FAQ
You’ve got questions about Jocelyn’s Soil Booster — and we’ve got answers. And if there’s something you want to know that we haven’t addressed below, feel free to reach out to us anytime through our social media accounts, or via email.
Why use Worm Manure?
Soil is the foundation to all ecosystems in nature. All life relies on the soil's ability to support growth. And a little known fact is the soil itself is teeming with millions of micro-organisms or microbes working every day to break down nutrients to make life possible. Worms are a keystone species in these soil ecosystems. As they digest material, they break down the soil aggregates and enhance the microbial activity.
Jocelyn has replicated this natural process to produce Worm Manure that brings Mother Nature's processes to your plants own ecosystems. Worm manure contains microbes that transform soil minerals into plant nutrients, which the plant uses to grow healthy and strong roots, stems, leaves, fruits and veggies. Worm castings also contain natural growth, stimulators which trigger plants to grow quickly.
Once the microbes are in the soil, they help restore soil structure, by producing the glues and fine strands that allow soil to have air pockets and water pockets, allowing plants to access water whenever they need it. Plus, worm castings contain 50% more humus than regular topsoil; humus has the capacity to store large amounts of carbon, making it an effective climate-change fighter. Think of Soil Booster like an a la carte menu: plants ask for what they need by releasing specific carbohydrate molecules into the soil, and Soil Booster’s microbes go out — much farther than plant roots can reach — to find or manufacture the meal that has been requested. The microbes deliver the requested nutrients to the plant root system in exchange for more sugar.
How do we make our Worm Manure?
Jocelyn's Soil Booster Worm Manure is made in 3 steps, using an advanced vermicomposting system. The first step is to collect food waste destined for landfill as a feed stock for our worms. Food waste brings variety to the worms diet, allowing them to produce a diverse microbial population. This step also keeps food waste out of landfill, lowering carbon emissions and contributing to the regenerative movement.
The second step is to feed the food waste to our millions of Red Wiggler worms. The worms do what they do best, breaking down food waste into accessible minerals with all the beneficial microbes necessary to deliver nutrients to your plants.
Finally, our team works hard to harvest and process the castings to ensure that each batch customers receive is of the highest quality. Not only that, but that the Worm Manure is produced in an ethical and environmentally sound way that takes care of everyone involved, including the worms!
What plants can I use Jocelyn’s Soil Booster products on?
Jocelyn’s Soil Booster products can be used to enrich the soil around whatever type of plant you’re growing, from fruits, veggies, and flowers to indoor plants and bud. Our products are safe for all plants and won't burn the roots of young seedlings.
What is the N-P-K of Jocelyn's Soil Booster products?
NPK, which stands for nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium, is a common measure of how potent a fertilizer is. However, we don't use NPK at Jocelyn's Soil Booster because we don't make fertilizers! Fertilizers force-feeds a limited number of nutrients to plants, which then quickly wash away after the first rainfall or watering. Soil additives (or soil enhancers) like Jocelyn’s Soil Booster build a healthy, diverse ecosystem of soil organisms that respond directly to the needs of each individual plant, doing all the work to find nutrients themselves.
What is the shelf life of Jocelyn's Soil Booster products?
Jocelyn recommends storing our products at room temperature. In these conditions, Jocelyn's Soil Booster products retain their efficacy for a year. After a year, products don't go bad but begin to lose their boosting power.
What if my Jocelyn's Soil Booster product freezes?
Some microbial life will go dormant in a freeze. It's best to replicate Mother Nature's thaw by bringing it back to temperature slowly in the fridge. The microbial life will slowly reactivate and replicate once again.
How does Jocelyn’s Soil Booster contribute to regenerative growing practices?
One of the core tenets of regenerative growing is developing healthy soil, and reusing your growing medium — in other words, your soil — as much as possible. Because Jocelyn’s Soil Booster rebuilds soil structure and contributes to the development of carbon-rich humus, it’s an invaluable tool in your regenerative toolkit, enabling you to successfully grow plants year after year using healthy, climate change-fighting soil. Check out our blogs for more information on the science behind regenerative growing.
Why is it more expensive than traditional fertilizers?
You may notice that, gram-for-gram, Jocelyn’s Soil Booster is costlier than conventional fertilizers or manure products. This is, simply, because it’s a highly concentrated product: because Jocelyn’s Soil Booster is so rich in beneficial microbes, you’ll need to use much less of it on your plants than you would fertilizer or manure. Of the thousands of different types of microbes in Jocelyn’s Soil Booster, each plant will pick and choose a few that it likes best, and will then increase the population of these preferred microbes. A little of Jocelyn's Soil Booster goes a long, long way.