Go into your grow room or garden and take a glance at your cannabis plants. See those green specimens before you? They’re loaded with silica! of course, they contain more silica than they are doing essential macronutrients like nitrogen and potassium.
Yet, unlike these two nutrients, plants don’t depend upon silica to function. So why do they hoard most of the stuff?
It seems silica can do a cannabis plant a world of excellent. Although they don’t need it, it can certainly increase their chances of survival, and potentially even the standard of their flowers.
Overall, silica offers many benefits to cannabis growers. Before we dive into more detail in a while, try the most benefits of using silica for your crop below:
- Increases cell membrane strength
- Improves nutrient uptake
- Protects plants from soil contamination
- Enhances plant metabolism
- Defends plants against disease
- Helps to keep off pests
What Is Silica?
Silica, also called oxide, occurs all throughout nature, and no folks would be alive without it. Second, only oxygen makes up 59% of the Earth’s crust. On the cosmic scale, it holds the 8th position because of the most typical element within the universe.
Silica also occurs in 95% of known rocks, and shows up in three main crystalline varieties, including quartz. on every occasion you opt for a stroll on the beach, you create contact with silica with every step, like it, alongside oxygen, works to make sand.
Finally, the molecule plays a fundamental role in our own bodies. It helps to make collagen, which matches on to create tissues like cartilage, bone, tendons, teeth, hair, and blood vessels.
Are Silica and Silicon the Same?
No, but they’re very close. Silicon occurs on the table, with the symbol Si, as an element within the same column as carbon, germanium, tin, and lead. it’s a tough crystalline solid and possesses a blue-grey metallic sheen.
However, silicon can only remain in its pure form aloof from the presence of oxygen. When silicon and oxygen meet, they form a compound referred to as silica.
How is Silica created?
The huge quantities of oxygen and silicon within the Earth’s crust lead to the inevitable formation of big quantities of silica. The matter occurs when one silicon atom forms a bond with two oxygen atoms. When enough of those compounds join together within the Earth’s crust and soil, they form a colorless crystalline compound found mainly within the varieties of quartz, sand, and flint.
Why Use Silica for Cannabis Growing?
Now that you just know a touch more about silica, why must you use it during your next cannabis-growing operation? Well, it with great care happens that silica offers a bunch of advantages to weed plants. It can help them grow stronger, increase their defenses against fungal pathogens, deter nibbling pests, and even boost yields in environments with poor-quality soil.
Let’s explore the advantages of silica in both soil and hydroponic cannabis grows.
Soil Growing
Silica can help protect soil-grown plants against external threats, and will even boost plant productivity. As a living substrate, soil contains innumerable microbes. While a number of these tiny critters are beneficial to weed plants, others can cause problems. And silica may have the answers. The chemical can even help to shield plants against toxins that accumulate in the soil thanks to human activities.
Increases cell membrane Strength
Silica helps to strengthen cell walls, which supplies plants with more resistance to mechanical and osmotic stress (the movement of water across the cell membrane).
Have you ever felt a sinking when approaching your outdoor weed plants, only to determine branches and stems snapped by the wind or the burden of a bird? Adding more silica to the soil can help to guard against these threats by increasing strength and resilience.
Stronger and thicker cell walls also end in thicker stems and branches. This increased size allows plants to distribute essential substances like water and nutrients far more easily throughout their tissues.
Improves Nutrient Uptake
Silica helps plants absorb key nutrients rather more efficiently. Not only does it help plants thrive in healthy soil, but it can help them survive during a growing medium largely depleted of minerals. Adding silica to poor soils can help your plants’ roots tap into the low levels of nutrients present, increasing the possibilities of a rewarding yield at the tip of the growing cycle.
In particular, silica plays a fundamental role within the uptake of three vital nutrients:
N
Nitrogen
Cannabis plants rely on large quantities of this macronutrient to photosynthesize and fuel leafy growth.
K
Phosphorus
Weed plants also require potassium in large quantities. very similar to silica, this mineral helps to take care of the structure of cell walls, protect plants against mechanical stress, and forestall them from wilting.
Mg
Magnesium
This important mineral makes up the center of the chlorophyll molecule, the chemical that permits plants to convert sunlight into energy. Low levels lead to stunted growth and poor yields
Protects Plants From Soil Contamination
The unchecked act has had an outsized impact on our home planet over the previous few centuries. yet as slowly eroding the topsoil with our questionable agricultural practices, we’ve also contaminated these life-giving substrates with a bunch of pollutants, including heavy metals.
Heavy metals like chromium, lead, aluminum, and mercury are toxic to plants, even at very low concentrations. They impact plants in numerous ways, including by inhibiting photosynthesis, causing yellowing of leaves, preventing the uptake of nutrients, and even killing plants outright.
Fortunately, silica can help protect cannabis plants against these culprits. Ideally, growers should test their substrates and avoid growing in these soils altogether. However, if they happen to be present, silica can minimize the damage.
Researchers have explored the results of silica against heavy metal toxicity in plants. After reviewing a series of experiments involving the chemical, they concluded that it works to cut back the bioavailability of heavy metals within the soil and their uptake in plants.
