Hey organic soil growers… Recharge, thoughts?
Last grow I used Fish Sh!t samples given to me when I bought my tent. That’s gone so now I’m looking at Recharge for this grow. Holy smokes these products are EXPENSIVE. $40 for the smallest bag.
Is this my best/cheapest option?
I mean I’ve got forty bucks, I just don’t like feeling taken advantage of by a “Cannabis Specific” product if I don’t have to. Oh ftm, I’m growing in Happy Frog/FFOF soil & I top-dress dry ammendments.
Recharge is alright. It has microbes as well as molasses, humic acids, and kelp if I remember correctly. A small bag lasts a long time, you only need a teaspoon per gallon and use it once a week.
There are other options, but they are all in a similar price range. I’ve used Recharge, Fish Brew Bold, and EM1 as my microbe inoculate in the past. There’s also Fish Sh!t Rootwise Mycrobes Complete, Mammoth P, and Rootwise Biophos I can think of off the top of my head.
There are also as LABS, IMO and compost if you want to go the DIY route.
This sounds like upchuck fertilizer 
I currently make a side by side experiment with the expensive cannabis grow nutes and some for tomatoes. Same amount, 1/8 of the price. Depending on the outcome I’ll decide what to use to recharge the soil.
It will be in my grow log, you’ll see the outcome if you chime in now and then.
Greetz
I was going to type vermicompost, but thought the general compost term was better. I fixed the typo. 
I figured it was shorthand for vermicompost, but my brain made it into the other thing pretty quick
Another good product! I also like BioAg’s VAM. 
You’re easiest option would be JMS, the jadam style of diy microbes. It’s basically the same as extending EM-1, only you use wild microbes instead of em. It’s pretty much the same thing as any other liquid inoculant off a shelf except crazy amounts cheaper 
The tl;dr is mixing some kind of carb (like boiled potatoes or molasses) and some kind of inoculant (like leaf mold, compost, ewc, etc.), maybe a little extra microbe food like a pinch of sea salt, in some water and letting it sit anerobically for a few days until it’s bubbling at its strongest, aka when it’s the most “alive”.
You can do this in a 5 gal bucket if you want to do a whole garden or just do it in a 12oz water bottle if you only have a few plants. That’s what EM drinkers do - mix up a water bottle, sit it by a windowsill (encourages PNSB) and burp it until it’s good to use.
There’s a lot of good products I’d recommend that are worth the money, Recharge is one, so are the Bio-Ag TM-7 and Cytoplus, and then there’s this one that people say is identical to Recharge but they haven’t been jacking the price like Real Growers has lately. With code FIRSTFIVE for $5 off, this is probably your cheapest option to try:
You could also stretch your product, whether Recharge or this, by brewing it with an airstone in a bucket for 24 hours, maybe with a little compost or EWC,that’ll help the little beasties reproduce and you’ll get more bang for your buck.
No, recharge is not necessary. All that is necessary is water and base nutrients with balanced micronutrients. Mycos is inexpensive and has been proven to assist in growing the largest plants possible…even if its being used to grow the world’s largest giant pumpkins get advertised the most
Here’s a good source in Southern Ontario…
https://blackswallowsoil.com/product/endomycorrhizal-inoculant-625
Cheers
G
To be Honest that’s a lot of money these days.I’ve been recharging my own soils with plain old DR Earth Veg and they even inoculate it with microbes now so I mean a bag of the stuff is like 15$ at the most and it has lasted me almost a year now it will last you forever it’s pretty Hot shit so a little goes a long way.Just mix a little less than the dose calls for and let it sit in a plastic tote with the dirt you want to recycle for 2 weeks then your back in thr saddle.I don’t ever have nute issue’s anymore either now I do this.
This is another one I’d recommend for an inexpensive and easily available product, they have this at garden stores and Walmart or Lowes for $10-15, Espoma has a couple different mixes with their Myco-Tone mix of endo- and ecto-mycos plus bacillus and some humic added. Great company, been making organic fertilizer for a hundred years in New Jersey, all family owned and now solar powered, they’re honestly the best option out there I think for mass market fertilizers and soil amendments since they offer just about everything as either a mix or single ingredients, I use mostly their products, Coast of Maine, and Down To Earth.
I don’t like recharge because it introduces a ton of variables to your grow.
You would have more control over your grow with controlled applications of humic acid and various soil inoculants to introduce beneficial micro-organisms and fungus, rather than using a general purpose product like recharge.
With recharge, you have no way of knowing what dosage you are administering for each individual component within the mix.
In addition to its other components, recharge is also an artificial plant enzyme and hormone treatment. As in, this product artificially introduces naturally occurring hormones and enzymes derived from other plants. Some of the ingredients are banned from organic products in the oregon legal marijuana market, like salicylic acid.
It can actually change the traits expressed by the genetics, altering the natural phenotypical expression of the plants you are cultivating.
When I grow a pack of seeds, a wild landrace, or an heirloom clone, I do not want to alter the natural environmental expression of genetic traits. I want to see the plant naturally express its genetics in organic soil.
If I used a product like recharge, I wouldn’t know whether I was looking at traits that would naturally express themselves in my environment, or traits that were induced by the enzyme and hormone treatment.
it would be more difficult to discern usable information about what traits you might see expressed in later generations or outcrosses.
The enzyme and hormone treatments in recharge can trigger herms when used late in flower, especially if you are not careful with the dosages.
Recharge is a good con but doesn’t have all the microbes it claims per the state of Oregon’s independent lab analysis
@CapnCannabis I’ve 3 giant bags of Dr. Earth 4-6-3 fert. Are you saying there’s already microbes in it, or is this a different product all-together?
@Dirt_Wizard I already have Great White so I got the myco. I’ve got Southern AG garden friendly fungicide (bacillus amy.) So I guess I got one bacillus covered. I’ve got Food Lion unsulfered molasses. I got Yucca extract.
So I guess I just need the fulvic/humic, trichoderma etc?
Wow alright, that gives me a lot to think about.
I’ll show you a pic of my purple kush when I get out of work and you can have a see for yourself.It’s been working for me so far haven’t had a problem.Haven’t messed with the Mykos yet so I cant speak for it.Something to get by when your in a pinch for cash
If you just need fulvics, grab some of this stuff:
20% off your first order with newsletter signup
