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Foliar Sprays - hype or hack? · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily and today we're talking about foliar sprays
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  and I'm going to go through all the benefits and then all the disadvantages
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  of foliar sprays because it's a highly controversial topic.
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  Everyone's got an opinion if you go into a grow shop about foliar sprays and
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  whether they're good and I've actually manufactured and we still do manufacture
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  a number of foliar sprays for other people.
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  It's not our bread and butter but it does mean we've got good knowledge of what's
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  in them and what they're good for.
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  And so I thought I'd go through the benefits as I see them and the disadvantages as I see them.
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  So let's do the benefits first. They're a great way of getting biostimulants
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  onto your plants and having an effect of biostimulation.
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  So seaweed extracts, really good at getting growth promoting.
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  Amino acids, they're a really good way of getting nitrogen and protein build up in your leaves.
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  Yucca extracts and other biostimulants that
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  are of plants like aloe really good way of getting biostimulants into
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  your plants first one second benefit it's
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  a really good way of getting micronutrients into your plants
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  if you've got a soil imbalance so if
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  the ph is too high or the plants are struggling just
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  to get enough iron maybe they really need a lot of iron then spraying
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  a foliar spray of iron is it quickly readdresses
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  that imbalance the iron doesn't get
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  locked up in the soil and the same for zinc and other
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  micronutrients so micronutrients really good if
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  you've got plants are struggling to get micronutrients you can
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  also replace lost calcium so if
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  your plants are outdoors and you've got
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  acid rain if you're in an environment where you're getting acid rain and you're
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  getting calcium deficiency then you can add that back in with a foliar spray
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  you could also put a silicon spray on to harden up cell walls with calcium and
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  silicon really good weight both good as root drenches but also can be applied as a foliar.
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  There is potential to modify the pH within the cells to control apical growth and things like that.
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  That's something we've looked at, but it's not something we can roll out into
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  grow rooms and hydroponic crops just yet.
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  They're looking at reducing stretch with folias.
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  We really want to launch a product to do that that's PGR-free,
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  but the technology's not right yet.
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  There's a disadvantage with it, which I'm going to go on to when it comes on
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  to the disadvantages of folias.
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  You can clean your house plants by putting a foliar spray on and getting the dust off them.
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  That's a really good way, just getting the dust off them. And then the final
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  really good advantage of just spraying your crops every now and again is that
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  you can see spider mite webs.
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  So red spider mites produce webs and then when you spray them with any solution,
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  the light catches them. It's a good way of finding out you've got spider mites.
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  And also it's just very therapeutic. It's one of those fun
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  jobs to do is spray your plants you know
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  you know it's just it's just a nice thing
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  to go around spraying spraying your crops the disadvantages are you can lose
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  all that foliar spray because it can just bounce off certain crops have very
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  waxy leaves or have hairs on have trichomes on them that the water droplets
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  will just bounce off so lupine plants they're Not waxy,
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  but they have a hair system on the leaf that just all solutions pretty much
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  just bounce off, straight off.
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  And you can't really tell that until you've actually tried spraying one.
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  So I used to think that I was going to spray an application onto brassicas.
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  Yeah, so it was cabbages, and I was going to do chitosan as a biofungicide.
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  And I thought, this has got no chance, because brassicas have got waxy leaves.
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  But it actually worked really well.
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  The chitosan was absorbed quickly. So you can never tell until you actually can apply it.
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  The other potential disadvantage is that you by
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  spraying liquid everywhere around your grow room or your greenhouse you
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  increase the humidity and you promote disease however that
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  might not be the case and in fact it's been found that just spraying any water-based
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  liquid onto your plants if they've got mildew is a good way of controlling mildew
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  because it causes all the spores to germinate so it's a double-edged sword that
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  and you but if you have got the disease if you have got mildew.
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  Then spraying is a really good way but if you haven't got mildew and
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  your plants are on the edge and they are susceptible you
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  might want to not put furlews on for that reason the
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  next disadvantage is that it can promote scorch so
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  especially if you're applying an npk product if
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  you're diluting a base nutrient and you're going on
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  with a really high dose rate and you're then sticking them those
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  plants under high light or high light intensity
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  from the sun if it's the summer then you can get scorch
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  and that's normally due to a macronutrient sulfur
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  calcium nitrogen phosphorus potassium their
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  magnesium these can all cause scorch
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  if you're not careful and certainly whenever we've
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  got any product with calcium and sulfur in we always say don't apply
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  it to lawns for example on really hot
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  sunny days because you can get scorch luckily in the
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  uk we get about one or two sunny days a
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  year so that's not really a problem so scorch is not a problem for
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  us unless we're in a grow room the other disadvantage
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  of a folia is that they you could be being
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  conned into buying a product that is just a diluted base
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  nutrient it's just mpk with a bit of preservative in there
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  and they can be expensive for what they are there is
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  a company that in the uk who who
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  make hydroponic fertilizers and
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  about 10 years ago i was selling them seaweed extract and
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  they were diluting it tenfold and selling it for what was equivalent of.
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  Like 60 pounds per liter and i put
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  the price up by 20p and they went crazy
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  and informed my ceo at
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  the time and it's like you need to sort russell out
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  this is outrageous he didn't inform
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  us there was going to be a price rise and they were just making an
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  absolute killing selling diluted seaweed extract they
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  weren't even preserving it properly they had bits floating in it it's still
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  sold to this day in growth shops uh that product i won't name it but yeah they
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  had a bit of a cheek doing that so um yeah be careful you're not just buying
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  diluted expensive base nutrients or just you know they find out what they are
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  and try and make your own really i suppose.
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  So yeah the rtu ready to use they're expensive for what they are.
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  Always avoid anything with copper in, cobalt, nickel.
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  I'd probably avoid anything with zinc in as well, because these,
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  if you inhale them, that's heavy metals you're going to be inhaling.
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  There are, as I said in previous episodes, there are products that are aimed
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  at hydroponic growers, some very popular products that contain copper.
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  And if you inhale them, then you'll be exposing yourself to heavy metals. So don't do that.
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  So they are the, so yeah, so when I was saying about the product
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  that could potentially reduce stretch that we've been experimenting with
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  in our grow rooms here the big problem was it was
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  it was just causing scorch on the leaves and so we
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  definitely couldn't release a product that did that so yeah the
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  pros and cons of foliar sprays if you can as
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  always if you if you know more than me or you've
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  got an extra added nugget of knowledge please email
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  me or dm me find me on all the socials for liquid gold gold leaf utreema and
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  i'd love to hear from you in the meantime make sure you're following hydroponics
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  daily to receive updates every day on hydroponics we've made it through to nearly
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  the end of march now i've really enjoyed this process.
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  And i reckon we can do it to the at least till the end
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  of the year and it's going to involve a lot more research because i chose the
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  easy easy wins the topics that i knew a lot about first and now i've actually
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  got to do some research on certain topics so yeah hard work starts now but thank
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  you very much for listening up until this point and see you tomorrow on hydroponics daily.