Liquid botanical activator with aloe vera

The 250 ml bottle is enough for a few pots, the one-litre bottle suits a family vegetable garden and the 5 litre container suits greenhouses or large gardens. As with any organic product, prepare the solution at the time of use rather than several days in advance, and rinse the sprayer with clean water after each use so that the nozzle does not clog. The neat product has a pH of 4.15, slightly acidic: measure the pH of the final solution after adding it to your fertiliser, especially in coco fibre.

The range's feeding schedule changes the dose over the course of the season rather than fixing it once and for all. It starts at 2 ml per litre for cuttings and during growth, rises to 3 ml in the first week of flowering, to 4 ml in the second, then to 5 ml for the following two weeks, before gradually dropping back to 1 ml at the end of the cycle. This curve follows the plant's activity: you give more when it is building its flowers and fruit, and cut back as it approaches harvest. If you grow in a peat-free compost, the dedicated schedule follows the same curve with a lower peak, at 4 ml per litre.

This schedule applies to most fruiting vegetables grown in pots, such as tomatoes, peppers and aubergines, whose flowering is spread over several weeks. For salads, herbs or leafy vegetables harvested before they flower, simply stay at the growth step, at 2 ml per litre. Measure each dose with a syringe or a graduated glass rather than with the bottle cap, and do not exceed 5 ml per litre, the upper dose on the technical data sheet.

Acti-Vera is dosed for watering crops grown in soil, potting compost or coir, not for water where fish, bacteria and plants live together, so you do not pour it into the pond of an aquaponic system. Its iron content might suggest that it corrects the yellowing common in aquaponic plants, but that job belongs to a DTPA chelated iron, dosed to maintain around 2 mg/L of iron in the system water, and safe for fish.

It does, however, find its place in the nursery, away from the system, when you start your plants in coco fibre pots before setting them in the grow bed. Watered with an organic solution and Acti-Vera during their first few weeks, the plants form their roots in a living grow medium; simply rinse the base of the pot with clean water when you install them in the system. It is also suited to soil beds and to the pots around your setup. The article on the nitrogen cycle in aquaponics explains how the plants in the system receive their own nutrients.