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Rootwise Mycrobe Complete - 2 oz is backordered and will ship as soon as it is back in stock.
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Rootwise Mycrobe Complete - 2 oz is backordered and will ship as soon as it is back in stock.
Mycrobe Complete is a dry, full-spectrum soil inoculant. Twenty species of beneficial bacteria, mycorrhizae, and fungi in one bag. You mix a very small dose into water and drench the root zone, whether you are firing up a brand new soil mix or keeping a no-till bed alive through its fifth cycle.
Rootwise Soil Dynamics is a Colorado company. We started working with them back when they were down in Paonia, about an hour up the road from our factory in Montrose, and we have stayed with them for over a decade since. The organisms are grown in the United States by a well regarded lab that uses DNA sequencing in its own process. In a category where plenty of bags are filled with brokered overseas powder that nobody ever tested, that matters, and it is the biggest reason we have never gone looking for a cheaper inoculant.
1 Tbsp per 5 gallons of water to start. 1.5 tsp per 5 gallons for every application after that.
Water your plants first, then drench the root zone with about a cup of solution per plant. Repeat every 2 weeks, and at every transplant.
Through veg. About a week before you flip, run one transitional dose alongside Bio-Phos, then hand off to Bio-Phos for flower.
2 oz or 4 oz covers one or two tents for well over a year. 1 lb and up is farm and commercial scale.
The Rootwise Combo Pack bundles this with Bio-Phos and the enzymes at a discount.
That is one tablespoon doing all of that, not one bag. Five gallons is 80 cups, and a cup per plant is all it takes once the soil underneath is already watered. A 2 oz bag holds roughly thirteen of those five gallon batches at the follow-up rate.
Pro tip, not a rule
These organisms ship dormant. If you mix your dose and let it sit for about 30 minutes before you water it in, you give them a head start on coming out of dormancy, and that may get you more out of the same amount of product.
Do not let it become a barrier though. I usually mix and go right away, and it works. If you have the half hour to spare, take it. If you do not, water anyway.
| Application | Rate | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Simple drench, initial inoculation | 1 Tbsp per 5 gal | First application |
| Simple drench, follow-up | 1.5 tsp per 5 gal | Every 2 weeks through veg, and at every transplant |
| Transplant and clone dip | 1 tsp per gal | Submerge the root mass as you transplant |
| Large garden and farm, initial | 6 g per cu yd | Blend with enough water to saturate the root zone |
| Large garden and farm, follow-up | 3 g per cu yd | Ongoing |
Notice that every follow-up dose is exactly half the initial dose. That holds on the container rate and the farm rate both. Your first application does the heavy lifting of establishing the population. Everything after that is maintenance.
Do not skip the transition
About a week before you flip to flower, run one application of Mycrobe Complete and Bio-Phos together, with the enzymes. This is the handoff, and most growers miss it entirely.
By that point your mycorrhizal network is already built, so you are not reapplying to establish anything. You are bridging from the biology that builds the network to the biology that mobilizes phosphorus, before the plant actually needs it. After that one transitional dose, Mycrobe Complete is done for the run.
A level teaspoon of Mycrobe Complete weighs about 3 grams. That is the figure behind every gram number on this page. Diatomaceous earth is light and fluffy, so a packed scoop will read heavier than a loose one.
You do not really need it, though. The drench directions are written in teaspoons and tablespoons, so a measuring spoon is all this takes. The gram figures here are for people running scales and for the coverage math, and the farm rates are printed in grams to begin with.
You can, and it works. Just know the tradeoff going in. This is a concentrate, and a liquid drench puts it exactly where the roots are. Applying it dry scatters it around instead, so you burn through more product to get the same result. If you have the choice, drench it.
Sprinkling the transplant hole. Dust the hole before you set the plant in so the product lands right against the root ball. Plenty of growers do it this way and there is nothing wrong with it. It is just less ideal and more wasteful than mixing that same dose into water and pouring it straight into the root zone. If you are transplanting anyway, the clone dip on the label is the better version of this idea.
