Silicon, silica, sylicic acid...What is it?

  • Thread starter TheMaverickFarmer
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Peat_Phreak

Peat_Phreak

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Agree with the previous comment. Flexible branches in the beginning. Rubbery. Then they harden later in the grow and keep the LST shape when released from tension.
 
testiclees

testiclees

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Hi TMF thanx for the info.

So I'm wondering what your opinion is about this product and their statement about OSA/MSA. This is my silica treatment of the month atm :).

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What kind of silica is in Silica Gold?
"Silica Gold is derived from two sources of silicon. It contains both organo-silicates from plant extracts and potassium silicate that we micro-chelate with organic acids to create an ultra bio-available formula. The most important part of Silica Gold is the benefit of these two sources. Organo-silicates can absorb immediately and are the organic-acid chelated potassium silicate takes anywhere from 1-10 days to uptake. The combo is a steady flow of silicon for your plants."

Why is Silica Gold not made of orthosilicic acid?
"Orthosilicic acid or monosilicic acid is a very interesting topic, and we get a lot of questions about it. We engineered Silica Gold to not be made of this form of silicon on purpose, here are a few reasons you might want to consider when looking at OSA or MSA sources: 1. Orthosilicic acid can only exist in .0012% concentrations when at room temperature before changing forms and turning into a gel, which means when you buy a liquid OSA you are actually getting almost zero silicon. Silica Gold has 2500% more silica per liter than OSA or MSA products. 2. Orthosilicic acid can only exist at very low pH range. When you add it to your reservoir or your plants roots at a more normal pH of 5.5-6.5, it immediately begins to break down into non-bioavailable silicones. For this reason one of the best uses for something like orthosilicic acid is to foliar spray it, because it can absorb quickly and doesn't have time to break down at higher pH ranges."


Sales chatter or another good option? After trying a few other forms of silica I kinda gave up on MSA now after stumbling on this product and have basically just started using it on my seedlings and am going to use it up to mid flower on them.
I think the tps products are effective. Ive been using signal and started on their silica product last week. I had been using grow-sil but silica gold appears to be an upgrade.
 
shaganja

shaganja

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If you are using a living soil then rice hull as a soil amendment will give you some silica as it breaks down. Dry weight of rice hull is 25% silcia but it takes a full year to break down completely in warm moist soil but it begins the process of breaking down within a few months. With a long veg, much of the rice hull will be turned over by microbes an consumed by the plant. Rice Hull Ash is a quick remedy as @sambapati said.
And if you wanna give em another shot besides the hulls, is horsetail. It grows all over the u.s. you can let it compost and use it later, or make a juice with it, and use it quicker.
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Masonsdad15

Masonsdad15

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You aren't looking hard enough.
OK. Please enlighten me my friend. Show me a company that uses soil and Epson salts (doesn't really have to be that exactly, you know what I mean 😆) that is large scale .... and I'll leave it at that. Was gonna say successful but who's to say what parameters that entails exactly. Lol. Maybe they like losing money and having slow laborious turn overs. Who am I to say if thats what they want. Haha. No but really. What do you mean cause I have looked. By looked I mean watched youtube videos while trimming for countless hours a week. Lol. Ahh good ole 2020 researching. So simple. That's a joke on me btw.
 
RootsRuler

RootsRuler

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OK. Please enlighten me my friend. Show me a company that uses soil and Epson salts (doesn't really have to be that exactly, you know what I mean 😆) that is large scale .... and I'll leave it at that. Was gonna say successful but who's to say what parameters that entails exactly. Lol. Maybe they like losing money and having slow laborious turn overs. Who am I to say if thats what they want. Haha. No but really. What do you mean cause I have looked. By looked I mean watched youtube videos while trimming for countless hours a week. Lol. Ahh good ole 2020 researching. So simple. That's a joke on me btw.
Gotta Agree. In my personal and anecdotal experience none of the pro growers I worked for used epsom salts. Usually, they'd just get a tote of cal/mag and water it down into the crop.
 
ninjadip

ninjadip

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Has anyone here used Mono-silicic acid versus tps gold in two different grows? I have been reading and rereading all the threads on silica here and I can get behind the science on Mono-silicic acid being a more readily available form, but tps gold claims about its instability are interesting...

I am doing hydro and want to introduce this in the next grow, I already pulled the trigger on a bottle of MSA Stout, but Amazon returns are easy.
 
simonkay

simonkay

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Damn guess i shouldn't of brought silica blast as its potass based, still though ive been using as a foliar for weeks so will see how it turns out
 
shaganja

shaganja

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263
Gotta Agree. In my personal and anecdotal experience none of the pro growers I worked for used epsom salts. Usually, they'd just get a tote of cal/mag and water it down into the crop.
Wheelhouse in detour michigan. We get jacks, and make a big 60 gallon barrel of it, and use it in our 2000 gallon nutrient tank. Just started couple weeks ago, for the push.
 
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