
Featherweight Champion
Paonia Soil Co. has been perfecting their soil recipes since 1990. They learned first hand that the best technologies don’t work against nature, they work with it. When they brought our mixes to market in 2012, their family-owned business changed the way Colorado grows.
Featherweight champion soil has a medium level of nutrients
It’s perfect for starting seeds, and keeping the starts fed. It’s perfect for delicate, low feeding plants like houseplants, perennials, trees and some other plants. It also works great in situations where you want all the benefits of our amazing compost and mastodon peat but still want to feed liquid nutrients as well.
The Ingredients
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Coconut Husk Peat
Coco peat is a proven natural alternative to mined peat moss. Using it helps slow down peat extraction from environmentally sensitive swamps worldwide. Coco coir peat will last three times as long as peat moss and sphagnum peat moss. Unlike peat moss, coco coir is hydrophilic and will re-wet easily without using wetting agents. It can hold up to 8 times its own weight in water. Used as a growing medium/potting medium, coco coir outperforms most of the popular brands of peat and sphagnum peat.
Coco coir peat promotes healthy root growth in plants. This eco-friendly alternative to peat moss is derived from the husk of the coconut. Coco coir is an excellent growing medium for both commercial and home gardening applications. The hydroponics and horticulture industries have observed that plants grown with the aid of coir develop larger roots, stems and blooms. This is because unlike ordinary soil, which is usually compacted, coco peat provides more breathing space and aeration for plant roots, resulting in better growth.
Coco peat is included in Original Bomb™, 50/50 and Raised Bed Mix, and is not included in Sphagnum Bomb™.
Dynamic Dressing
High nitrogen, Biodynamically prepared chicken compost, fully composted at over 140F and then cured. Non windrow turner turned and perfectly carbon to nitrogen balanced with natural sawdust for higher microbe species and more nutrients. In addition to the biodynamic preps that are inserted into the pile we inoculate with beneficial nematodes as well as the Stratiolalapse S beneficial. These great micro-arthropods will patrol your soil looking for pest insects to devoure and provide the crucial final layer of the soil food web delivering the organic nutrients to your plants.
Sphagnum Peat
Sphagnum is a genus of approximately 380 accepted species of mosses, commonly known as “peat moss” though they are different as peat moss has a more acidic pH level. Accumulations of Sphagnum can store water, since both living and dead plants can hold large quantities of water inside their cells; plants may hold 16 to 26 times as much water as their dry weight, depending on the species. The empty cells help retain water in drier conditions.
Our Coarse Grade Peat Moss is ideal for plant propagation. It boasts an excellent air filled porosity (AFP), allowing roots to grow and expand to their maximum capacity. It is also preferred by mushroom growers for its fibre structure and water absorption properties.
Sphagnum peat is included in Sphagnum Bomb™, 50/50 and Raised Bed Mix, and is not included in Original Bomb™.
Azomite
A natural trace mineral source, AZOMITE® is unique highly mineralized ore that is a complex silica (Hydrated Sodium Calcium Aluminosilicate or HSCAS) mined in Utah from a deposit left by an ancient volcanic eruption that was ejected out of the side of a mountain. The volcanic ash filled a small nearby sea bed. The combination of seawater, fed by hundreds of rivers rich in minerals, and the rare and abundant minerals present in volcanic ash created the AZOMITE® deposit which is found nowhere else on Earth. The deposit is very old, perhaps as much as 30 million years. Today, the geologic characteristic is an outcropping known as a hogback.
Mastadon Peat
Harvested from an archeological excavation in the Colorado Rockies, this amazing organic material is over 45 million years old and has large amounts of humic and fulvic acid. It was the ancient plant mater surrounding actual mastodon and mammoth remains.
Humic Acid makes nutrients more absorbable. Essentially highly concentrated ancient organic matter. Humic acid is a principal component of humic substances, which are the major organic constituents of soil (humus), peat, coal, many upland streams, dystrophic lakes, and ocean water.[1] It is produced by biodegradation of dead organic matter. It is not a single acid; rather, it is a complex mixture of many different acids containing carboxyl and phenolate groups so that the mixture behaves functionally as a dibasic acid or, occasionally, as a tribasic acid.
Beneficial Bacteria Inoculant
13 strains of beneficial bacteria break down nutrients and crowd out pathogens.
Mycorrhizal Inoculant
12 strains of symbiotic root organisms that increase uptake of nutrients and water.
Worm Castings
Vermicast (also called worm castings, worm humus, worm manure, or worm faeces) is the end-product of the breakdown of organic matter by earthworms. These castings have been shown to contain reduced levels of contaminants and a higher saturation of nutrients than the organic materials before vermicomposting.
Vermicompost contains water-soluble nutrients and is an excellent, nutrient-rich organic fertilizer and soil conditioner.
Perlite
Heat expanded volcanic rock is the world’s premier organic aeration and drainage agent. This means that it lets water drain into the mix more quickly and then pulls air in as it drains out. See more about the advantages of perlite here. It is not Styrofoam as some people assume. It is rock.
Kelp Meal
Kelp meal is a very high quality organic fertilizer. With an N-P-K ratio of approximately 1-0-2, it is a good source of nitrogen and potassium. It also contains minerals, amino acids, and trace amounts of other micronutrients. Kelp meal is seaweed, specifically Ascophyllus nodosum, and is harvested from the ocean. We primarily add it for it’s root stimulant and as a tonic for transplant shock.
Citric Acid
A small amount is our final effort to correct the typically Alkaline water and soil conditions in Wyoming.
Dried Molasses
Feeds beneficial bacterial microbes and adds carbohydrates to enhance the flavor of fruits and vegetables.
Greensand
Ancient sand deposit provides silica & potassium.
Feathermeal
High nitrogen protein and excellent fungal organism food. Feathermeal has a good mix of soluble and non-available nitrogen to provide a great start and a long time release that you can still feed lightly on top of, if desired.
Fishbone Meal
High in nitrogen, protein and phosphorous another excellent beneficial microbe food.
Fossilized Seabird Guano
An ancient and naturally chelated source of phosphorous. Our two source method insures that plants, and especially flowering plants have what they need.
Natural Potash
An excellent natural source of potassium that is slightly more available than the green sand in the soil food web for immediate delivery.
Gypsum
Adds calcium and sulfur, both critical, increasing the calcium to magnesium ratio while dropping p.H. Gypsum’s bound sulfur is much less fungicidal than other sulfurs, helping microbes, yet still pushing against the dolomite to drop us closer to our 6.5 optimal p.H.
Dolomite Lime
Adds calcium & magnesium. Dolomite is ground natural limestone and will buffer acidic conditions yet never raise above 7.
Organic Wetting Agent
An organic, yucca-based wetting agent with saponins that increases your crop’s water and nurtrient uptake and gets water into our mix even faster.
- Saponins improve the soil’s absorption and dispersal of both nutrients and water by reducing surface tension. This allows plant roots to absorb more of what is available to them as the water and nutrients are distributed more evenly.
- Yucca extracts reduce salt buildup by reducing dry pocket formation within the soil and increasing permeability in clay soils. In the case of excessive mineral buildup, yucca extracts will reduce the amount of water necessary to flush the soil.
- Saponins and complex carbohydrates in yucca extracts provide slow-release food sources for many soil-dwelling microorganisms. As a result, many compost tea recipes use yucca extracts. Yucca extracts commonly contain micronutrients such as iron, zinc, manganese and copper as well.
- Yucca contains antioxidants (i.e. salicylic acid, vitamin C) that protect cells from free radical damage. Yucca extracts also stimulate plants’ immune systems to produce their own protective hormones boosting insect and disease resistance.