Protects Plants From Soil Contamination
Silica can help to drive plant metabolism, which ultimately results in more ascent and more efficient energy production. Plants given silica manage to form higher levels of chlorophyll, which enables them to photosynthesize and build sugars at a superior rate.
Defends Plants Against Disease
Fungal diseases and parasites, like Pythium and mildew, can wreak havoc on a cannabis crop. Thankfully, feeding your plants silica can help to shield them against these potentially devastating conditions.
Plants are able to concentrate high levels of silica around infected areas, which helps to fortify vulnerable spots against infection. By forming a solid mineral barrier, plants effectively create a wall that will protect against the penetration of fungal hyphae (tiny threads that they use to move nutrients).
Helps To thrust back Pests
Microbes aren’t the sole life forms in nature with an affinity for fresh cannabis tissue. many various insect species like to chow down on cannabis leaves and flowers. Silica also does a good job of repelling grazing bugs and flies.
Silica defends plants against herbivorous insects in a very similar thanks to microbes. The substance builds up within the cell walls of leaves and creates a hardened barrier. This prevents critters from biting, sucking, and burrowing into leaves.
Hydroponics
Hydroponic growers may also have the benefit of the various advantages of silica mentioned above. Free from the soil, hydroponic plants extend their roots directly into an aqueous nutrient solution. this offers them the advantage of immediate access to minerals and allows them to grow faster, often leading to larger yields.
Adding silica to your nutrient solution can help to accelerate already zoom, together with the added benefits of protecting plants against disease and ramping up chlorophyll levels.
Drying and Curing
Silica also comes in very handy after harvest. Silica packs work to soak up moisture and pull the surplus water content out of cannabis flowers. Place them among your buds while they’re drying, and within the identical jars as they’re curing, to cut back the number of your time it takes before you get to smoke your harvest.
Which Silica Supplement is that the Best for Cannabis?
There are two main forms of silica supplements on the market: nutrient formulas for roots, and foliar sprays. Growers are spoilt for choice when it involves silica supplements, but not all of them are equally effective.
We recommend choosing supplements with a silica concentration of a minimum of 8%. Not only will this drive more silica into the cells of your cannabis plants, but it’ll saturate the soil and increase the provision of the chemical to your roots. Some products contain as little as 3% silica, which could leave your plants hungry for more. Ideally, you want to use silica derived from monosilicic acid, like Xtreme Silica and Power SI. You can find more information on why this is important in our Power SI Bloom Review.
How To Use Silica in Cannabis Growing
Administering silica nutrient products is simple. Simply follow the instructions on the bottle to make sure you’re using the supplement correctly.
Soil Growing
Soil growers can use silica throughout the duration of the growing cycle. Although some suggest stopping use past the third week of the flowering stage, many growers use it successfully all the way through.
You also have to remain mindful of soil pH to urge the foremost out of your silica products. As an alkaline substance, the chemical will increase the pH of your soil, so you’ll have to use a pH meter and pH down solution if things get out of hand.
Finally, you’ll have to add silica cut loose other nutrients. Mixing them together will cause bioavailability issues. Apply silica to your soil on days you don’t usually feed your plants.
You can also apply silica liberally as a foliar spray. Use it in accordance with the merchandise instructions to fortify your leaves with a waxy coating. Silica applied via the leaves boasts high bioavailability due to the small stomata on the leaf surface.
Using silica in hydroponic setups remains a rather complicated challenge. Beginner growers might find it overly complicated, but intermediate and advanced hydro growers will happily make the sacrifice to reap the rewards of silica application.
Because you can’t apply silica alongside other nutrients, the supplement works best with a specifically rigged ebb and flow system. founded a further nutrient reservoir with a silica solution to make sure no other nutrients are present when bathing your roots with the supplement. Dilute your solution in step with the merchandise instructions.
Because your plants will receive silica from a separate solution, you won’t worry about the pH within your standard nutrient reservoir. Just confirm your silica solution stays above neutral to optimize absorption.
Drying and Curing
Boveda Humidity Packs makes using silica during drying and curing easier than ever before. This product harnesses the ability of silica and creates a two-way system that regulates moisture within curing jars. you’ll be able to also place them around your flowers during the drying process.
Use an 8g sachet for a tiny low personal sash, or a 67g sachet when curing larger amounts. Select the 58% or 62% sachet supported the number of moisture you would like your cured buds to keep up.
Each sachet also comes with a color-coded dot that shows users once they must swap out their sachet for a replacement one. When the dot turns from purple to blue, simply place a fresh sachet in your jars.
Using Silica To Grow Bigger Cannabis Buds
Silica is straightforward and effective thanks to getting the foremost out of your cannabis plants. it’ll help them obviate insects and pathogens, remain strong against harsh winds, and even protect them against heavy metals.
While every grower can have the benefit of silica, it doesn’t work as a cure. to create the foremost of the supplement, you would like to dial within the basics of watering, lighting, feeding, and training first.
That’s it for today guys. I hope this post was helpful, if you guys enjoyed it, please share it, it helps us out! As always leave a comment below so I can hear your thought on this!
