Cannabis Chronicles

Miscellaneous Earth Juice Info

Here are some final thoughts and notes on Earth Juice from a bird’s eye perspective.

In theory there’s no need to “flush” organic soil grown herbs before harvest. And, because organic fertilizers are not salt based like chemical fertilizers, traditional techniques for “flushing” wouldn’t carry away nutrient salts in the traditional meaning of the word “flush” anyway.

That creates a danger with organic fertilizers that doesn’t exist with salt based chemical fertilizers. With salt fertilizers over-fertilizing can be pretty severe, but it will show up fairly quickly, and the solution (a good flushing) can be enacted pretty quickly too.

It’s probably harder for a grower to over-fertilize using organic fertilizers, but if they do, there’s no quick solution. Organic fertilizers usually can’t be flushed away like salt fertilizer’s can, so if a grower over-fertilizes, they will likely have to live with the consequences for a longer term.

And, when it comes to harvest time, we do go ahead and put our organic herbs on a “crash” diet. In the past it’s just been pure water for the last two weeks, but lately we’ve been experimenting with adding Fulvic Acid while watering during the second week before harvest, before switching to plain water the final week. This technique really seems to bring out the fullest potential of our babes, but the wonders of Humic Acid and Fulvic Acid are deserving of their own discussion at another time.

Before we finish our initial discussion of Earth Juice Fertilizers, we need to also touch on the practice of premixing and bubbling Earth Juice fertilizers. We gotten a lot of questions on this topic in private, so may as well discuss it here and avoid having to type the same information time and time again.

This is the most common question we hear . . .

“Is it absolutely necessary to pre-mix and bubble / aerate Earth Juice fertilizers before use ?“
Our simple answer is no it’s not necessary at all. But, it should also be said that Earth Juice will be more efficiently and effectively used if “brewed” for 24-48 hours before use.

In organic farming the old adage is “feed the soil not the plant”, and making your Earth Juice fert mix into an aerated tea really maximizes the benefits it can provide for your plants. But, should you decide not to go to the bother, they will work very well if used without any premixing or bubbling.

We should also add that if you do not care to go to the bother of premixing and aerating your Earth Juice, that you use the fertilizers in smaller / lighter proportions than can be applied with an aerated Earth Juice tea.

We also hear this question a lot . . .

“What about the low pH of those Earth Juice fertilizers? - Will that low pH harm my plants?”
And our simple answer is that there’s likely little concern about that issue unless you are using a growing medium is already abnormally acidic. As long as your growing medium is properly buffered with lime and/or dolomite lime, we’ve never experienced any problems or issues with pH when using Earth Juice.

It’s probably worth adding that the pre-mixing and bubbling/aerating we talked about in the prior question will moderate the pH of an Earth Juice mix to an extent. That’s probably one factor behind why aerated teas can be made more strongly.

Our experience with Earth Juice in everything from 3 gallon pots to 30 gallon beds indoors is that a good soil mix with a healthy microbe population will moderate it’s own pH to a great extent The calcite and dolomite lime use commonly in soil mixes will do some of the work as well, so we’ve never had any actual plant problems with pH in our Earth Juice experience.

from time to time we hear the following question. . .

“What’s the shelf life on these ferts?”
When storing darn near any organic garden product, we believe it’s best to avoid exposing them to extremes of heat or cold, but, other than that, Earth Juice ferts seem to require little special handling or care. We’ve had them on our growroom shelf for at least a couple years, with no noticable loss of quality.

The Grow and Bloom formulas are the only ones we can imagine degrading much in quality over time. EJ Grow has the consistency of thin mud, and after extended periods of storage we’d imagine that it’s cocktail of organic goodies would degrade some in quality, but we’ve never actually observed any problems first hand. And that’s been true even with bottles that were three of four years old.

As we stated before, EJ Bloom seems particulalry prone to having it’s heavier contents settle out, but after a good stir, it still seems to perform fine too. On the other had, even after an extended period of time, we’d have relatively little concern about age effecting the quality of Meta-K or Microblast. The components of those particular products are primarily sourced from mined minerals, so even extendedstorage should have no significant effects on their performance.

And finally we also get asked . . .

“Can I get by with just Bloom and Grow and not have to go to the expense of the other products?”
And the simple answer is yes of course you can. Catalyst is a molasses based product so the substitution of cheap and easily available Blackstrap molasses will be almost as good as the real thing. And, although we prefer to use Microblast and Meta-K a few times during a plant’s life, we’ve certainly had great grows without them too. So we cant’s call them essential, but they sure can be handy!

And, we should also add that not having those extra ingredients available can make your life much more difficult if something does go wrong. Having a sufficient source of Potassium is a major factor in a plant’s ability to withstand the heat stresses inherent in many indoor grow rooms, so we like to use a bit of Meta-K from time to time.

Micronutrient deficiencies can be hard to diagnose and treat without a “full range” micronutrient fertilizer like Microblast, so it’s pretty essential as well. Maxicrop kelp concentrate is the only other alternative we know of that’s anywhere close to being as effective at treating a shortage of potassium and trace minerals. Whether it’s absolutely necessary or not, many growers prefer to avoid using strong kelp products during the later stages of flowering due to the presence of growth hormones in seaweed extracts.