Incorporating into a new soil mix. Same idea, with one condition attached. The soil needs real moisture in it and it needs to be planted right away, whether that is your main crop or a cover crop. Inoculated soil that sits in totes or bags develops dry pockets and hot pockets, and survivability drops off hard. If the soil is going to sit, wait and drench after you plant instead.
This is the part people get wrong, and it is the reason a two ounce bag looks expensive until you run the numbers.
When you read "1 tablespoon per 5 gallons," the instinct is to think you need 5 gallons of solution to water your garden. You do not. You water your plants normally first. After that, all you need is enough inoculant solution to carry the biology into the root zone, and that is about a cup per plant.
Every dose below is a first dose. After that, cut it in half and keep it there for the rest of the run. Spoon measures because that is what people have in a drawer, with grams underneath for anyone on a scale or working at farm rates.
These are rounded to the nearest spoon you actually own, so they land within about a quarter of the label rate either way. At these amounts that is pennies and it does no harm. The 5 gallon row is the label rate exactly.
| Your setup | Solution to mix | First dose |
|---|---|---|
| 4 plants | 1 quart | 1/8 tsp0.4 g |
| 8 plants | 2 quarts | 1/4 tsp0.75 g |
| 16 plants | 1 gallon | 1/2 tsp1.5 g |
| 32 plants | 2 gallons | 1 1/4 tsp3.75 g |
| 80 plants | 5 gallons | 1 Tbsp9 g |
Practical advice
An eighth of a teaspoon is about as small as a kitchen spoon set goes, so at four plants you are already at the floor of what you can measure. Just mix one gallon. A gallon is easy to measure, it treats up to 16 plants, and it costs you under two grams of product on your first application and about nine tenths of a gram on each one after. Use what you need on your plants and put the rest on your outdoor beds or houseplants. Do not save mixed solution for next week.
Everything above teaches the efficient method: water first, then drench the root zone with a small concentrated dose. We teach it that way on purpose. The point of an inoculant is getting organisms into direct contact with roots so they can colonize, and a targeted root zone application is the best return on every gram you paid for.
But if you are running two to four plants and the math has you trying to eyeball a quarter of a gram, drop the precision. Mix your dose into your full watering volume and water normally. You will use more product than you strictly need, and that is the entire downside. There is no risk to the plant, no risk to the soil, and nothing to feel bad about.
At four plants that difference is pennies. At scale it is not, and that is exactly why we teach the targeted method first. An operation dosing its whole irrigation volume instead of the root zone can waste thousands of dollars a season on product that never touches a root. A tent is not a farm. Do whichever version you will actually keep doing on schedule.
Applications are the honest unit here, because veg length varies enormously between growers. One application below means one gallon of solution mixed at the follow-up rate, covering up to 16 plants. A veg cycle means an eight week veg dosed every two weeks, plus the transitional application at the flip.
| Size | Grams | Gallon applications | 8-week vegs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 oz | 57 g | ~63 | ~9 |
| 4 oz | 113 g | ~126 | ~18 |
| 8 oz | 227 g | ~252 | ~36 |
| 1 lb | 454 g | ~504 | ~72 |
| 5 lb bucket | 2,268 g | ~2,520 | ~360 |
Count your own cycles. Most indoor growers veg four to six weeks, which is three or four applications rather than the five the table assumes, so a run costs them less than that. Outdoor growers and no-till beds run far longer and will use more. Either way you are spending under a gram per application. Whatever your season looks like, this is not the line item that decides your budget.
Which size to get. Running one or two tents, get the 2 oz or 4 oz. It is plenty and it is the cheapest way to find out whether you like it. If you already know you want it and you would rather buy once and stop thinking about it, the 8 oz is a genuinely good call. Dry dormant inoculant stores well, so there is no clock to race. Above that, the 1 lb and 5 lb are built for farms and commercial operations working off the cubic yard rate, and for grow crews splitting an order.
