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We’re thrilled to offer a new product line in the Gardenerd Store: Custom Biologicals. If you’ve always wanted to apply biologically active compost tea (ACT) to your garden but don’t have the time to buy all the ingredients to brew your own, this is a shortcut. It’s not the same as ACT, but it’s close. It’s not the whole Soil Food Web, but a few key members.

Custom Biologicals has been creating biological soil amendments since 1992. “Biological soil amendments are sometimes called biological fertilizers, probiotic fertilizers, bio fertilizers, soil inoculant, microbial inoculant, or a host of other names,” says Bill Baugh of Custom Biologicals.

These new products offer beneficial bacteria and fungi for your garden soil with ample benefits:

• Produces plant hormones
• Increases root mass
• Reverses root oxidation
• Processes nutrients
• Degrades organic material
• Increases crop yield

Product Overview

Custom GP

Custom GP contains 4 strains of beneficial fungi that help plants grow stronger, healthier roots, and improve the overall condition of the soil. While the company can’t make claims about preventing diseases, Custom GP has been used successfully to prevent and reduce fungal infestations like powdery mildew.

Custom B5

Custom B5 contains 5 strains of beneficial bacteria to help restore biotic balance, make NPK more available to plants, produce plant hormones, improve size and health of plant roots, and help break down organic material. Custom B5 is all about happy roots, and giving nutrient cyclers in the Soil Food Web something to eat.

BiotaMax™

BiotaMax combines the beneficial fungi of Custom GP and the beneficial bacteria of Custom B5 into one product, with additional nitrogen-fixing bacteria. It’s a great overall soil amendment to increase root mass, prevent biota imbalance, process nutrients, and increase moisture in soils.

We’re testing BiotaMax in a garden bed infected last year with bacterial wilt (from cucumber beetles) to see if the additional soil microbes can out-compete the infestation. The experiment is still in progress, and we will report our findings when we know more.

Does your soil need a boost? Find these three products and all the details in the Gardenerd Store. Products are shipped directly from Custom Biologicals to ensure viability.