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If you’ve followed my blogs in the last couple years, you already know I make a “beneficial bacteria tea” once a week.  If you don’t know what beneficial bacteria is (stoners call it “bennies”), it is an actual living bacteria that inoculates your root zone.  The word “bacteria” sounds bad, but in when it comes to beneficial bacteria in your roots, it’s all good.  You may have heard of products like “great white”, “Hydro Guard”, “ZHO”, and other mycorrhizae and trichoderma fungi; these are all forms of beneficial bacteria.

A couple years ago, I had a battle with “root rot”, or “Pythium” in a deep water culture grow.  DWC is notorious for being prone to pythium.  Pythium is the bad, anaerobic type that will literally make mush of your roots. Once you get it, it is near impossible to over come.  The roots die, plants start yellowing from the bottom up, and there is little hope for them.  I tried to combat it by killing ALL bacteria, with products like H2O2, Dutchmaster Zone, physan 20.  I was completely unsuccessful.  After 3 months of pain, I finally turned to beneficial bacteria.  I started making a beneficial tea concoction of Mycos, aquashield, zho, and ancient forest, and molasses.  It worked.  I finally was able to grow new, white roots!  On a side note, I highly discourage people from growing in DWC, because it is so risky.  Pythium is lurking, even for experienced growers.

Since then, I’ve been making the tea once a week.  It’s a pain in the ass.  To start, it costs almost $100 just for all the ingredients.  Then, I add all the ingredients to a bucket of water and aerate for 48 hours.  Then I use the tea on my plants.  The tea lasts for 48 hours, and after that, the microbes die off, and I start over again.  My roots are amazing, when I use the tea.  If I skip tea for a couple weeks, my roots are NO longer amazing.

I don’t consider myself an expert on beneficial bacteria.  In fact, I don’t fully understand how it works.  It has something to do with the microbes breaking down nutrients, and storing them for the plant, so the roots can take in those nutrients better.  Another huge advantage, is it helps to eliminate nutrient lockouts from PH swings.  If your PH is too high or too low, it is difficult for your plant to use certain nutrients.  With RECHARGE, your PH range can be much wider, and your plant doesn’t care.  What I do know for sure… I have seen the difference between using beneficial bacteria, and NOT using it.  The difference is night and day.  If you’re NOT using beneficial bacteria, you are not maximizing your plant’s health and growth rate.

A few months ago, I was listening to the DUDEGROWS show, and I heard about RECHARGE.  I looked up the product, and sure enough, I see claims like this:

“Recharge is a Natural Soil Conditioner that enhances the quality of any crop, potted plant, lawn or landscape material.  If it grows in soil, Recharge will grow it bigger, stronger and most importantly, the way nature intended.

If you’ve kept up with my blogs, you know how I feel about these kinds of words.  It’s so easy to slap this on a label.  I’m always skeptical, but a few weeks ago, I got my hands on some recharge.

I’m a hydro grower, in rockwool.  Most of what I’ve heard and read about RECHARGE, is related to dirt.  But it doesn’t matter if you’re in COCO, rockwool, dirt, beneficial bacteria works in them all.  Here is how I use RECHARGE:

1.  Start with a pitcher of R.O. water (or distilled).  Most city tap water has chlorine in it, which may kill beneficial bacteria.

Recharge_1

Scotty_real_recharge

 

2.  Pour in a teaspoon of RECHARGE, and stir.

How_to_use_recharge

3.  Pour about 4oz on the little ones, and about 8oz on the big ones (both veg and flower).

Recharge_grows_Plants

Pour_recharge

Notes:

The water looks really dark, but your roots will look pearly white.

If you don’t use all the water you made, pour it on your house plants, your grass, or your bushes.

Don’t worry about using too much.

Don’t worry if you get it on the leaves, it won’t hurt them.

If you’re using synthetic nutrients (not organic) it is best to pour the tea, at the base of the stalk, after you have watered with nutrients.  Synthetic nutrients don’t necessarily kill beneficial bacteria, but the salty nutrients are not idea for the bennies.

You can use the RECHARGE every day, once a week, whatever you like.  I’ve been using it every day, and these are my results after only two weeks:

Roots_with_recharge

Here’s how we look up top:

Plants_recharge

Why does RECHARGE work so well?

It’s all in there.  I don’t know how they did it, but when I compare the ingredients I put in my tea, those same ingredients are in this RECHARGE jar.  There is $100 worth of ingredients in this $29 jar, and there’s no brewing needed.  No special instructions.  It’s so easy, I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to making tea again.

I’m only been using the recharge a few weeks.  I will come back to this article and post more results, after a few months.

Happy Growing, from, The Captain.

 

EDIT: 12/8/2014  A few people have messaged me and asked where they can get the Recharge.

You can get it on Amazon:  Amazon link

Ebay:  I won’t post the ebay link, in case it changes

If you want 25% off, you can get it at RealGrowers.com

In order to get it 25% off, you can enter this coupon code at check out:  capn