Welcome to another episode of Soil King in The Victory Garden. On this episode, we’ll be talking about top dressing, fertilizing, what products to use and most importantly, how to use them.
First off, it’s most important to use the right products. Use the wrong products, you don’t get the rewards. You don’t get the results you’re looking for. I do a Q&A where our followers ask questions. And one question that came up for this episode was from Sarah G. Sarah G. said, “Soil King, in my victory garden, I’m not getting the growth patterns, the yields. My tomatoes and my cucumbers are not growing. They’re really little and they have brown spots on them and there just don’t seem to producing”. My question back to Sarah was what’s your soil medium? What have you been using? And she said, “I’ve been using compost. I got from a compost facility down the street”. Sarah, I’m here to tell you composting 101, that is the problem right there. You bought a product that doesn’t have enough fertilizer, minerals and probably has contaminants like glyphosate. You know, cardboard printing out the cardboard and plastics when they do the composting. There’s a lot of things that can be going on with the compost that you bought.
What I always say is make sure you buy the best products. If you’re going to start out with, especially a victory garden, because you want to get produce that you can actually be proud of. You want to see growth that you can actually get excited about. And you want to harvest that, bring it to your table and share it with your family. With that, Sarah, I’m going to teach you how to do top dressing and the proper way of doing it.
There’s a lot of bad ways of doing it. There’s a lot of bad products. But this is how you’re going get the results you’re looking for. First off, one of my favorite products, which is a Soil King approved product. Not a whole lot of Soil King approved products by the way, but this is one of them, Mr. B’s Green Trees. Mr. B’s Green Trees is a few different formulas that they have. They have one for vegetation state and one for bloom state, and they also have one in the middle called transitions. So, from veg to transition to bloom, you kind of want to use these products and you can get the best result.
So, this is how I do it. And this is the reason why. I’ll bring it over there. This is fertilizer’s, guano’s, minerals, mycorrhizal spoors, there’s all different types of things in here combined that are going to help your your garden be beautiful and prosperous. But when you’re top dressing, most people do, is it’s a dust farm. And you see the dust that comes off this. Yeah, you don’t really want to breath that. It’s really not good for you. And better yet, you don’t want that going all up over your plant and produce and going into if you’re cultivating, let’s say, hemp or something. You don’t want all that sticking on the on the flower and the trichomes.
So, what I love to do is I grab an empty bucket. Three Soil King approved products and I’ll put it in a separate bucket. Mix your ratios by the handful, you know, because we’re just making a substance right now. Nothing has to be scientific here. The applications a little bit different because you don’t want to overuse an over burn your plants. This is another product, this is Azospirillum. Benefits with Azospirillum, it’s a bacteria that enables the roots to uptake nutrients and take off quickly. It’s a great bacteria, Azos is a great bacteria. You’ll see some other products with Azos, but with this product, why I like it so much is the carrier that’s in it is a secret carrier, but it’s definitely a beneficial to your plant. But there’s, for one tablespoon of this equals three 12 ounce bags of extreme Azospirillum. So, you’re getting what you pay for when you’re when you’re rocking with Green Trees, no doubt about it. Always is a Soil King approved product. I’m not saying that Extreme is a bad product. I’ve rocked them for years, we just stepped up with a better one at this point.
So, they give you a little cup, you know, measuring. I don’t really do that. I grab a handful and I sprinkle it in. I sprinkle it in. TerraVesco, TerraVesco is vermicompost. Vermicompost is a high end worm castings. So they are, all these products are CDFA, all recertified, already tested. Every product that I’m going to show you a present you we’ve already sent it out to independent laboratory and had our own testing done on it. This all passes for heavy metals. These products are actually in Big Rootz soil, which is another great asset. But Terro Vesco, this is Terro Thrive in smaller bag. We have different bags you can purchase.
The reason why I love to use worm castings or vermacompost in with mixing this is because the moisture content takes the dry content of the fertilizer and wets it down enough so you don’t get all that dust back up. Plus, you get the beneficial pack of what, the gold that is in this bag right here, all the beneficials, enzymes and everything else are packed in this sack right here.
Then I go in and I just mix it up. Now it goes from from this to this, nothing to it, right? Put the lid back on this because we’ve had enough of that. Most people in the industry top dress, they throw all the fertilizers on top. They’re breathing it all, it’s blowing all over the plants. And it could be a contamination. I mean, you could find a lot of bad stuff in there as well. It’s good for the plant. It’s not good for your lungs. So don’t breathe it.
But here we are now. So, now we got a good amended top dress right here, ready to put it in action. Follow me.
Now, Sarah, your plant probably isn’t looking like this because this plant was put in Big Rootz soil and that’s what Big Rootz soil does without adding anything. But let’s pretend this plant is a little plant and it’s struggling in your hard pan or your more inexpensive compost, right? And so you’re trying to get that plant to grow. You’re trying to figure out a solution. Here’s your solution. Now that we have our amendment already made, there’s no dust coming off it, I’m not going to breathe it. We’re going to take this. It just, it can be salt and pepper like you would a steak. When you are barbecuing, just sprinkle it around. And most likely, most likely, you are in a harder hardpan, which is… hard pan is considered compost or a soil that is hard. You can’t really dig in too much, there’s not a lot of oxygen in it. This soil, Big Rootz, has a lot of oxygen. It’s really soft and fluffy. But important thing to do in your compost would be to now grab your fingers and just mix it and scratch it.
Add water, bam, there you go. I would do this since you’re struggling. Every seven, seven days to 10 days right now. Then you can go into every two weeks or a little bit longer. But you need to get that immediate hit to the root zone with some good fertilizers, minerals and biology and enzymes as well. So there you have it. Easy peasy. This is how your top dress.
You can find all of my products on thesoilking.com web site. Green Trees right now is on special. We have free shipping anywhere inside the continental United States. So, and shipping is really expensive, so take advantage of that. You won’t find that deal anywhere else. Again, that’s at www.thesoilking.com.
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Soil King in the Victory Garden. It means a lot to me to be able to educate what was freely educated and given to me to share it with you. And if you could pass it on to other people, that’s how we do it. We’re better together, right? That’s how it works. So, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button and you’ll get more videos and links that are going up. You can Google the Soil King and see the whole world of what we do on a lot of different levels. But this is how we do beginner one-on-one in the Victory Garden and give back what was freely given us. Thank you. And stay tuned for the next episode.