we're talking about yucca extracts, which come from,
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  well, the southwest of America and Mexico.
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  But they're used in hydroponics and they're used in hydroponics all around the world.
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  So of interest to all hydroponic growers and even some gardeners and horticulturalists.
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  Now why do we use yucca extracts specifically?
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  That's because when you make an extract of yucca you get a soap, a natural soap.
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  Now natural soaps are called saponins but essentially they're just natural soaps,
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  that's just a fancy word.
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  And the species that is used for this
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  is yucca shidigera or the
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  mojave yucca and it's used
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  for three main reasons in hydroponics it's one
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  it's added as a feed for grow media as
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  a wetting agent and that's really good if your wetting agent
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  has either dried out so and
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  when you let wetting agent when you let a soil or a.
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  Grow media dry too far it becomes hydrophobic
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  and it won't absorb fertilizer or
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  water when you apply it and so you'll see
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  this where your your grow media shrinks
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  and then when you water it the water doesn't it
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  pulls on the top and then falls around the sides the the gaps
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  between the container the pot and and
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  the grow media and so your plant continues to be
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  droughted and or in water
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  deficits so it's really good as a wetting agent
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  the soap opens up the grow media and so
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  that's really good or if the wetting age the grow
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  media has degraded over time imagine you've
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  been growing plants in it for several weeks many
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  months you're late on into flowering in those
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  sorts of crops then then you can rejuvenate
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  the grow media by adding a wetting agent to improve the
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  flow wash out salts wash out any allelopathic
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  chemicals that have built up so it's really good for that and
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  you can also add it you can also be sprayed uca
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  extract as a as an organic insecticidal soap
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  where that's allowed in your country so many countries
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  you're allowed to spray soaps as ways.
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  To control pests and diseases and so
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  you break down the waxy exoskeleton on the pest and then dehydrates and dies
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  and this is classed as a physical mode of action and in the uk and in america
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  i think as well you you can you can use physical mode of action products.
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  So lots of products are based on soaps.
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  So we sell an insecticidal soap here.
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  Which is based around synthetic, normal soaps that you would find in dish soap,
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  soft soap, shower gel, things like that.
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  But a sodium-free version, our version is sodium-free because plants hate sodium,
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  although most insecticidal soaps aren't sodium-free, so just be careful on that.
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  And then yucca extract is an organic version of that, so that's a really good option.
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  So it can be used as a Western agent in insecticidal soap, and it can also be used as a.
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  Biostimulant, because when you get yucca extract and give it a smell, you'll smell the,
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  sugars in it because the the soap
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  particles are linked to a sugar molecule they're they're classed as steroid
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  glycosides the glycoside bit is the sugar bit and the steroid bit is that is
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  the soapy bit and so they smell sweet and and so just like carbohydrate based and sugar based,
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  biostimulants that you put on during late flowering
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  to promote resin then yucca is another good good
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  sugar-based product that's really good because it
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  opens up the grow media as well at that time of year so a lot
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  of formulations based around late on
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  in flowering in hydroponics contain yucca even if
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  they don't say that they do it's an expensive product
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  so it won't they won't be in cheap products and instead
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  of saying yucca they might have a fancy name saying our products contain hydros
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  staminator technology inside to improve the wetting of your grow media and you
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  know but basically that just means it's got some yucca extract in it and and so.
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  Look out for those fancy names as i say
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  it's an expensive product in the usa it might be cheaper because obviously
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  over here i have to import big totes
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  you call them in america in the uk we call my bcs and
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  it's not a cheap product to import it's heavy product it weighs
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  a lot so products that contain yucca will be heavy and
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  then that's why you'll often find adulterated products
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  on the market there's a very large company in the
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  uk and they buy some yucca extract in and then they add synthetic surfactants
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  to make it appear as if it's a natural soap but actually contains synthetic
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  surfactants when you look on the safety data sheet you'll also find yucca extracts
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  being offered by Chinese companies and,
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  The yucca shirigara doesn't grow in China as far as I'm aware,
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  so that will be products that's taken to China.
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  They've done what they do with it in China and then they send it back,
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  so just be on the lookout for that.
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  As I say, it should be brown, it should smell sweet because of those steroid
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  glycosides, it should foam up like a soap, and it should be dense.
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  It should weigh a fair amount, like a litre should weigh 1.2, 1.3 kilos around there.
