Doug wrote:
THRIVE and Garrett Juice are staples in the Dirt Doctor foliar feeding program. These products are producing excellent results from home garden and landscapes up to full production growing operations. There are many benefits to using THRIVE in a monthly program:
http://www.usethrive.com/http://www.dirtdoctor.com/THRIVE-and-Ga ... vq3101.htmI disagree with the idea of continually adding more microbes to a microbially healthy soil. What Doug is talking about is a FOLIAR feeding program. Lawns are fed from the soil because it is much more efficient to feed the soil microbes rather than the leaf microbes. Leaf microbes on blades of grass are mowed off before they get a chance to feed much of anything. Foliar feeding on lawns requires gallons of fertilizer per month per 1,000 square feet. If you are spraying gallons when you spray, then it is likely you have some dripping off the foliage and into the soil. What happens to the foliar feed when it hits the soil is it feeds the soil microbes. In my view that is a waste of foliar spray. I would rather apply 20 pounds of alfalfa than spray liquefied fish or microbes by the fraction of an ounce.
Thrive is supposed to contain micorrhizal fungi which help feed through the roots. Then what's up with repeated applications? Are these microbes so fragile that they die out completely between apps? If so then they fall into the category of "not adapted to the environment." The first rule of gardening success is to use the best plants adapted to the area, soil, and weather. If you try to grow a bermuda lawn in Canada you will be disappointed. If you try to grow KBG in Florida, same result. I'm saying that if you need to reestablish those fungi monthly, then those microbes are not adapted to your conditions. Once established on the roots of a plant, micorrhizae should last indefinitely until the plant dies or is pulled out of the ground.
The before and after pix in Doug's links look exactly like Malcolm Beck's before and after pictures for compost. Exactly! They could be the same pictures. They also look exactly like every other micorrhizal fungus seller I've seen. But when it comes down to the average homeowner, they don't see the same results. If they were previously on a chemical program, or if they live in the Sonoran or Mojave Desert, they might see something like those results. If they were previously organic, then the results are much less dramatic and less predictable.