"I didn't know that they made such ferts. I wonder how they were made, I know you can make a compost pile very high in nutrients and use the tea as a fertlizer, the microbes have already made the nutrients available. Interesting." Yes and you would have to make the compost tea which is a big mess and takes forever. Try running compost tea in a hydro system lol ;) These fertilizers are predictable and have lables, teas you don't know what you will get. If I wanted to know how much produce I can grow in a given amount of containers that can be done using stable hydro-organic fertilizers, I cant tell what I will get with compost teas. If I asked the many that use Botanicare and said why not just use tea, they would look at me like I have 10 heads.

I did years ago, using them in a fertilizer injector tied into my watering system. I used a very dilute mixture of mostly 46-0-0 urea. My main fertilizer though was organic to help the soil. I now use only organic fertilizers in the garden. Retirement gave me the time. When I worked and was time deficient, I applied fertilizer the easiest way possible. The 50 gallon cans and trash pumps were used for applying alfalfa tea to the individual bushes rather than attempting to haul it in buskets. I still use very dilute water solubles when I overhead water the plants in my greenhouse. That's the most effecient way to fertilize all those potted plants. Changing circumstances call for different methods to be used as I get older.

All synthetic fertilizers are salt whether they are liquid (dissolved in water) or granular. Ammonium sulfate = salt Potassium sulfate = salt Potassium chloride = salt Magnesium sulfate = salt (Epsom salt to be specific) Sodium phosphate = salt With all synthetic fertilizer it must be dissolved in water before the plants can use it. With granular it must be watered in before the first dew hits it. When you water it, it becomes liquid fertilizer...much like the liquid you are considering spraying on. When the liquid dries, it becomes a dry fertilizer like the granular. Generally it costs more to ship water around the country so liquid fertilizers are more expensive. The cost is lower because to keep the grass green, you have to apply every week or so. With fertilizers it is pounds per 1,000 square feet that matter. Dry ferts go on at about 1 pound per 1,000 square feet (plus or minus) and last quite a long time. Because 90% of the weight of liquids is pure water, it is much easier to apply 1 pound of dry chemicals than it is to apply 1 pound of liquid chemicals. Getting to the roots faster is not necessarily a benefit. Millions have been spent to find ways to slow down the absorption of fertilizers to the roots. To claim a benefit of speed is sort of a freaky claim. The problem is when you force feed a plant you can burn the roots. The amount you use and the concentration makes the difference. If you are not experienced with application of liquid ferts, I would stick with the tried and true granular. Use a good granular ONE TIME in the LATE SPRING and two times in the early and late fall for best results. Use the ones being sold for the season. Skip over those with weed controls mixed with fertilizers.

Purlisa: I no longer post for the pubic, but I make exceptions when people ask for me specifically. I respect & learn from honest folks like you who share about their garden. I learn more from honest folks who talk about problems in their garden, than gorgeous pics. of roses (with zero details as to type of soil & pH-level & climate & annual rainfall). That's my pet-peeve in HMF, folks just post pics, without specifying if it's own-root or grafted, zero info. on planting zone & type of soil & climate. If you click on my Houzz profile-picture , I updated to include tips on how to tell which own-roots are appropriate for which soil pH, type of soil & climate, just by looking at the leaves. https://www.houzz.com/user/strawchicago I received 8 roses yesterday 6/15 from RU summer sale, they are BIG, and some are over 2 feet tall & with buds & blooms .. very healthy. These roses are bigger & more blooms that the 7 roses I bought full-price early May. My last house was acidic clay: soft & easy to dig, with blue hydrangeas & deep-colors roses. My current house is alkaline clay: rock-hard, need a pick-ax to dig, pink hydrangeas, and roses have faded colors. Roses are much healthier in alkaline clay. My purpose of posting is to help foiks NOT to make the same mistakes like I did in my 30+ years of growing roses, and 110 own-root varieties. My B.S. is in Computer Science, minor in Chemistry, so I want to use my background to help folks. If you have sticky & dense clay, skip the Epsom salt (magnesium sulfate), since it hardens clay further. MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY IS RARE, EXCEPT IN SANDY SOIL (this is from the booklet when I got my soil tested by EarthCo.) My sticky clay soil was tested exceedingly high in magnesium. Skip the molasses, I tested for many years and it attracts rose-slugs, plus sugarly stuff LOWERS soil pH, sugar sours things fast. Azomite is similar to dolomitic lime (both have pH 9), but Azomite works faster. Digging deep, and remove the dense & icky clay & rocks at bottom helps with drainage, so acidic rain water don't sit at the bottom to rot roots. If your clay soil is acidic, COARSE sand (paver's sand) is good on top. BAGGED SAND AT STORES IS VERY ALKALINE, so it will neutralize the acidity of rain. Niels in Denmark, with hundreds of roses, put sand on top of his acidic clay. Skip the alfalfa, it becomes VERY ACIDIC like Kimchi if decays in acidic rain water. Many folks report roses breaking out in blackspots after "sour alfalfa tea", it's like watering roses with sauerkraut or Kimchi-water. At least Kimchi or sauerkraut has salt to control the acidity, but I already tested acidic-alfalfa-tea and it made leaves thinner, thanks to its acidity. Since my clay is rock-hard alkaline at pH near 8, I use acidic pine bark (pH 4) to fix my clay. People root roses in sand. I read a book by a CA rose-grower on the coast (mild temperate climate), he bought a land filled with sand and converted into a rose nursery, to sell cut-flowers !! Here's an excerpt from Houzz when I googled on clay .. folks in CA have heavy abode clay, while I have dolomitic clay. But both are mineral-rich clay. Kittymoonbeam have over 100+ roses in Southern CA, wrote this in Houzz .. from my experience I agree with her 100% .. I killed plenty of roses with acidic organic matter in the planting hole. And Roses Unlimited's tip of 1 cup of alfalfa meal mix-in WORKS ONLY FOR THEIR ALKALINE-TAP WATER inside nursery, but NOT FOR OUTDOOR ACIDIC RAIN, with pH 4.5 in my Chicagoland, and even more acidic rain on the East Coast. Kittymoonbeam - "I just came from a soils class by a local nurseryman. He said DON'T add organic amendment into the soil. The plants only tolerate it, not prosper in it. The short of it is that eventually it breaks down and rots causing oxygen problems in the root zone. A NASA guy said NO terrestrial plant wants to live in ground up dead tree. So most potting soils are only good for maybe 5 months, then they start harming plants. The growers know the plants can only survive a short period before they decline in that mix. Potting up in non amended soil causes no harm. You can grow in 100 percent sand as long as you water and feed often enough. Strawberry leaves from plants grown in sand were twice the size of those in the premium potting mix! There are no overwatering issues. Why the change from propagation in soil to wood products is a long story. However, we've all been taught to do it. But no one ever used to in the old days. Disneyland removed their riverbed soil and replaced with amended soil. After a few years, they took it all out and purchased new riverbed sandy loam and now they only mulch on top. This is all new to me but that's the way it was for millions of years. The organic stuff stays on top where it breaks down and travels to the roots below. Roots want a purely mineral soil with as much oxygen as they can get and still be moist." Kittymoonbeam. Lauren (Los Angeles, 10a, Sunset Zone 19) - kittymoonbeam, that does seem to make sense. Limited personal experience has also showed me that top dressing compost with shredded leaves/mulch produced better results than than simply mixing some compost into the surrounding soil" Lauren