Safer® Brand Organic Nutrients
A Better Choice for High Yields & The Environment?
Present Day Natural Technologies
If you are reading this, it’s a pretty good bet that you are a savvy gardener with a level of awareness in the wide range of agricultural technologies that are available to you.
Looking back to the immediate past, there has been a very strong reliance on chemical formulations for modern crop production. In some instances, there has been some serious harms done to people, animals and the environment as a direct or indirect result.
However, nobody likes to take chances when it comes to their favourite plants. As a result, we have become somewhat dependent on the consistency that chemical formulations offer, especially when it comes to fertilizers.
Until recently, organic fertilizers and nutrients that performed well in a wide range of growing conditions and that had a stable shelf life while at a reasonable price were considered to be more of a “pipe dream” than a growing reality.
Usually, organic gardening methods have not been the best choice for indoor growers—it’s just not a good idea to be composting indoors in most instances.
Most serious growers and home gardeners are looking for more than basic fertilizer formulations. Feed Charts or Crop Feeding Programs have become a staple or even closely guarded secrets with some. Crop Feeding Charts provide a visual reference point for what to feed crops and at what times in the early, vegetative, pre flower, bloom and ripening plant development phases.
Above: A Complete Organic Nutrient Kit, Complete with Feeding Charts
With organics, it’s typically been a mix n match (or “hit and miss”) type of affair to create a crop feeding program, especially if you aren’t used to shopping at a hydroponics retailer that carries “specialty” crop nutrients.
The Safer Brand Nutrient Kit we received and trialled under a range of growing conditions at Grozine is what really peaked our interest in getting to speak with the good folks at Safer Brand. Check Out the Company History We UnEarthed and Shared Further Into This Article–Highly Refreshing, We Found!
The Safer Brand Nutrient Kit
More and more people want to grow at home, and largely for their health and enjoyment.
At the same time, there is a growing awareness for organic production methods—however, consistency, affordability, ease of use, performance and availability haven’t been readily available in an organic nutrient line up.
We get to see lots of top shelf growing technologies as an established hydroponics publication, and while we’re often impressed, this nutrient kit sent a strong signal to us that things are about to go very big in the area of high tech home growing in the immediate future.
Super user friendly instructions that are highly visual make a very compressive feeding program easy to follow and measure. On average, the grower is using around three products for most growth phases from the kit that contained five different nutrient components:
Three of the five Safer Brand nutrient components carry the OMRI Certified organic badge, and we have since learned the other two are being reviewed by OMRI at the time of this writing.
This program works and it’s organic. We’ve tried it in both hydroponics and soilless growing conditions in our research greenhouse and have also received very strong positive feedback from indoor gardeners trialling the products as per the feeding chart supplied with the kit.
Above: The Safer Brand Nutrient Kit was Complete and Easy to Use, Feeding Strengths Tested on Target
Indoor Gardening Trends & Tomorrow’s Landscape
One thing we’ve seen lately in the hydroponics industry is a “mainstream gardening” corporate presence. Largely this presence is not in the way of new offerings or innovations, rather, buying up existing and established brands that are well recognized by home hydroponics growers.
Seems so far the mainstream corporations serving as buyers of these hydroponic brands don’t necessarily have the strongest or best received track records where most of the people who support such products through purchases are concerned.
One of the larger outfits presently buying up hydroponic brands actually has a criminal conviction for harming wildlife and the environment (it was found they knowingly sold bird seed that was contaminated, ie poison). We won’t even get into some of the other products they have made available for consumers in the way of insecticides and herbicides.
As a result of this trend in changes, there’s some strong mixed feelings about the which way the winds seem to be blowing for home hydroponics growers in the indoor gardening community.
Above: Growing with the Times; Mainstream High-Tech Hydroponics Gardening Gear
All in all, we at Grozine find it highly refreshing and inspirational to see very well established companies with proven track records taking a strong interest in developing and offering products for hydroponics and urbanfarmers that not only work great for us in terms of yields or crop quality, but that also offer a strong commitment to our health as consumers of hydroponics goods and the environment we live in.
