Feeding plants naturally isn't about just dumping nutrients on them — it's about building a living ecosystem in your soil, and then feeding soil life that feeds your plant. Do that, and your plants literally fertilize themselves. 👌

How Plants Fertilize Themselves (the microbe partnership)

In nature, no one shows up with a bottle of fertilizer — yet forests grow just fine. The secret: plants team up with microbes to trade nutrients.

Roots leak the same ingredients used to make a cake (by-product of photosynthesis) into the soil to attract beneficial bacteria and fungi. In return, those microbes break down organic matter — dead leaves, compost, minerals — into simple nutrients the plant can absorb, and deliver them right to the root. Mycorrhizal fungi even extends the root system like a second, massive underground network, reaching water and nutrients the roots never could alone.

So your job as is: keep that underground workforce fed and happy. Feed your microbes; and your microbes feed your plants. 🍄

How to Use Soil Amendments

Amendments are the charger for your soil battery.

• Bios dry fertilizer — fermented wheat bran mimics a leaf falling on the ground and decomposing creating new soil, and feeding microbes.
• Kelp meal — trace minerals plus natural growth hormones; great for root development and stress resistance.
• Alfalfa meal — gentle nitrogen and triacontanol, a natural growth stimulant. Microbes love it.
• Rock dusts (e.g. basalt, glacial, diatomaceous, soft rock phosphate, etc.) — slow-release minerals and trace elements are essential for growth & blooms. These remineralize soil and can help with drainage/aeration depending on the type.
• Compost/worm castings/Insect Frass — all-in-one: nutrients and a huge dose of living microbes. Composts/manures are a natural part of soils in nature.
• Manure (well-composted) — rich, slow-release nutrients. Only ever use it aged/composted, never fresh (fresh can burn). It has to smell sweet like soil or don’t use it. Different manures/composts have different microbial and nutrient profiles so diversity is best.
• Biochar — a "microbe hotel," biochar is extremely porous (lots of microscopic spaces) to act like a home for beneficial microbes, holds nutrients in soil, and holds water in soil. Biochar and carbon are essential for healthy soils. Ancient cultures in South America used carbon to charge their soils and they continue to get better 1000+ years later. It’s a good idea to mix biochar with a liquid fertilizer or moist compost first to “charge it” or fill the spaces because otherwise it will fill it’s spaces with that’s in your soil already.

When to Fertilize & How to Tell It's Needed

Timing: You can definitely fertilize more often in the summer if using your liquid fertilizer, but because houseplants have pretty consistent indoor conditions throughout the year, they’re always growing and you can fertilize year-round. Natural fertilizers are far more gentle so even though growth slows in winter due to shorter light hours, your plants won’t burn.

Signs a plant is hungry:

• Slowed or stalled growth during the growing season
• Older/lower leaves yellowing while newer growth looks smaller
• Pale, washed-out colour overall