Different organisms in your soil handle different work. Some tear down raw organic matter. Some fix nitrogen out of the air. Some free up phosphorus and other minerals that are chemically locked and unavailable. Some colonize the root surface and trade sugars for nutrients. Some just hold territory so pathogens have nowhere to move in.
Mycrobe Complete carries multiple species from each of those function groups at agricultural strength, rather than loading up on one organism at a huge count. That is the entire design philosophy behind it, and it is the same one we use with minerals. Balance beats brute force. Dumping a massive dose of a single microbe is the biological version of dumping a bag of nitrogen and hoping it works out.
The part that matters most
Consistent, moderate doses do far more for your soil than one heavy dose. If you take nothing else from this page, take that. Small amounts on a schedule beat a big slug at transplant.
This widens your margin for success. That is the honest pitch, and it is a bigger deal than it sounds.
In living soil, nutrition is not a number you dial in. What your plants can actually reach depends on moisture, temperature, organic matter, mineral balance, and above all on whether you have the biology to cycle any of it. Keep that population high and consistent and you buy yourself room to be imperfect everywhere else. That is the real return on running a biological program.
Where this product came from. Kevin at Rootwise built Mycrobe Complete coming off outdoor seasons where he was pushing heavy phosphorus and paying for it with Pythium pressure. In the seasons after he brought a full biological program in, he could feed noticeably less and still finish healthier plants. That is the whole idea in one sentence. When the nutrition already sitting in your soil gets cycled and made available, you stop needing to force feed it, and heavy feeding is behind a lot of the problems growers end up blaming on something else.
What to watch for. Your mulch and chop-and-drop layer breaking down noticeably faster. Better root mass when you pull a plant out of the pot. Plants that hold up when conditions slip. Nutrients going further than they used to. And the one growers bring up to us unprompted, a fuller terpene profile once a biological program is running. These show up across a run, not in a few days.
| Component | Percent | What it is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Diatomaceous earth | 85% | The carrier, and a clean one. Not talc. Keeps the organisms dry, dormant, and evenly dispersed. |
| Live beneficial microbes | 10% | The 20 species listed below, at the CFU counts shown. |
| Humates | 3% | From fresh water humic deposits. Food and habitat for the biology once it lands. |
| Kelp extract | 2% | Trace minerals and plant compounds to support the handoff. |
Why only 10% microbes, and why the carrier matters
The carrier is not filler. It is a design decision, and it is one worth checking on any biological product you buy.
Start with why a carrier has to exist. This inoculant is potent enough that a real dose for a home grower is under a single gram, and the living fraction of that is so small you could not portion it out if you tried. Without something to carry it you would be asked to measure a millionth of a teaspoon and then somehow distribute that evenly through a gallon of water. Nobody can do that. The carrier is what makes a dose measurable with a kitchen spoon, holds the organisms dry and dormant on the shelf for the life of the product, and disperses them through your water instead of letting them clump in one corner of the bucket.
So the real question is not how much carrier. It is which carrier. Plenty of products in this category use talc, because it is cheap and it flows well. Talc is also a mined mineral whose purity depends entirely on the deposit it came out of, and it carries a long, well documented history of contamination problems. Diatomaceous earth costs more and it is clean.
That is the trade Rootwise made and we think it is the right one. When you are putting something into the root zone of a plant you intend to consume, the inert ingredient deserves as much scrutiny as the active one.
CFU per gram. Four species of endomycorrhizae plus Trichoderma on the fungal side, fifteen bacteria across the nitrogen fixing, phosphorus solubilizing, and organic matter decomposing groups.
That list matters less than the proportions between the things on it. Twenty organisms held in the right balance behave like a functioning soil community. The same twenty at random ratios behave like a fight. The formulation is the work, not the roster.
Do not stack inoculants
This is why we never recommend buying several microbe products and mixing them together. It feels like more biology for your money, and it is one of the most common mistakes we see growers make.
