Ecothrive Life-Cycle Soil Amendment

A carefully formulated organic nutrient mix that has been designed to reinvigorate depleted soil mixes allowing them to be used again. Thanks to it's slow release nutrient profile it can also be used as a top dress on soil and coco to enhance performance. Building your own soil mix from scratch? Life Cycle is a key component we recommend adding for outstanding results! 

How It Works

Life Cycle is comprised of a blend of premium, raw, dry ingredients. It is completely natural and organic and very simple to use in a variety of different applications. We believe this is truly the best 'off the shelf' product for living soil growers to provide a slow release of nutrients throughout the growth cycle and allowing your plants to be fed with nothing else but plain, de-chlorinated tap water. It can however be added to standard soil mixes for those seeking an organic boost without the need for liquid fertilisers. It is also a key component to use when growing in Ecothrive Eco-Life Soil. Here's what Life Cycle contains:

Mealworm Frass (Ecothrive Charge) - Ecothrive's flagship product. Charge, is well-known for its nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium boosting power, as well as being an excellent source of beneficial microbes. This natural and ecological product helps to boost key primary nutrients in your soil mix. As a secondary benefit, mealworm frass also contains tiny fragments of mealworm skins and other body parts providing a great source of chitin to stimulate plant immune response and elevate defences.

Insect Meal - An ecologically-sourced crustacean meal replacement! Insect meal is very similar to crustacean meal in its nutrient profile, but has very low sodium, making it an ideal living soil amendment. Rich in amino acids, nitrogen and phosphorus, this is a great source of nutrition for the plants, and for the soil biology. Most important, insect meal is much more sustainable that crustacean meal, the insects are black soldier fly larvae and are grown indoors on controlled food waste streams. The time has come to stop depleting our oceans, and small moves like this can make a difference.

Neem - Neem is a potent source of soil fertility largely thanks to being a nutrient accumulator itself. Neem has deep reaching roots which pull up nutrition from deep down below the soil surface where other plants can’t reach. Neem is rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as well as calcium and magnesium. As an additional key benefit, neem also helps to ward off soil pests and pathogens.

Rock Phosphate - Providing a long term slow release of phosphorus, rock phosphate is added to raise this key nutrient and allow the beneficial soil biology to steadily deliver it to the plant. Phosphorus is a key nutrient for all plants and plays an important role in root development, vegetative growth and fruit and flower production.

Premium Seaweed Meal - Sometimes called “green gold” because of all the treasures it brings to the soil! The seaweed meal is exclusively sourced from the highly-prized species Ascophyllum nodosum and contains an impressive spectrum of minerals - over 60 trace elements! This incredible, natural soil amendment gives your plants a luxurious nutritional diet complemented with valuable natural plant growth hormones including cytokinins to help drive cell division and speed up growth, auxins and gibberellins for assisting the mobility of essential nutrients, and indoles for turbocharged root development.

Basalt Rock Dust - The “magic ingredient” for essential trace minerals and silica—essential for optimal plant health and vigour but often lacking from lesser soil mixes. Trace minerals form the building blocks of enzymes, proteins and many other metabolites while silica helps plants to grow big and strong with thick stems and branches to support heavy yields.

Gypsum - Gypsum provides extra calcium and sulphur for improved aroma, flavour development and overall health in fast-growing plants. It also conditions your soil by improving water penetration and reducing water logging.

Humic and Fulvic Acids - Humus is the final product of decomposition and is rich in humic and fulvic acids. Life-Cycle contains both humic and fulvic acids derived from naturally mined deposits of ancient vegetation. These key fractions are great at chelating nutrients making them easy for plants to uptake, as well as stimulating microbial activity and improving plant health and root growth.

How To Use Ecothrive Life-Cycle Soil Amendment

Life Cycle can be used in a number of ways, suiting different methods of growing. However with all of these it is very important to use de-chlorinated water at all times to get the very best from it. The chlorine found in tap water can be very harmful to the microbes and other beneficials in Life Cycle. The easiest way to remove it and make you water instantly safe to use is by adding Ecothrive Neutralise with every watering.

Top Dressing - Lightly dust the surface of your pot (40-50L soil) with around 1-2 tablespoons (15-30ml) of Life Cycle, then water as usual. This is a great way to get the benefits of Life Cycle into already potted plants. For those growing with Eco-Life Soil it is imperative to add Life Cycle as per these instructions once in late-veg/early flowering then once again 3-4 weeks later, ensuring the last top dress is applied 4-5 weeks before harvest.

Used Eco-Life Soil - At the end of your cycle lightly dust 2-8 tablespoons (30-120g) onto 45-60L of soil to rejuvenate it for re-use. We recommend adding in worm castings at a rate of 5% of the total pot volume. Over multiple cycles this can be reduced as required. Remember if you add to little you can always a apply a top dress to top it up! You can also follow the above guidelines for those wishing to re-use other soil mixes, experiment with doses to find out what works best for your plants.

Making Your Own Living Soil - For those looking to make their own soil mix from scratch, Life Cycle is so good we feel it's a compulsory addition! As a general rule these guidelines work well:

Light fertility - 300-400g per 50L
Moderate fertility - 500-600g per 50L
High fertility - 800-1000g per 50L

Always mix Life-Cycle with your soil mix using the largest container available to promote a stable, homogenous mix. Adding additional nutrition to soils can sometimes cause an exothermic (heat-producing) reaction—this is all perfectly natural and normal! Allow some time for the soil mix to warm up and cool down before using. Larger volumes of soil (above 500L) with a higher dose of amendment will warm up more and may need turning every two to three days for up to two weeks. When making a small batch (50L or so) with a light dose of amendment, this 'cooking time' is not always needed.

When making your own soil mix with Life-Cycle, we recommend using 20-30% high-quality compost or worm castings/vermicompost such as BioBizz Worm Humus. This will increase biological diversity and speed up the conversion of organic ingredients into plant-available nutrition.

Ecothrive Life Cycle is available in 1kg and 5kg tubs.