Why Use Liquid Plant Foods?
When building fertility in poor soils, it's difficult to get your plants what they need to be the best versions of themselves. Pest resistance, disease resistance, weather resiliency, frost tolerance, size, color, and flavor are all dependent on if your plant can receive enough nutrients.
Healthy, fertile soils not only have minerals and nutrients, but also they have large microorganism populations to convert those minerals and nutrients into a soluble form the plant can uptake. This is why a common issue with new gardeners is they throw down a bunch of fertilizer, but nothing seems to grow. It's because there is an inadequate population of biology to convert the fertilizer.
Liquid plant foods allow you skip that important step, because the nutrients and minerals are already in solution. For this reason, we recommend you explore the world of liquid plant foods while you are addressing your soil biology issues.
Eventually, when your garden matures, you will need to rely less on liquid plant foods, but even in our oldest, richest beds, we still fertigate once per week because everything simply tastes better.
We recommend organizing a routine with your garden where you spray or 'fertigate' once per week with liquid plant foods. Everything we offer locally is made 'extra' from our own supplies we use in our market garden. All of these recipes are open source and you can make them yourselves relatively easily. Subscribe to our newsletter to learn how. But, really, if you are near Tamworth, NH save yourself time and mess and just buy from us.
Fish Amino Acids
The classic Korean Natural Farming recipe from Master Cho is made from Fish waste and organic brown sugar. We source our fish parts from the docks at Gloucester, MA.
FAA ferments for 1 year and the fermentation process breaks down the fish proteins into its base amino acids. We ferment ours with a breathable cover, so the fermentation is both aerobic and anaerobic. When Diluted 1:1000 (1 tsp per gallon of water), your plants will absolutely delight in this sweet plant delicacy.
Master Cho recommends you will see the best results in the reproduction phase of a plant, when it goes to flower, but our vegetables and flowers go GaGa over this one throughout the season.
FAA can be used as a soil drench and foliar spray. It is a living liquid and has healthy bacteria in solution. The plants will take it anyway it can get it. One 8oz glass is enough for 50 gallons.
Supercharged Worm Tea
All worms have a bacteria strain and an enzyme in their stomachs that can work together to trigger a hormonal growth response in all plants; from grass to trees.
We use freshly harvested worm castings from our vermicompost continuous flow system to brew a worm tea in order to rapidly multiple an exponentially larger population of bacterias and enzymes.
This concentrated liquid is invaluable for kickstarting soil biology. In addition to triggering growth spurts in healthy plants, Supercharged Worm Tea can be used to revitalize stunted plant starts and to heal sick plants.
It’s also a great way to troubleshoot the lack of biology in your soil. If you use Supercharged Worm Tea and see immediate results, it could indicate a lack of soil biology.
We use Captain Matt’s recommended recipe. Supercharged Worm Tea is brewed aerobically at 70 – 80ºF. It is to be used as a soil drench only. This is also our preferred method for inoculating Biochar. We apply the biochar, soak it and then apply Supercharged worm tea. We use a 1:50 dilution rate (1 cup per 3 gallons).
Liquid Ash
In a normal wood fire temperatures do not get hot enough to melt the minerals accumulated by the tree. Many trace minerals, especially calcium undergo a chemical reaction in the burning processes which makes them water soluble.
We make biochar in a open top Kon Tiki kiln which requires water to quench when it gets full. The ash generated by the kiln is in solution in the highly alkaline quench water.This water is very valuable to a garden with sandy acidic soil.
Since all these minerals are in soluble, you can dilute it with water and use it as a foliar spray. It’s like a San Pellegrino for your plants. We dilute it 1:50 (1 cup per 3 gallons) and spray it on the leaves of all our plants.
Liquid ash results in plants with strong cell structure. Since we started using liquid ash as part of our fertigation program, flavor of all of our vegetables improved, our cut flowers were more vigorous, and all plants took multiple frosts in the field without cover before dyeing.
Water Soluble Calcium (WSC)
Calcium deficiency is probably the biggest challenge for gardeners in New Hampshire. Our acidic granite alluvial soil has barely any available calcium. However; most annuals we grow in temperate climates are originally from the Mediterranean region where calcium abounds in the rich volcanic soils found there.
Most people use pulverized lime to ‘sweeten’ their soil and add calcium, but it takes a season or more to become available. Once again, Master Cho has provided us a Korean Natural Farming solution which is the absolute fastest way to get calcium into your plants.
Water Soluble Calcium is made from mixing calcium carbonate with acetic acid to create a calcium acetate. Calcium Acetate is a soluble version of calcium that can be absorbed through a plant’s stomata.
We make ours from our hens’ eggshells and organic apple cider vinegar. It makes an ideal foliar spray when diluted 1:1000 (1 tsp to 1 gallon of water). One pint makes 96 gallons.
Spraying your plants with WSC once per week keeps them strong and more resistant to pests and disease. But the best benefit is all vegetables taste better when they get adequate calcium.
Wood Vinegar
Coming soon in May, 2026!
Fermented Fruit Juice
Coming soon in May, 2026!