What you are actually doing is layering unknown ratios on top of a formulation somebody spent years balancing. You end up heavily overweighted on whichever species happen to overlap between the products, and you have no way of knowing what community you just built. Loading up on any one organism throws the system sideways the same way loading up on any one mineral does.
Mycrobe Complete is already balanced. You do not need to supplement it with another inoculant, and we would rather you did not.
What it does pair with is the rest of its own system. Rootwise is the only line we know of where the phosphorus product and the enzymes were formulated against this exact blend. Bio-Phos carries the same balanced approach weighted toward flower, and Bio-Catalyst is the enzyme output of these same organisms. That is what makes this a complete program rather than a shelf full of guesses.
Here is the uncomfortable part of this category. A species list on a bag is just text. Printing twenty organisms and a CFU count next to each one costs nothing, and independent testing of commercial microbial products has turned up plenty of bags that did not contain what the label claimed, at counts nowhere near what was promised, and in some cases nothing viable at all.
A lot of that traces straight back to sourcing. It is common in this industry to buy microbial powder from an overseas broker, print a label, and sell it. If nobody along that chain ever tested anything, the company selling it does not know what is in the bag either. They are repeating a number somebody handed them.
And you cannot check their work. Culturing and identifying twenty different organisms is slow, expensive lab work, nowhere near anything a grower is going to do before buying a bag of inoculant. So what you are really buying is the credibility of whoever grew the biology. That is the honest state of this category.
Why we have stayed with Rootwise
These organisms are grown in the United States by a well regarded lab that uses DNA sequencing in its own process. Not brokered, not imported by the drum from a supplier nobody has ever met. That is unusual in this category, it costs more, and it is the single biggest reason we have worked with Rootwise for over a decade instead of chasing a cheaper inoculant.
When you cannot see, taste, or count what you are buying, the thing protecting you is who made it.
Rootwise makes three products and they are not interchangeable. They also do not all run the whole time. Here is how we sequence them.
| Stage | Mycrobe Complete | Bio-Phos | Bio-Catalyst |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transplant | Every transplant. Clone dip at 1 tsp per gal. | Not yet | Yes |
| Root development and veg | Every 2 weeks. This is its window. | Not yet | Every 2 weeks |
| About 1 week before the flip | Yes, one transitional dose | Yes, one transitional dose | Yes |
| Early flower first few weeks |
Done for the run | Weekly | Weekly |
| Mid to late flower | Done for the run | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| About 2 weeks before harvest | Done for the run | Final application | Final application |
Most indoor growers veg under six weeks, so three or four applications of Mycrobe Complete gets you through a full veg, plus one at each transplant and one at the transition. Then Bio-Phos takes over for flower, when phosphorus demand climbs and you want the organisms that mobilize it. Bio-Catalyst runs the entire time, start to finish, alongside whichever powder you are on.
If you are running no-till beds, perennials, or an outdoor garden without a hard veg and flower split, the sequencing is looser. Keep Mycrobe Complete going on a regular schedule and layer Bio-Phos in as things move toward flower and fruit set.
| Product | Form | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
|
Mycrobe Complete You are here |
Dry powder | The full-spectrum foundation. Twenty species across every function group, including four endomycorrhizae. |
| Bio-Phos | Dry powder | Same full-spectrum approach, weighted toward organisms that mobilize phosphorus already in your soil but locked up. |
| Bio-Catalyst Enzyme Elixir | Liquid | Ten digestive enzymes produced by beneficial cultures, concentrated. Not an inoculant. |
Full guide
The complete stage-by-stage breakdown, including why the timing works the way it does and how to avoid wasting product, is in the Rootwise Deep Dive: How to Use It and When to Apply It in Living Soil.
Bio-Catalyst is not another microbe product. It is the enzyme output of the same organisms that are in this bag, cultured and concentrated. Enzymes are what actually perform the work of unlocking nutrients. Microbes are just the factory that makes them.
