Cannabis Chronicles

EARTH JUICE CATALYST .03-.01-.10

Earth Juice Catalyst isn’t a “stand alone” fertilizer, rather it’s intended to be a compliment to their Grow and Bloom products. There was a sudden proliferation of “carbo-load” and similar products released for use by gardeners a few years back, and while EJ Catalyst has been around a bit longer than some of it’s competitors, it generally falls into the same category.

For some odd reason, we’re not exactly sure why, the Canadian Government requires this product to be labeled as “Xatalyst”. Whatever it happens to be called where you live, if you’ve run across the “3LB Molasses Manual”, you may already know the biggest “secret” to this product. the sweet sticky goodness of molasses.Here’s Earth Juice’s own description of EJ Catalyst:

CATALYST: (XATALYST in Canada) A premium organic additive that encourages compact branching, stimulates optimal fruiting sites, and triggers early yields. Conditions soils and hydroponic solutions for better nutrient availability. Best to use in conjunction with other NPK fertilizers.

Now, here’s the complete ingredient list for Earth Juice Catalyst:

oat bran
kelp
wheat malt
molasses
yeast

The primary purpose of the molasses in EJ Catalyst is to feed soil microbes and fungi. Just as consuming sugars can provide quick energy for your body and fuel your metabolism, the sugar in EJ Catalyst provides energy for microscopic soil life. The “soil food web”, as it’s been called, after being energized by the sugars in molasses, can more easily metabolize soil nutrients and make them more quickly available to our plants. Molasses also acts as a chelating agent to make micronutrients more available to plants.

While we often use Blackstrap molasses as a more economical substitute for Earth Juice Catalyst, it should be noted that Molasses isn’t a totally complete replacement. Those extra organic goodies in Catalyst, things like yeast, wheat malt, and oat bran, really are “icing on the cake”.

It’s our current understanding that the yeast in Catalyst will help increase the soil’s bio-activity, and Tom Hill tells us they can help tie up, or “complex”, a good deal of the sodium found in some water sources, rendering the salt less harmful to plants. The wheat malt, oat bran, and kelp, all provide their own side benefits, making this a very nice plant food additive.

We usually use EJ Catalyst fairly sparingly, adding perhaps a teaspoon of Catalyst per gallon of water. One complete EJ recipe we commonly used a while back, based on mixing a variety of Earth Juice ingredients into 4 gallons of water, included one tablespoon of Catalyst, a mixing rate of slightly less than a teaspoon per gallon. While it’s not as economical as Molasses, it’s still fairly inexpensive as an additive, since such moderate doses are required.