Sorry not trying to roast you, but drives me crazy that you’ve been sold a load of nonsense about how FF soil is some super soil and using mycorrhizal/microorganisms products are beneficial. It’s like strapping a spoiler on your Honda Civic hoping you’ll win a Formula 1 race. A car spoiler does have a use, but freeway driving isn’t one of them. It’s not that these microorganisms products are completely worthless, but they aren’t a magic bullet and unless you have all the basic dialed in, a complete waste of your money.
I can’t speak to the Stepwell products or marine phytoplankton. But really KIS. If your dog was starving and you had a choice between a can of dog food or phytoplankton, which will you give your dog? It’s not that bloom boosters or phytoplankton are bad, but they’re not going to providing all the nutrients, vitamins and minerals that your plant (or dog) needs. And unless you’re really experienced horticulturalist it’s much better to stick with compound/mixed fertilizer product (which contains the full complement of NPK and micro nutrients. Going back to the dog analogy, people do make their own dog food. But most people aren’t biologist or nutritionist and unless you know the fundamentals, are better off feeding their dogs food made by experts.)
It’s great that your growing organically. Lots of good reasons to continue. But for being so basic (humans have been organic growing for over 100,000 years) it’s definitely harder to do indoors than using synthetic fertilizers. Mainly because you’re trying to recreate and environment in your closet that nature has spent millions of years perfecting, and much harder to make corrections. Organic fertilizers aren’t plant available. This means that there’s an intermediate steps between applying the fertilizer and your plants being feed (and where your GW & Recharge products fit in). But it’s no easy task to figure out how how long any specific fertilizers will take before it’s of any use. For instance you may read about using egg shells for Ca. Sure egg shells are fine to throw in your compost, but the Ca won’t be available to your plants for many years. Rock phosphate will take 1/2 year before it provides phosphate for your veggies. When you look at a product like Stepwell Soil Bloom, you need to look at the ingredients, and then figure out if these ingredients will actually be plant available in 8 weeks before you harvest. The alfalfa will, I doubt the wollastonite will (but honestly have no freaking clue).
So don’t be afraid to just pick up a bottle of Dyna-Grow, Jacks, General Hydroponics or any of the other “Grow” blends. Then as you gain more gardening experience, you’ll be better positioned to use more and more natural products. And just to be clear, using a synthetic fertilizers isn’t going to poisoning your organics. Even if you’re doing great with your organic grow, using a synthetic fertilizer won’t burn up your microorganisms or nuke your environment. You can safely mix synthetics with your organics to get yourself back on track.