So when you apply the enzymes at the same time as the inoculant, the biology gets to work immediately instead of spending its first stretch building up an enzyme supply from scratch. That is the whole reason these two get sold together, and it is why the enzyme runs through both veg and flower while the powders trade off. If you only add one thing to your Mycrobe Complete order, make it the Bio-Catalyst.
This is a dry powder holding dormant organisms, not a live liquid that turns on you in a season. Sealed, dry, and out of the sun, it holds up over the long haul. Buy the size that fits your grow without worrying about racing a clock.
Temperature
Store below 120°F. A closed shed in July will push past that. A closet, basement, or shaded garage shelf is fine.
Light and moisture
Keep away from both. Seal the bag after every use. Moisture in the bag starts waking organisms up with nothing for them to eat.
Mixed solution
Do not store it. Once it is in water the clock is running. Mix only what you will use that day.
Caution, straight off the label: store away from children and pets. Do not ingest.
Buy all three
All three products in matched sizes, from Small up to XXL, at a discount over buying them separately. If you already know you want the full veg-through-flower system, this is the cheaper way to get it.
See the Combo Pack and saveNo, and this one is on the label. Do not tank mix with chemicals or concentrated mineral salts. Salt concentrations that plants handle fine will dehydrate and kill microorganisms on contact. Apply your Rootwise dose as its own watering, separate from your feed. Use clean equipment too, since residue in a sprayer or reservoir from a previous chemical application will do the same thing.
Filtered is best practice, and if you have it, use it. But if you are mixing and applying right away, tap water is almost certainly fine.
Chlorine gets consumed on contact by organic matter, and there is plenty of that in your soil. Do not let your water source become the reason an application does not happen.
It will colonize, but the label is upfront about this and so are we. These rates are designed for soil systems. In hydro and inert media you will likely need to re-inoculate more frequently depending on your media and how much chemical input you are running. These organisms make their living cycling organic matter into plant-available nutrition, so in a medium with nothing to eat and a salt feed working against them, you get root colonization benefits but not the full picture. This product earns its keep in living soil.
The bacteria will. The mycorrhizae depend on what you are growing.
The four Glomus species in here are endomycorrhizae, the type that partners with most annuals and vegetables, cannabis, grasses, and a lot of fruit trees and vines. That covers the large majority of what people actually grow.
They will not colonize plants that partner with ectomycorrhizae instead, which is a different family of fungi altogether. Conifers, oaks, birches, and beeches are the common ones. Blueberries and other ericaceous plants run their own type again, and a few crops like brassicas and beets do not form mycorrhizal partnerships at all.
None of that makes the bag useless on those plants. Sixteen of the twenty organisms in here are bacteria and Trichoderma, none of which are mycorrhizal, and their work of fixing nitrogen, solubilizing phosphorus, and breaking down organic matter helps any plant in any soil. You just will not get the mycorrhizal piece unless your plant is an endo host.
Good compost and castings are the best biology you can get, and nothing here replaces them. What an inoculant does is fill in the function groups your compost may be light on and give you a consistent, known population at the moments that matter, like transplant and the start of a new mix. Think of castings as your baseline and this as targeted reinforcement.
Yes, and it is a good pairing. Just add it at the end rather than the start. Brew your tea the way you normally would, then stir Mycrobe Complete in right before you apply.
The reason is the ratio. A brewer multiplies whatever happens to grow fastest in your particular setup, so anything you put in at the beginning comes out at a very different balance than it went in. You paid for a formulation, and a full brew cycle rewrites it.
The mycorrhizae make the point best. Those organisms cannot reproduce in a bucket at all, because they need a living root to colonize. Running them through a brew costs you viability and gains you nothing.
Tea first, inoculant last, then water it in.
Mostly you waste money. Beyond that, heavy doses of any single input can push things out of balance somewhere else in the system. There is no upside to overdoing it, and given how far a bag goes, there is no reason to. Consistent moderate doses on a schedule beat a heavy hand every time.
