100% Organic Sweet Corn, Christmas Cactus Blooming Forth

While we here on Gabriola are still covered in snow, Eloise and John are reporting from New Zealand that their young corn is growing like a bag of popcorn in the microwave.

In addition to their base nutrient, Iguana Juice Grow, which is a 100% organic fish-based fertilizer, they are also using root colonizers, as mentioned last week. These don’t have to be applied every week, rather every third week, since the beneficial fungi, bacteria, and microbes in Piranha, Tarantula, and Voodoo Juice grow and multiply on their own, increasing the size of the root ball and helping with the absorption of vital nutrients.

Eloise writes that they also started using Organic B on all their vegetables, including the sweet corn. In addition to the usual B-complex vitamins (Thiamine, Cobalamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Panthothenic Acid, Pyridoxin, and Biotin), Organic B delivers these using three unique yeast extract hydrolysates, and also contains proteins, peptides, free amino acids, lipids, and cytokinins. The application rate is 5 mL/L, based on standalone feeding.

All that technical stuff adds up to stress relief and vigor for all of Eloise’s vegetables. She finally sent us a picture of the young corn growing in their fields, and the stalks certainly look healthy. She reports that all her neighbors envy their vegetable garden and are using their computers to visit the Advanced Nutrients online store to purchase some of the same products that they are using.

Since John and Eloise are mixing quite a few ingredients into their watering tank, we directed them to the Nutrient Calculator at the Advanced Nutrients website. They have to punch in “100% organic” in the Base Nutrient category, and “100% organic – Vegetative Growth” in the Formula slot.

The default reservoir size is 100 L, so they had to change that to the size of their watering tank (in which they mix all these ingredients), which is 50 L. Even though diehard New Zealanders shun Metric, John and Eloise are progressive souls, so they have adopted the international standard.

Their ppm was 496 ppm in week 1 and it will go up to 745 ppm in week 8 of the vegetative growth. For the uninitiated, ppm mean parts per million, and it means the particles suspended in the watering solution.

This week I only have time for a short posting, so I’ll explain further John and Eloise’s use of the Nutrient Calculator next week. Suffice it to say that Advanced Nutrients suggests nine supplements to the basic fert, which is Iguana Juice Grow, for organic gardeners.

In addition to the basic fert, Grandma Enggy’s Humic and Fulvic Acid, Carboload Powder or Liquid, SensiZym, Piranha, Tarantula, Voodoo Juice, Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract, and the aforementioned Organic B are mixed to form the incredibly effective 100% organic grow cocktail, suggested by Advanced Nutrients.

Sara and I advised John and Eloise to follow their suggestion, since gardeners the world over are using Advanced Nutrients products successfully. This is due to the company’s impeccable record of scientific research and ability to manufacture products with superb, quality ingredients, as opposed to the cheap stuff, that their competitors try to get away with.

A final word about Grandma Enggy’s Seaweed Extract, which is like a multi-vitamin for plants. In addition to some B’s, it contains vitamin C (ascorbic acid), two vitamin A precursors, folic acid and folinic acid, vitamin E (tocopherol), vitamin K, as well as other growth-promoting substances.

As an added bonus, it contains natural antibiotics and natural chelates to help the uptake of nutrients. Seaweed Extract increases cell replication, stimulates the metabolism of the plant, and accelerates growth.

Next week I’ll get into the exact amounts of all these ingredients that you need to mix into your watering tank or reservoir (all these products can be used either for growing in soil or in any hydroponic medium). John and Eloise are very happy with the progress of their vegetables, and promise to send more pictures as soon as John learns how to use their camera without getting a whole bunch of rejects on each roll.

Back here at home, our Christmas cactus is just starting to flower, and Hedgehog and Jim are looking forward to presents under the tree.