AusBonsai

Yesterday I was listening to the latest Ryan Neil podcast (Bonsai Mirai - Asymmetry) where he was talking to a soil scientist about feeding soils. It’s pretty long and technical but one of the upshots was that for trees in containers you’ll do well to encourage various fungi and less of the bacteria, and three important ingredients for this was humates, fish hydrolysates (similar to fish emulsion but not heat treated) and cold pressed kelp products. This was supposed to encourage the type of microflora that would help a tree pick up nutrients, fight off pathogens and even reduce internode length.

I went to my local hydroponics store and after explaining what I was after I was pointed to this product - Seafuel bloom, which has all three of the products I was after. It’s an Australian product which is a bonus so I’m going to trial it on a few species and see how it goes.
Anyone else tried it? Anyone else listen to the podcast?

Matt.

One thing you should do is to be wary of anything coming out of the US.

treeman wrote:One thing you should do is to be wary of anything coming out of the US.

Sorry Matt, can't help with your product evaluation, but couldn't resist ...

Hello matt,
I just listened to the podcast and it was all quite interesting. The guy also said we should be relying less on store bought stuff and using compost piles to make teas with. This can help with the bioflora of our soils.

Let us know how you go with that product.

If anyone is interested, here's what I found after using this product for the last 6 weeks. In short there's been a definite improvement in some species but there's a few caveats.

- The biggest improvement was in my lawn. I watered it in to a square meter patch twice over 2 weeks and the lawn has grown longer and thicker with a better colour. However keep in mind that the whole lawn would have been under fertilised so I don't have any evidence that this works better than any other product.
- Junipers seems to like it with a slight improvement in colour in those I used it on. All my junipers are already well fertilised with other products.
- I didn't notice anything significant in my pines but there were good signs of mycorrhiza in the soil where previously there were none. This is what the podcast predicted and was what I was hoping for.
- Young Eucalyptus trees responded well and look like they're growing stronger to me.
- Leptospermum seedlings that I picked out of a tray and transferred into a pot had a better survival rate (all six survived versus the 4 out of 6 without any product).
- The figs I tried it out on (Ficus thonningii) had more robust looking leaves all over, but no change in colour.
- Underneath some of my stands where the run-off collected I had a sudden crop of toadstools appear.
- Nothing noticeable on Jades or deciduous trees, but these have mostly stopped growing anyway.


And here are the caveats:
- 6 weeks isn't very long for any effects to be noticed.
- This is not a scientific study so my judging of how a tree responded is purely subjective, and to be honest I was hoping to see improvement after spending this much money!
- I didn't do any comparisons to other products so I don't know if it works any better than say, seasol.
- It's quite expensive and so wouldn't be much good for those of you with large collections and commercial setups.
- The mycorrhiza I noticed in the pine pots might also have been due to the extra care I took with the water I use. The water here in Adelaide is highly chlorinated in summer and I assume this has a detrimental effect on the fungi I'm trying to encourage, so I was vigilant in letting a couple of buckets of water stand for 24 hours before use.

In summary I'm convinced Seafuel bloom has a benefit but I don't know if it's any better than any other product and worth the cost. I'm going to keep using it on some of my trees, mainly pines and junipers and anything that's been repotted in the last 6 months. Also on any tree that's not thriving the way I would like. I'm also going to continue to use water that's been standing for 24 hours on my pines, but this is impracticable for all of my trees.

Keen to hear if anyone else has any experience with this or any similar product, especially in the promotion of mycorrhiza.

Cheers,
Matt.

Thanks for the update Matt, very interesting observations.

How much did you pay for this product, Matt?

Hi Mel,

I paid $45 for the 2.5 litre bottle. That’s about twice the price of seasol bit it’s a much more complex product.

Cheers,
Matt.

Crikey!! I did a search and found it for $9 for 1 litre, which is why I asked...

Edit, that was the 300ml bottle, sigh... the 2.5l on this site is $35... and eligible for free shipping

https://www.aquagardening.com.au/bloom-seafuel

Hi Matt,

What sort of dilution rate and how often where you feeding with seafuel bloom, and was this together with another fert?

Thanks

Joni

What sort of dilution rate and how often where you feeding with seafuel bloom, and was this together with another fert?

The dilution rate I used was about 40ml per 8 litres, every 2 weeks.
I also use the homemade fertilizer recipe as posted by treeman here: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=21156

Matt.