No, and this is the most common mistake we see. Once your mycorrhizal network is established there is nothing to gain by reapplying it, and growers waste a lot of product doing exactly that.
What you want instead is one transitional application about a week before you flip, Mycrobe Complete and Bio-Phos together with the enzymes. That bridges you from the biology that builds the network to the biology that mobilizes phosphorus. After that, Mycrobe Complete is done and Bio-Phos carries flower.
For no-till beds, perennials, and outdoor gardens without a clean veg and flower split, keep Mycrobe Complete on a regular schedule year round and layer Bio-Phos in as things move toward flower and fruit set. Bio-Catalyst runs the whole time either way.
Still not sure which size or which product you need? Our whole staff grows, so reach out by chat, email, or phone and we will point you at the right thing even if it is the cheaper one.
Questions?
We are here to help and our entire staff knows how to grow. Just reach out via chat, email or even phone. We are passionate about growing and want you to succeed.
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From seed start with basic build a soil and added watering with sprayer Rootwise Mycrobe. Roots flourishing add water only week 2 1/2 starting 2 true leaf sets. Natural Southern California sun seed start partial sun to full Summer Solstice late experiment
Product works tremendously
From the first time I used the Rootwise complete, I was impressed! Plant tool off like a rocket--- of course we used the Elixir also! Buy it! ✌️
Looks good
Works great the plant love it
Mycrobe Complete is a dry, full-spectrum soil inoculant. Twenty species of beneficial bacteria, mycorrhizae, and fungi in one bag. You mix a very small dose into water and drench the root zone, whether you are firing up a brand new soil mix or keeping a no-till bed alive through its fifth cycle.
Rootwise Soil Dynamics is a Colorado company. We started working with them back when they were down in Paonia, about an hour up the road from our factory in Montrose, and we have stayed with them for over a decade since. The organisms are grown in the United States by a well regarded lab that uses DNA sequencing in its own process. In a category where plenty of bags are filled with brokered overseas powder that nobody ever tested, that matters, and it is the biggest reason we have never gone looking for a cheaper inoculant.
1 Tbsp per 5 gallons of water to start. 1.5 tsp per 5 gallons for every application after that.
Water your plants first, then drench the root zone with about a cup of solution per plant. Repeat every 2 weeks, and at every transplant.
Through veg. About a week before you flip, run one transitional dose alongside Bio-Phos, then hand off to Bio-Phos for flower.
2 oz or 4 oz covers one or two tents for well over a year. 1 lb and up is farm and commercial scale.
The Rootwise Combo Pack bundles this with Bio-Phos and the enzymes at a discount.
That is one tablespoon doing all of that, not one bag. Five gallons is 80 cups, and a cup per plant is all it takes once the soil underneath is already watered. A 2 oz bag holds roughly thirteen of those five gallon batches at the follow-up rate.
Pro tip, not a rule
These organisms ship dormant. If you mix your dose and let it sit for about 30 minutes before you water it in, you give them a head start on coming out of dormancy, and that may get you more out of the same amount of product.
Do not let it become a barrier though. I usually mix and go right away, and it works. If you have the half hour to spare, take it. If you do not, water anyway.
| Application | Rate | Frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Simple drench, initial inoculation | 1 Tbsp per 5 gal | First application |
| Simple drench, follow-up | 1.5 tsp per 5 gal | Every 2 weeks through veg, and at every transplant |
| Transplant and clone dip | 1 tsp per gal | Submerge the root mass as you transplant |
| Large garden and farm, initial | 6 g per cu yd | Blend with enough water to saturate the root zone |
| Large garden and farm, follow-up | 3 g per cu yd | Ongoing |
Notice that every follow-up dose is exactly half the initial dose. That holds on the container rate and the farm rate both. Your first application does the heavy lifting of establishing the population. Everything after that is maintenance.
