Horsetail Fern - Cottage 420's Organic Perpetual Indoor Garden

bobrown14;3694362 said:

Here's a little info bomb on HorseTail Fern and what it brings to the table:


Horsetail Fern "Equisetum hyemale"

Horsetail Ferns contains Silica at 60,000 - 97,000 ppm

Here's a few other benefits from this plant material:

Silicic Acid - 80,000 ppm (rooting agent)
Phosphorus - 14,762 ppm
Calcium - 24,000
Magnesium - 4,730 PPM

NOTE: ratio of Calcium:Magnesium (a little higher than 5:1)

The biggest benefit = Carbohydrates - 737,000 ppm

Ever since I've been incorporating Horsetail Fern tea into my soil regime and IPM routine... NO PM/Mold and plants even clones of the same plants are much larger and yields have gone up since my plans are larger. Also pests and incidence of infestations of mites has gone down quite a bit as well. Still get mites from time to time but they never really get a very good grip and are mainly isolated to a few branches, then I wipe them out with Spinosad and neem.

Silica from Horsetail Ferns and Pro-Tekt are taken up by the plant and the plant actually builds a layer of Si in the plants protective layer (cuticle) that is the waxy layer on the leafs epidermis (skin).

Quoted from a study on the effects of Silicon and plants:

Link:
Probing the mechanisms of silicon-mediated pathogen resistance

"the enhanced resistance is associated with the higher deposit of silicon in leaf so as to form physical barrier to impede pathogen penetration and the activation of host defense response.

Since Si was found to control plant disease, physical barrier was traditionally used to explain its role in enhancing pathogen resistance. Si can accumulate and deposit beneath the cuticle to form a cuticle-Si double layer and thereby interfere with pathogen's penetration through mechanical barrier."

And there's more .... in that article linked above.

Click to expand...