Full Circle: an All-Natural Plant Super Food

I like keeping my garden as organic as possible, which is why Full Circle is one of my go-to products. It’s an awesome, all-natural fertilizer that is a 2-in-1 plant food and probiotic. It is the saving grace for soils that are over-worked, over-fertilized, and sterile due to chemical fertilizers and herbicides used in the past.

Benefits of Using Full Circle

Effective

To begin, Full Circle is jam-packed with beneficial microbes. These microbes are vital for healthy plants because they assist in nutrient uptake by breaking down nutrients into forms that the plant can use when they need them most. Full Circle really helps feed the soil, which in turn will feed your plants for years to come.

Versatile

Secondly, you can use Full Circle on a wide variety of plants, including fruit, vegetables, herbs, houseplants, succulents, cacti, turf, ornamentals, and everything in between. You can even use it on seeds and newly emerged seedlings.

Safe

Unlike synthetics, there is little salt buildup when using Full Circle products, and the slow-release nature cuts out the chance of accidentally burning your plants. In addition to being plant-safe, it is completely human-safe, pet-friendly, and will bring no harm to any wildlife or pollinators.

Full Circle also helps protect local waterways. The source of phosphorus in their products is organic, which means that it will not leach. So instead of running off into local waterways where it can cause devastating algae blooms, the phosphorus stays tied up safely in the soil to be used in the future when a plant needs it.

Behind the Brand

Full Circle is a small and locally-owned business that specializes in hand-made batches of natural fertilizer. The company was started in 2012, with a mission to push the research of the benefits of healthy, chemical-free soil.

The idea for Full Circle evolved from trying to find another revenue for the dairy industry. Owner, Mark Harbold, saw dairy farmers struggling with the cost of maintaining a dairy farm.

He also recognized their problem in dealing with an abundance of cow waste. Each cow produces 120 pounds of manure every single day. Now imagine having 300 cows on a single farm! That’s a lot of animal waste to deal with, certainly more than a single farmer can recycle in their own facility. But what’s the best way to use up all the extra manure?

The Process

This got Harbold thinking “What if we could sterilize and aerate the manure, feed it to worms, and then use their worm castings as fertilizer?” He tried it out and was very pleased with the results.

Fast-forward to today, every batch is still done by hand in the founder’s basement. Here’s a simple break-down of how the granular formula is made: the cow manure is first composted with silage (preserved fodder used for feeding cattle usually), then aerated and heated to 170 degrees to kill pathogens and weed seeds. The composted manure is then fed to earthworms and their waste is collected, bagged, and used as a rich soil amendment.

To create the liquid tonic, they take the collected worm castings and add soluble kelp and humate. Humate comes from various natural sources (like broken down leaves) and contains lots of good nutrients that will help feed the beneficial bacteria we want. The kelp helps add an extra boost of potassium and trace minerals. They brew the mixture to create a final product that is a versatile concentrate full of beneficial microbes, cytokinins (molecules that encourage plant growth), and nutrients that encourage maximum plant health and growth.

Granular vs. Liquid Tonic

As mentioned, Full Circle makes both a granular and a liquid form of this plant super-food. It is recommend that you use the granular formula when you plant in May, and then you follow-up with the liquid tonic starting in June.

How-to Use

Full Circle Granular Formula

• You can mix Full Circle granular fertilizer into potting/topsoil or use it as a top-dressing.
• When working it into soil, mix at a 1:10-1:20 ratio.
• For top-dressing, use approximately 3 tbsp for an 8-10 inch pot or 4 tbsp for a 12-16 in pot. Continue to top-dress every 3-4 weeks before watering.
• Alternatively, use 4 cups per 100 square feet.
• If fungal infestation exists, double your coverage, and repeat every two weeks for six weeks.

Full-Circle Tonic

Full Circle Premium Plant Tonic is a concentrated worm-casting aerated compost tea (ACT), packed with minerals and beneficial bacteria to inspire plant vigor.

It is great for general fertilizing while watering, inoculating seeds, hydroponics, and soaking/misting roots that are not underground, like orchids.

• Dilute 2oz per quart (32oz) of clean water.
• Use twice per month, up to 4 times a month.

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Do not use Full Circle products in conjunction with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides. The introduction of synthetic products can counteract what these products do. Synthetic chemicals are harmful to soil microbes and with continued use will wipe out the majority of the beneficial microbes we are cultivating.

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Want to learn more? Head over to the Full Circle website for more information.

Here’s a good article from the owner explaining the basics of soil biology, which gives some clarification as to how Full Circle works so well.

Pick up the granular or tonic form at our garden center!