Do not skip the transition
About a week before you flip to flower, run one application of Mycrobe Complete and Bio-Phos together, with the enzymes. This is the handoff, and most growers miss it entirely.
By that point your mycorrhizal network is already built, so you are not reapplying to establish anything. You are bridging from the biology that builds the network to the biology that mobilizes phosphorus, before the plant actually needs it. After that one transitional dose, Mycrobe Complete is done for the run.
A level teaspoon of Mycrobe Complete weighs about 3 grams. That is the figure behind every gram number on this page. Diatomaceous earth is light and fluffy, so a packed scoop will read heavier than a loose one.
You do not really need it, though. The drench directions are written in teaspoons and tablespoons, so a measuring spoon is all this takes. The gram figures here are for people running scales and for the coverage math, and the farm rates are printed in grams to begin with.
You can, and it works. Just know the tradeoff going in. This is a concentrate, and a liquid drench puts it exactly where the roots are. Applying it dry scatters it around instead, so you burn through more product to get the same result. If you have the choice, drench it.
Sprinkling the transplant hole. Dust the hole before you set the plant in so the product lands right against the root ball. Plenty of growers do it this way and there is nothing wrong with it. It is just less ideal and more wasteful than mixing that same dose into water and pouring it straight into the root zone. If you are transplanting anyway, the clone dip on the label is the better version of this idea.
Incorporating into a new soil mix. Same idea, with one condition attached. The soil needs real moisture in it and it needs to be planted right away, whether that is your main crop or a cover crop. Inoculated soil that sits in totes or bags develops dry pockets and hot pockets, and survivability drops off hard. If the soil is going to sit, wait and drench after you plant instead.
This is the part people get wrong, and it is the reason a two ounce bag looks expensive until you run the numbers.
When you read "1 tablespoon per 5 gallons," the instinct is to think you need 5 gallons of solution to water your garden. You do not. You water your plants normally first. After that, all you need is enough inoculant solution to carry the biology into the root zone, and that is about a cup per plant.
Every dose below is a first dose. After that, cut it in half and keep it there for the rest of the run. Spoon measures because that is what people have in a drawer, with grams underneath for anyone on a scale or working at farm rates.
These are rounded to the nearest spoon you actually own, so they land within about a quarter of the label rate either way. At these amounts that is pennies and it does no harm. The 5 gallon row is the label rate exactly.
| Your setup | Solution to mix | First dose |
|---|---|---|
| 4 plants | 1 quart | 1/8 tsp0.4 g |
| 8 plants | 2 quarts | 1/4 tsp0.75 g |
| 16 plants | 1 gallon | 1/2 tsp1.5 g |
| 32 plants | 2 gallons | 1 1/4 tsp3.75 g |
| 80 plants | 5 gallons | 1 Tbsp9 g |
Practical advice
An eighth of a teaspoon is about as small as a kitchen spoon set goes, so at four plants you are already at the floor of what you can measure. Just mix one gallon. A gallon is easy to measure, it treats up to 16 plants, and it costs you under two grams of product on your first application and about nine tenths of a gram on each one after. Use what you need on your plants and put the rest on your outdoor beds or houseplants. Do not save mixed solution for next week.
Everything above teaches the efficient method: water first, then drench the root zone with a small concentrated dose. We teach it that way on purpose. The point of an inoculant is getting organisms into direct contact with roots so they can colonize, and a targeted root zone application is the best return on every gram you paid for.
But if you are running two to four plants and the math has you trying to eyeball a quarter of a gram, drop the precision. Mix your dose into your full watering volume and water normally. You will use more product than you strictly need, and that is the entire downside. There is no risk to the plant, no risk to the soil, and nothing to feel bad about.
At four plants that difference is pennies. At scale it is not, and that is exactly why we teach the targeted method first. An operation dosing its whole irrigation volume instead of the root zone can waste thousands of dollars a season on product that never touches a root. A tent is not a farm. Do whichever version you will actually keep doing on schedule.
