See the update below for how this recipe worked for us this growing season.
Use this and biofertilizer every 2 weeks. Right now this is my preferred formula of all the biofertilizer, biostimulant, and bioferment recipes I have read.
In a 5 gallon bucket
1 cup Worm Castings
1/3 cup Bat Guano or other high nitrogen guano
5 TBSP Blackstrap Molasses (unsulphured)
5 TBSP Kelp Extract
This recipe can be scaled up or down depending on your needs.
The guano and kelp provide nutrients as do the worm castings. The castings also help promote soil microbes and the molasses feeds those microbes.
In our area, it is already getting into the upper 90’s regularly with a pretty steady wind. Using this formula along with mulch and good starting soil amendments, we have reduced our need for water from daily to once every two to three days. We have no wilt in between and the plants are thriving.
If you want to read more about Biostimulant, Biofertilizer and Bioferment check out this post.
Update:
We completed the 2019 growing season. I used this recipe in the garden the entire time, once every 3 weeks. I have to say that this was the most prolific garden I have ever had. It was lush and produced an amazing amount of food.
The pictures below show how well it did and how fast it happened. I was stunned.
Six weeks and it was a jungle. By the way, those peas were supposed to be bush peas. I doubled checked the label, yep bush. They got almost 10 feet long in some cases. They completely covered the tomatoes. We harvested about 20 gallons of peas from a bed about 12 feet long and 6 feet wide.
The tomatoes produced exceptionally well. About 2.5 lbs of tomatoes every other day. That was just from the grape and Roma style tomatoes. The larger ones we planted produced well but we did not get to harvest any ripe ones. We had an early season freeze. So we pulled them when they were green and my wife is making chow chow. If you live close, she might be willing to part with some of it once it is ready. Her fermented food is delicious and healthy. Our farm site will have it available for sale when the time is right and look for her at the Dripping Springs Farmer’s Market after the first of the year.
The squash produced well enough we have winter squash for storage. Even with an invasion of aphids we still harvested over 20 acorn squash and over 20 butternuts. I can’t complain at all.
This biostimulant recipe isn’t the only reason it produced well. Bed preparation played an important role as well. I don’t want to mislead you on that point. I truly believe that the small layer of mushroom compost played a huge role. It kick-started the soil food web and this recipe fed it. Feeding the soil is the key to fertility. More to come on that later. We are working on a class for the spring. “As Above, So Below.” A primer on the gut microbiome and the soil microbiome. How to feed and take care of both of them. If it is something that interests you keep an eye on this site or Our farm site for details.