Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.

Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is Garrett Juice Plus.  Along with Dr. Earth Organic fertilizer it makes up the core of my 7 part fertility program for maximum garden production.

First right up front I will tell you that you don’t have to buy Garrett Juice, Howard Garrett (aka The Dirt Doctor) publishes the recipe to make it yourself right on his site.  In fact for many years he didn’t even have a commercial product available.  Eventually he realized that not everyone has all day to garden and some of us would be happy to pay 30-40 bucks for a gallon of his stuff.

It may seem expensive but one gallon of concentrate makes 64 gallons of spray.  Consider if you wanted to spray an acre you would use 35 gallons.  This means that a one gallon jug makes enough spray for almost 2 acres.  Once you consider this the home gardener buying it pre made starts to make a ton of sense.

Over the years I developed my own approach to this, you can see I have zero brand loyalty here, each of the seven products is from a different company, why, I found the best of each category.  The seven products are…

• Garrett Juice Plus or Garrett Juice Pro
• Dr. Earth Premium Gold Organic Fertilizer
• Endo Mycorrhizae Fungal Inoculation from S.A.T. Inc
• G.S. Plant Foods Liquid Kelp Fertilizer
• Hydro Organics Cal-n-Mag Plant Food
• Fishnure Fertilizer
• Liquinox 3032 Iron Zinc Chelated Solution

I also want to be totally upfront about something.  Garrett Juice being shipped by the liquid gallon makes it cost more online then it does in a local store.  So if they sell it where you live, in local stores (Lowes and some garden stores carry it in my area) you may be better off getting this item locally.

So how do I use Garrett Juice?  I spray everything with it, my trees, my plants, etc.  I also add garlic pepper tea when I spray it often to help with pets.  I do a soil drench in my garden beds with it twice a year as well.  If you saw some of the videos of this last season you know my plants blow and go like crazy on this regime.

There is another great use for this stuff and I have confirmed it to be as simple as this.  Get some orange oil, add an ounces to a gallon of water with two ounces of Garrett Juice and you have fire ant killer.  There used to be a product called Antifuego that you could buy for this, but due to the cost of shipping they no longer ship.  So now Garrett Juice plus some orange oil does the same thing.

The way you use it is put 2 oz of Garrett Juice (I use the plain version for this to save money and buy it locally) and 2 TBS of orange oil into a two gallon watering can, fill with water and slowly soak mounds.  This will melt all the ants and queens and you should have a dead mound in a day.  We have tons of fire ants here, this has been a God send in controlling them.

Okay so there are three levels of Garrett Juice, so what is the difference…

• Garrett Juice – Is made with compost tea, apple cider vinegar, molasses and liquid seaweed.
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• Garrett Juice Plus – Is made with all of the above plus liquid fish emulsion.
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• Garrett Juice Pro – Is made with everything above plus beneficial soil organisms that are alive.  Hence it has a maximum shelf life of 18 months, but I try to use it up in a year or less for maximum effectiveness.  I do personally have some doubts about the long term viability of the living microorganisms in a sealed liquid product.  However, Howard recently said on his radio show that they are viable for about 18 months from date of manufacture if kept at reasonable temps.  I have listened to the guy on and off for about 15 years and take him at his word.

So give Garrett Juice Plus or Garrett Juice Pro a try today, gardening season is upon us.  For maximum success this year I recommend my full seven part fertility regime, and remember out of those four it is quite possible that even though I am linking to Amazon here, you can save money on Garrett Juice by buying it locally, specifically if you want the base formula or the plus, again I can’t seem to find the pro version anywhere around here and Howard lives in Dallas!

Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com

P.S. – I brought this around today because we are hitting what I call “the turn”.  Summer is still here, it will be hot for 4-8 more weeks depending on where you live but the turn is turning.  Even on days when it is 100 out here the mornings are starting to get cooler, the days are growing shorter.  During this time you need to be using this or another good liquid feed along with a good organic solid fertilizer (like Dr. Earth 4-4-4) is the quick and easy way to get plants ready for your second flush, help them through the “dog days” and get the soil ready for fall planting.  Also while I do have 7 items in my ideal fertility system, if you made me pick only two, I’d pick Garrett Juice and Dr. Earth 4-4-4.