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  You know a 20 litre yucca should be difficult to carry if it's not then it's
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  not concentrated yucca it should be free of any contaminants i mean it might
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  be sick it might have a sediment but it shouldn't be shouldn't have bits in
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  it that don't go through a sprayer as i say it contains steroid glycosides and
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  i've been selling yucca extracts for a number of years.
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  And we even had people who would buy it
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  to because they were bodybuilding and they thought that
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  because it contains steroids plant steroids they these were
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  like you know substitutes for anabolic steroids and then
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  they reported they had to stop taking it because
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  they got too hairy and apparently the the steroids in
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  yucca extract make you hairy but that also makes it good as a
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  pig feed because you want pigs to
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  build to build up muscle but you
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  also want them to be hairy pigs because it stops them from getting sunburned so
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  we had pig growers who would buy it i mean we'd never once claimed that it was
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  food safe or you know feed safe but they would buy it people who put it into
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  sweets cosmetics we've got a customer at the moment who puts it in cosmetics
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  and so it's got a wide range of uses outside of hydroponics yucca extract and there it's not the only,
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  plant-based saponin so you can get extracts of the tea plant from china this
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  time that'd be perfectly adequate india you can get saponaria and quilea extract
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  from south america these are
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  more powder type products the disadvantage of these products is that they.
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  Because they're powders, if the dust gets in your nose, you can start uncontrollably
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  sneezing because of the wetting agents, the soaps in your nose.
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  I've known that to happen.
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  I've known people who've been working, we've been working with quileia extract
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  and everyone started sneezing uncontrollably.
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  And if you are asthmatic, then that could be really bad.
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  You can also get terpene-based saponins from certain plants,
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  such as soapwort, which is a native plant to the UK.
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  I've grown this plant and I thought, oh, I'll grow loads of it.
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  And i'll extract the soaps and i won't have to buy the really expensive
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  yucca from the united states anymore i tried
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  extracting this i couldn't get any soap at all out of soapwort
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  i don't know what you have to do maybe something to do with the
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  ph of extraction or extracting solvents things
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  like this but that was a dead end product project any
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  anyone who knows how to get soaps out of soapwort let
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  me know because i think i might have even been given
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  the wrong seeds you know you know sometimes you get dodgy seeds
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  i once got some ginseng seeds
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  off the internet and they turned out to be pennsylvanian ash
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  or something like that completely useless plant
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  species luckily there's an american guy in my village
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  and he took this he took the plants and planted them in
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  the local park he seemed to like them but that was
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  a waste of time so yeah soapwort if you know anything about soapwort let
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  me know if you've got any good sources of ginseng anyone in ohio
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  midwest places like that let me know on that
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  note i've been looking at the the listener
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  figures as i said we've got one listener in arizona
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  one listener in mexico and it's my aim to cover every
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  state of the usa and every country in the world with this podcast so if you
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  know anyone who is a hydroponic grower in utah idaho montana wyoming north or
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  south dakota wisconsin oklahoma Arkansas.
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  South Carolina,
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  West Virginia, Maryland.
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  Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, Alaska, Hawaii, Rhode Island,
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  that's the last one, isn't it? Or Puerto Rico.
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  Yep. One of our Puerto Rican friends would send them a link to this podcast, please.
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  Anyone in those states, please send them a link to the to
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  this podcast and get that get my listener figures up i would be so
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  happy if we could get the whole of the continental and
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  whole of the usa even the us solomon isles and all those crazy places like that
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  i also haven't got any listeners in japan that makes me sad poland finland that
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  makes me sad places where i should have listeners like switzerland and austria
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  virtually the whole of south america.
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  Cuba indonesia malaysia singapore china haven't got chinese listeners don't
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  send them this one because it wasn't the most complimentary kazakhstan all the
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  stands pakistan afghanistan,
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  saudi arabia and all those countries in
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  the center of africa as well you know it sounds like
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  i've got no listeners i have got some listeners let's have
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  a look at obviously i say we're most popular in
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  the united states united kingdom canada australia and
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  then we've also got a lot of listeners in the middle east it
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  would seem iran is very iran and israel
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  you know they don't see eye to eye on a lot of things but they
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  do love listening to hydroponics daily so that's
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  fantastic and brunei obviously brunei darasalam is you know i'm big in brunei
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  so let's get the listener figures up in all the crazy countries if you know
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  somebody lives in greenland or iceland give them a shout and that's been hydroponics
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  daily for today yucca extracts. Thank you.