FertileTea

If you’ve enrolled in our Organic Lawn and Plant Care Program, then you’ve likely heard that the effects of an organic system are cumulative. Each application builds on the last by feeding and nurturing the living system in the soil. Synthetic (non-organic) lawn amendments are different. They essentially "spoon feed" your plants – if you miss an application, you’ll notice. With an organic, additive system, your plants are supported by soil rich in stored nutrition and beneficial organisms that do the work for you. Our organic program restores what Nature intended - a regenerative, thriving system that can be self-sustaining. 

Because healthy plants are nourished through healthy soil, our restoration efforts focus on the soil. One option to restore the soil would be an invasive method of digging up a property and mixing in compost and a variety of amendments into lower soil horizons. Applying a liquid FertileTea is a non-invasive, less expensive method of restoring the same healthy living soil system.

We rely on our proprietary FertileTea to deliver a full range of nutrients and soil microorganisms. These microorganisms are the critical, smallest organisms, that are food for the soil food web. Fungi, acids, and organic matter work together to provide ideal growing conditions for plants.

In short, FertileTea is dense with bacteria and fungi. When we feed the soil the smallest organisms at the bottom of the food chain, we create a favorable habitat for the larger organisms at each trophic level. 

Our freshly brewed tea is alive and teeming with hardworking microorganisms. Combined with premium organic fertilizers that provide balanced nutrition to plants, FertileTea helps restore a complete soil food web on your property. Your plants learn to fend for themselves and can rely on their natural immunity for better health. Your lawn and plants will be thriving year-round with this organic program, a truly evergreen space.

The Puget Sound region is home to a wide variety of plants, some native and others adapted to regions around the world. We want to make sure we’re giving each plant what it needs. We take care in preparing our tea - it's an actively aerated compost tea (AACT) brewed for 24 hours in dechlorinated water in a sanitized tank. The final brew can vary from year-to-year and season-to-season. Core components stay the same, but our philosophy is that if we vary the sources of our inputs, we’re diversifying the organisms in your soils.

• Worm castings – Worm castings are often referred to as “black gold” because they contain nutrients that are so perfectly available to plants, always a perfect neutral pH of 7, and are coated with digestive bacteria and enzymes that feed other organisms. You can also read much more about worms and their castings in an earlier blog post. We’re excited that we’re currently sourcing vegan worm castings from Cosmic Castings.

• Humic and Fulvic acids – These acids were once much more prevalent in our soils, when there was more natural nutrient cycling than many of our urbanized areas now allow. They build stable soil structure which helps hold onto soil nutrients, and also help make nutrients more available to plants. We like high quality HuMagic®, that hasn’t undergone any chemical processing, to help build long-term stable soil structure.

• Mycorrhizal fungi – (pronounced like my•kuh•rye•zal) These varieties of fungi are much like the idea of gnomes, working all the time, but we never see them! These fungi form, and sometimes inhabit, symbiotic relationships with plant root hairs, helping access additional food and water in the soil, in exchange for plant exudates as food.

• Bokashi – Unlike worm castings and the aerated tea, bokashi is a product of a fermented, anaerobic process, that proliferates different biological species. This technique was invented in Japan and now has 4 decades of research behind it. We can’t wait to see the results on your property, thanks to Southern Oregon Bokashi for making this available to us locally. This very adorable zine makes this process easy to understand for those interested.

• A Longer-Lasting Vibrant Lawn – FertileTea will extend the season of your lawn giving it a great look year-round.

• A More Nourished Lawn – The microbial activity in FertileTea helps to breakdown nutrients freeing them up for plants to use more readily.

• A Healthier Lawn – FertileTea will boost your lawn’s immune system, allowing it to suppress diseases and fend off pests more easily. A thicker turf also keeps weeds from finding a place to get a foothold.

• A More Resilient Lawn – FertileTea strengthens plant roots allowing them to burrow more deeply in the soil. Lawns with strong root systems are more drought-resistant and more resilient to weather challenges.