Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome back to Water Week here on the Epic Gardening

podcast. Now today I'm going to talk about hydrojels or water-retaining crystals,

water retaining granules.

There's a lot of different names for these products.

But the question we're going to discuss here

is, are they safe to use?

What are they, really, and how do they work and this question really was spurred on by my

good friend Callin Jones who is an epic gardening reader he helps out a lot on the

Epic Gardening Facebook group so thanks for that Callin and and this is gonna be a little gardening these are basically a water retaining gel or crystal that will swell to many

different times their size. They're called root watering crystals, they're called

water retention granules, so they will swell two to five times

their original size, sometimes even more,

when water is added to them.

So then water is then released slowly

into the surrounding soil,

which ideally reduces the need for irrigation.

So you can see the whole purpose of these.

They're sort of like water storage banks that fix the water retention problems that go on in your soil.

So a lot of people have used these.

I think a lot of landscape architects or landscapers

will use these because they want quick fixes, right? And so what are they made of that's that's the first question to talk about there polymers right of acrylamide and potassium acrylate they have a long life perhaps up to about five years or so, compared to some of the organic

hydrojels on the market. Those ones are made out of agar. They're made out of gelatin, they're made out of starch.

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