Cannabis Chronicles

EARTH JUICE META-K 0-0-10

Like Catalyst, which we just covered, Earth Juice Meta-K is also not specifically intended to be a “stand-alone” fertilizer, instead, it is used as an additive to EJ Grow and EJ Bloom. We’ve also found it helpful in acting as a potassium supplement for the garden when using other fertilizers too. It’s especially handy when fertilizing with teas made from bat and seabird guano, which have little or no significant Potassium. Meta-K also provides a simple and easy way to give plants a bit more sulfur too, if they happen to be craving that element, we’ll come back and explore that point more in a moment.

Similar to Catalyst in another way, this isn’t a product that would qualify as essential in every garden, but it sure can be handy to have available in the budding herbalist’s arsenal. At it’s essence, this is really just a simple Potassium additive, nothing more, nothing less. But as with most Earth Juice products, it does have some qualities that set it apart from the rest of the pack, at least in our opinion.Here’s the company’s own description of Meta-K.

META-K: A natural potassium-based formulation for maturing, fruiting, and flowering plants that require more potassium. Increase use prior to and during flowering/fruiting to improve the plant’s ability to support greater yields, build heat and drought tolerances, and to maximize nutrient assimilation.

Unlike the rest of it’s brethren in the Earth Juice lineup, Meta-K isn’t blended together from a wide variety of organic goodies, instead it has a single ingredient:

sulfate of potash

It sounds simple, but there’s actually a more than subtle difference between the potassium that Meta-K delivers, and what’s provided in some other Potassium boosting supplements. Some other Potassium boosters we’ve seen are actually based on Potassium Chloride, rather than Potassium Sulfate. In our eyes this makes all the difference. If you stop to think about it for a moment, Chlorine isn’t an element that’s friendly to living things, it’s used to sterilize swimming pools and the like. We advocate building a thriving “micro-herd” of bacteria and fungi to help nourish our plants, and it just doesn’t make any sense from a chemical standpoint to then turn around and add a Chlorine based fertilizer.

The use of Potassium Sulfate is actually even more significant in our minds than it would first appear, avoiding Chlorine containing fertilizers is certainly important enough on it’s own, but the addition of Sulfur provides another essential element that’s often overlooked to an extent in indoor gardening. In the end, Meta-K does have a good measure of Sulfur in addition to Potassium, and both are essential element for plant growth. While there’s currently some debate to be found over that effect Sulfur may have on fungal activity in the soil, we’ve never observed light to moderate usage of Meta-K to have a negative impact on fungal activity in our soil or compost bin.

We normally used Meta-K fairly sparingly, generally applying it at a rate of 1 teaspoon per gallon or less. And, Meta-K is not an additive that we consider to be essential for use with every feeding, instead we use it at infrequent intervals much as we also use EJ Microblast. Meta-K is very useful to give an extra boost of Potassium when necessary for optimum growth, and the fact that it’s not derived from Potassium Chloride is a big plus in our eyes.

Many organic fertilizers run a little “lean” on Potassium, especially guano based products. Earth Juice Grow and Bloom formulas will generally work pretty well on their own, but the occasional addition of Meta-K seems to really make plants thrive. EJ Meta-K gives us a way to add Potassium in controlled amounts, only as needed, and that’s pretty useful in our eyes.