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Silicon in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, where we unpack the science behind growing
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  better, smarter, and greener crops indoors, without soils.
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  Yes, it's hydroponics. I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, and today we're diving
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  into a surprisingly powerful ally in your hydroponic toolkit, silicon.
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  Now, I have mentioned we were going to be doing quite a controversial episode on silicon.
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  This is not it so stay tuned that will
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  be coming next week where we basically blow
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  the lid off a lot of the claims that are made for silicon
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  fertilizers and there's a lot of people who spend
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  a lot of time arguing and claiming
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  their silicon is the best and the most powerful and super
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  duper and and actually naming other people's products and saying they're terrible
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  well a lot of people might want to get into their bunkers for next week's episode
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  The today's episode though is about why you would want to use silicon and why
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  is silicon a good element to put on your plants.
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  Now when you think of essential plant nutrients what comes to mind?
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  Nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, maybe calcium and magnesium.
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  These are all the macronutrients as well as sulfur.
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  But what about silicon? That's not even a micronutrient but believe it or not
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  this often overlooked element plays a critical role especially if you're working
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  with grasses, bamboos, or even horsetails. Have you heard of horsetails?
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  They're what's often called Lego plant.
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  My kids love to pull them apart and put them back together again.
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  They're called the Lego plant. So they're really important for grasses,
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  bamboos, but also lots of other plants.
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  Silicon's really important. So in grasses and bamboos, they're called silicon
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  accumulators or hyperaccumulators.
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  Some or one species, the Sassavichii, can store up to 41% of its dry weight as silica.
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  That's almost half their body weight in microscopic glass.
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  Now, they wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't going to be doing something. So why do they do it?
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  And it's basically a clever defense mechanism. These plants form specialist
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  silica cells that deter herbivores.
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  Imagine chewing through sandpaper or
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  imagine i gave you a delicious burger to eat or a vegetarian patty if you're
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  or a vegan patty and if you're vegetarian and i said this is delicious it's
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  been you know wagyu beef and things like this but then i poured sand over it
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  you wouldn't eat it you wouldn't even go near it you wouldn't even try and wash
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  the sand off and that's the same with,
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  herbivores if the silica in there it's not as nice to eat so that kind of texture
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  here we're talking about. It's not just a physical defense either.
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  Silicon has been shown to boost tolerance to environmental stresses,
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  or as we call them, abiotic stresses.
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  This means heat waves, drought, ozone.
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  Plant's cell is just a lot more resistant
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  to stresses because silicon is building up in
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  the cell walls making it like glass so calcium
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  and silicon are really important for cell wall
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  strength okay so silicon is protective not
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  just curative you don't put it on as a curative thing
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  when your plants go problem so don't wait until your plant's under attack
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  it's too late you need to apply it before it attracts and
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  plants absorb silicon as silicic acid
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  and you may have heard of monosilicic acid
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  and next week episode is going to
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  sort of blow the lid on what monosilicic acid
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  is and what products contain them or which ones don't
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  and you'll be surprised so once the
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  the plant has absorbed the silicic acid and it's.
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  Moved it around its plants systemically in the
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  xylem then it forms structures
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  in the plant called phytoliths and these
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  phytoliths are unappetizing to pests and they
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  will dull your pruning tools they're that strong so
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  especially if you're pruning bamboo now phytolith
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  sounds technical and scientific phyto means
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  plant and lith means rock so basically plant rocks so
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  specialist cells okay so not all
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  plants are equal it's worth noting that monocots grasses cereals
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  they're high accumulators and dicots broadleaf plants
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  like tomatoes beans hemp legal cannabis
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  generally aren't but some of them can be so if i was growing any sort of monocots
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  a grass or a cereal then i would be supplemented with silicon okay so silicon
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  is abundant in most soils and but it's it's bioavailable form silicic acid can be scarce.
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  Now that's especially true if you're not using soil. So if you're using cocoa
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  or peat or rockwool, there may not be soluble silicic acid in there.
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  So that's where other additives come in.
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  So you may have heard of potassium silica that provides potassium and silicon.
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  And you'll often read that potassium is really good for plant defence.
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  It makes the plant's resilience to stress. and.
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  I believe that's probably because naturally the.
