Author: Aqua Gardening
Date: 11 April 2023

Chris Talks - Why you should add Silica to your regime

G'day it's Chris from Aqua Gardening, I want to speak to you about why you should add silica to your hydroponic feed regime for your plants.

What does silica do for the garden?

Silica helps your plants grow stronger cell walls which means it helps support heavier flowering and helps support resistance against diseases and pests. Basically overall there'll be a stronger stronger literally a 'sturdier stalk' and stronger more water drought resistant, pest resistant flowers and leaves and it'll help resilience all round of your plants.

Why do you have to add silica to a hydroponic regime?

So you need to add silica because it's not always there in the A and B part nutrients that you add to your feed reservoir. Basically silica comes as like the the third link in some brands they call it the "third link" to your nutrient feed and yeah because it's not there in the A and the B nutrient you probably need to add it somewhere otherwise your plants won't be as strong as and as healthy.

How do I add silica to my gardening regime?

so most of the silica Brands say that you add the silica into the reservoir as like the third part of a nutrient feed schedule or in the minute amounts that some of the orthosilicic and the monosilistic acid come in even some of the potassium silicates are highly concentrated so you don't need to add very much of them you need to add them at the right times in some cases because they are so concentrated they can cause the water to Cloud up and some of the minerals drop out of solution however the monosilistics and the orthosilicic acids are a lot easier to add minute amounts and they don't Cloud up the water or adjust the pH as far as some of the others do now you can also get great benefits by Folia feeding these these potassium silicate and also monosilicic acids as well and you only need to use very small amounts as per the directions on the bottle and you can use that along with the other nutrient that your foliate feeding your plants with at the same time with no dramas whatsoever

Is there any particular time in a plant's life that you should add silica? or is it throughout the whole life of it?

you can you can add silica to plants uh in all stages of their growth however in the early stages it's not really going to be apparent how much it's adding to the plant's growth probably from like the third week of growth up so like small seedling stage upwards from there and it's the most it's going to pay off the biggest in the flowering stage of plants or when the plants are growing at their maximum level and I'm flowering at their maximum level

What's the difference between potassium silicate and monosilicic acid?

so the the monosilicic acids and the orthosolic salicylic acids are a little bit easier to add to your nutrient Reservoir or the folio feed they mix a little bit better but saying that this the the form of Bud link is a silica that's very easy to add as well and the other ones are usually watered down to a level to make it very easy to add however you'll have a stronger faster response from these newer technology orthocytic and monosolic acids it's more readily available for the plants to absorb and show results faster

Do you have any hot tips on how to use or how to add silica to your regime?

yeah so it depends on your tap water how the silica additives are going to affect your pH sometimes you might need to PH down after adding them because they push your pH Up so that's going to depend on your tap water and your nutrient blend that you're using when foliar feeding you can add many of these silica products very easily without any dramas and that's going to be the fastest most instant results the orthosolic acids come in this Invasion Osa and the grow genius is a monosilic acid the others use forms of potassium silicate to deliver the silica to plants so that would be the sturdy stalker facilitor the bud link and the AG that AG silt

and that's it that's it thanks for watching this little video about silica if you've got any questions feel free to hit us up on the regular chat channels or give us a call otherwise these products are available on our website to browse and find out more about thanks for watching

 

Browse Additive Range

See more on Grow Genius here

See more on Aptus Fasilitor here

See more on Emerald Harvest Sturdy Stalk here

See more on Invasion OSA here

See more on Emerald OGS AGSIL here

See more on Hygen's Budlink here