Oregon Commercial Grower Tour: What nutrients should I use?

The growers had a lot of helpful insight in choosing nutrients and amendments.

Tyler from Hitman Farms

Hitman farms Oregon uses a living soil type grow method. Sustainable organics is kind of our thought process. We are big on our teas as well. We do a bokashi tea with kelp and a little bit of molasses for microbe life, and a couple other secret ingredients that I’m not gonna let you know. So some other amendments we use is worm castings as well as bu’s compost which is from Portland Oregon. It’s a very recommended product to use. If we see any deficiencies and we need to do some additives, we use some general organic products. Some of their cow mag products and other sorts of things like that.

Fish from Wild West Growers

We use a local organic company, Oregon’s Only, and they provide a high quality product to allow us to keep our soil and our microbials, you know, where we want them to be as opposed to some of the synthetics. And so we are trying to keep everything as natural as possible, and they provide that. We use worm castings, we’ll use bat guanos, we use a couple of other different products that have microrize, micros and azros, we make teas.

Justin from House of Leaves

Age old bloom, cuz it’s about, you know, 60% organic. I used to use.. doesn’t matter. But age old grow, and bloom. And I use kelp, I like the pH balance that it brings in and it’s a nice BMP for vegetation.

Rob and Dan

We use age old. Age old and fish from cooz bay. And the age old bloom and age old grow. That’s about it, nothing else.

Shawn McCreery

I wouldn’t have even used nutrients at all but because we ran out of time and everything I decided to use a bottled nute Otherwise I’d be brewing teas and going fully organic. Compost teas, and rolling that way. This year, just going with the soil and actual nutrients through elevation organics which is working great. Great stuff. But next year we will be going all… getting all jiggy with it when it comes down to the biologicals and all the good shit.

So it sounds like Age Old is the most popular bottled nutrient for these Oregon growers. If you are more into natural organic amendments, there were plenty of options mentioned by these experts.

Fish? Kelp? Worm castings? And what is a compost tea?

A compost tea is made when you get a big container and fill it with compost and water and… brew it like tea. Everybody has their own recipes and it creates a healthy liquid fertilizer. Most of the other amendments are to encourage healthy fruiting and prevent disease. Each grower had a unique set of nutrients and amendments, so you really have to try a few out to find what will work best for you.