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  Potassium is linked to silicon it's not the potassium that's doing that defensive
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  work it's the silicon that it goes in the anion
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  to the cation so potassium is positively charged
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  silica is negatively charged and we're
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  going to talk about potassium silicate much more next week because it's
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  an alkaline product so there are and it's a product with a
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  fairly high electrical conductivity so from both
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  the ph and an ec perspective you
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  have to be careful certainly worth saying here avoid any
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  silicon soluble silicon product that contains sodium those will
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  increase the soil salinity and hurt your plants much more than
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  they help quickest way to kill your plants is put sodium
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  on them sodium silica is is
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  what's also referred to as liquid glass but potassium silica
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  is also referred to as liquid glass it's a very very cheap
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  form of silicon i think
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  the only use i've heard of it's you being used in
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  with plants is like putting on
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  the soil to stop it from actually prevent drainage
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  and increase soil strength when
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  there's been like a nuclear meltdown
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  in like fukushima in japan they used a lot of silicon
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  then to stop it getting into certain waterways and things like that normally
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  you would never go near it so we said horsetails also contain a lot of silicon
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  and you can actually extract silicon from horsetails and horsetails were traditionally
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  used as like scouring brushes for cleaning pots and pans they contain that much silicon.
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  So in horsetails, it's considered an essential nutrient.
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  It's important to note that for most plants, silicon is not considered an essential
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  nutrient because plants will live and survive and reproduce without it.
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  They may not be as tolerant to stresses and pests and diseases,
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  but they can live without it.
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  So it's not considered essential. It's just a desirable, a highly desirable one.
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  And if I was growing hydroponically, I would always add silicon.
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  There's no reason not to. it's not it's not
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  stupidly expensive and it's always going to
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  be positive okay so you there are ways
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  of you can use in the soil obviously
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  loan based medias will be naturally high in silicon if you
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  you were using a bamboo shoot mulch or something
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  like that grass first grass cuttings and
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  things like that but normally you're going to be using a silicon fertilizer it's important
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  to know that most silicon fertilizers
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  won't be classified for use on organic crops i think at utrema we've got the
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  only organically not organically certified but an organically approved silicon
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  fertilizer called c silica so that can be used in the uk and the eu on organic crops.
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  It's that's basically its only benefit it's not super duper silicon it's not
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  better than anyone else's silicon it's just an organically certified one because
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  we we we know the the rules and the regulations of what we need to do to produce
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  a silicon-based product that
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  is organically certifiable and can be used in organic sustainable systems,
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  Another great use of silicon is that it doesn't just stop bugs and stresses,
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  it actually binds toxic pollutants inside the plant cells, shielding them from
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  metabolic processes and shielding them from damaging the plant.
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  So that's a really good use of heavy metals. It can really stop the plants being
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  dying or being poisoned by heavy metals.
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  So fantastic use of silicon there, binds them
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  in that of solid glass phytolith one
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  cell structure that contains a lot of silicon is trichomes so
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  if you're looking to produce a crop that is very high in
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  trichomes and the terpenes and
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  terpenoids that are very high found in
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  the in the trichomes then you'll need
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  to make sure there's good silicon nutrition there as well so silicon
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  it might not grab the headlines like
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  nitrogen phosphorus does but in the right systems and
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  the right plants it can be a total game changer strengthening your
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  cell walls deterring pests boosting stress
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  resistance and massively increasing your trichome
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  content and structure and and size so if
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  you're growing a plant that struggles in hydroponics because there's
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  no silicon naturally in the growing media or in any of
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  the base fertilizers that's an important point to note
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  none of the base fertilizers will contain silicon then always
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  look to add a silicon additive and we'll
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  go through all the options for that next week it's important
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  to know that no matter which silicon additive you use gold
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  leaf as it's called in north america or liquid gold
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  as it's known in the uk will always be your go-to fertilizer that i would choose
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  because it's ph perfect it corrects the ph so if you added potassium silicate
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  products that were very high in ph you don't need to worry about the ph being dragged up because.
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  Gold leaf just drags it back down to the sweet spot and
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  the same for any acidic products you were
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  going to gold leaf will just drag it drag it back up
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  to the sweet spot because that's the buffering
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  technology that's ingrained in the product so silicon fantastic
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  additive to use i would always add a silicon especially early
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  on in veg and probably all the way through to harvest i wouldn't
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  massively overdose it never overdose on silicon because it
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  will increase the ec value if you're not careful and
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  then you can be in a world of pain and get more stress so
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  always follow the manufacturer's description
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  and never go above that don't do that for any fertilizer unless you
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  know it's weak as piss really okay so that's been hydroponics daily for today
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  if you found this useful share it with a friend and share with your friends
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  so they're following ready for next week when we blow the lid off silicon fertilizers
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  and the claims they make should be a good one okay thank you very much for listening
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  until tomorrow that's been hydroponics daily.