Friendlier Garden Products That Work, Enter Safer Brand
As enlightened consumers and gardeners become more aware of the impact that their growing endeavours may have not only on the health of themselves and their family, the realization that what we put into the environment is going to come back to us creates a demand for products that are both friendlier AND effective to help grow crops with.
[quote]After all, the most powerful vote we appear to have in our present day is the dollar we spend, ie who gets it and why them.[/quote]
Safer Brand, as we know it today, has long been head of this curve and is a leader in supplying both home gardeners and conscientious members of the agricultural sector with solutions that met this criteria since the late 1970’s.
Just about any gardener and especially hydroponic gardeners are familiar with Safer’s Insecticidal Soap formulations for garden pest control. For a lot of growers, it’s an effective and safe to apply first line of defence in protecting their favourite plants from insects like spider mites, aphids and other garden pests that can devastate crops if left unchecked.
At Grozine, we often wonder who or what’s behind the products we like use. Often, there are interesting people and stories, especially when you are talking about the hydroponics industry or the companies that helped to build it over the last decades.
After all, the most powerful vote we appear to have in our present day is the dollar we spend, ie who gets it and why them.
We caught up with the folks at Safer Brand to learn more about their roots—and to pick their brains for as much info as we could gleam surrounding their newly released full line of organic nutrients and crop feeding schedule—and WOW, we are sure glade we did. Interesting stuff—none other than John Cleese was their original Spokesperson–just for starters.
Above: John Cleese, Gardening Spokesperson
Let’s back track a little first, because after all, every journey begins with the first step.
The Safer Brand as we call it present day grew out of an outfit called Ringer Corporation. You can see from this old catalog HERE, was quite ahead of it’s time. Seeing this further cultivates our hopes and belief that the Safer Brand line of products has always been committed to providing leading edge garden products that are safe for you, your family and the environment.
Above: The Ringer Corporation, Friendlier Thinking for Homes & Families
The Ringer “Attack” line of garden products (see image below) was offering natural technologies to control pests that for some us are still considered “new” technologies at present day including Bacillus thurgiensis, popillae and Nosema locustae. Among these still very relevant and leading edge natural technologies, we of course have our Insecticidal Soaps.
Above: Ringer “Attack” Garden Controls; Ahead of the Curve, Most Certainly!
To be very clear on the subject of “insecticidal soap”, The Safer Brand variety we use today is not the same as “home remedy” mixes made in a counter top blender using a range of household ingredients.
The differences are significant from both an effectiveness and formulation aspect—although both types of “insecticidal soaps” are much better for you, your pets and the environment versus chemical sprays that are notorious for their ill effects and creating a crop dependency on them.
The original inventors, are George S. Puritch and Sergi F. Condrashoff who developed and registered the product in the late 1970’s.
Here’s a link to the patent for the “fatty acids” that help to make their formulation for use as insect control using organic insecticides so effective:
https://www.google.com/patents/US4861762
Eventually, Ringer Corporation products gave way to the Safer Brand Corporation and are widely distributed throughout North America.
Woodstream is a Canadian Company largely responsible for the growth and widespread proliferation of the line up and have been in business for over 150 years. They began selling Mouse Traps (that are still around today) to the Hudson’s Bay Corporation.
Talk about an established company.
In our opinion, it is fortunate that choices still exist that allow us as educated and experienced growers to choose highly effective and leading edge natural technologies in the way of crop fertilizers and feeding programs.
As consumers, when we buy things were are often casting our strongest vote we have in terms of what our tomorrows may look like.
With the level of technology that is available today, coupled with economies of scale related to consumer demand for high end gardening products, there is no reason why anybody has to choose garden products that don’t represent their beliefs in order to gain the level of performance they seek or have become accustomed to.