Applications are the honest unit here, because veg length varies enormously between growers. One application below means one gallon of solution mixed at the follow-up rate, covering up to 16 plants. A veg cycle means an eight week veg dosed every two weeks, plus the transitional application at the flip.
| Size | Grams | Gallon applications | 8-week vegs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 oz | 57 g | ~63 | ~9 |
| 4 oz | 113 g | ~126 | ~18 |
| 8 oz | 227 g | ~252 | ~36 |
| 1 lb | 454 g | ~504 | ~72 |
| 5 lb bucket | 2,268 g | ~2,520 | ~360 |
Count your own cycles. Most indoor growers veg four to six weeks, which is three or four applications rather than the five the table assumes, so a run costs them less than that. Outdoor growers and no-till beds run far longer and will use more. Either way you are spending under a gram per application. Whatever your season looks like, this is not the line item that decides your budget.
Which size to get. Running one or two tents, get the 2 oz or 4 oz. It is plenty and it is the cheapest way to find out whether you like it. If you already know you want it and you would rather buy once and stop thinking about it, the 8 oz is a genuinely good call. Dry dormant inoculant stores well, so there is no clock to race. Above that, the 1 lb and 5 lb are built for farms and commercial operations working off the cubic yard rate, and for grow crews splitting an order.
Different organisms in your soil handle different work. Some tear down raw organic matter. Some fix nitrogen out of the air. Some free up phosphorus and other minerals that are chemically locked and unavailable. Some colonize the root surface and trade sugars for nutrients. Some just hold territory so pathogens have nowhere to move in.
Mycrobe Complete carries multiple species from each of those function groups at agricultural strength, rather than loading up on one organism at a huge count. That is the entire design philosophy behind it, and it is the same one we use with minerals. Balance beats brute force. Dumping a massive dose of a single microbe is the biological version of dumping a bag of nitrogen and hoping it works out.
The part that matters most
Consistent, moderate doses do far more for your soil than one heavy dose. If you take nothing else from this page, take that. Small amounts on a schedule beat a big slug at transplant.
This widens your margin for success. That is the honest pitch, and it is a bigger deal than it sounds.
In living soil, nutrition is not a number you dial in. What your plants can actually reach depends on moisture, temperature, organic matter, mineral balance, and above all on whether you have the biology to cycle any of it. Keep that population high and consistent and you buy yourself room to be imperfect everywhere else. That is the real return on running a biological program.
Where this product came from. Kevin at Rootwise built Mycrobe Complete coming off outdoor seasons where he was pushing heavy phosphorus and paying for it with Pythium pressure. In the seasons after he brought a full biological program in, he could feed noticeably less and still finish healthier plants. That is the whole idea in one sentence. When the nutrition already sitting in your soil gets cycled and made available, you stop needing to force feed it, and heavy feeding is behind a lot of the problems growers end up blaming on something else.
What to watch for. Your mulch and chop-and-drop layer breaking down noticeably faster. Better root mass when you pull a plant out of the pot. Plants that hold up when conditions slip. Nutrients going further than they used to. And the one growers bring up to us unprompted, a fuller terpene profile once a biological program is running. These show up across a run, not in a few days.
| Component | Percent | What it is doing |
|---|---|---|
| Diatomaceous earth | 85% | The carrier, and a clean one. Not talc. Keeps the organisms dry, dormant, and evenly dispersed. |
| Live beneficial microbes | 10% | The 20 species listed below, at the CFU counts shown. |
| Humates | 3% | From fresh water humic deposits. Food and habitat for the biology once it lands. |
| Kelp extract | 2% | Trace minerals and plant compounds to support the handoff. |
Why only 10% microbes, and why the carrier matters
The carrier is not filler. It is a design decision, and it is one worth checking on any biological product you buy.
Start with why a carrier has to exist. This inoculant is potent enough that a real dose for a home grower is under a single gram, and the living fraction of that is so small you could not portion it out if you tried. Without something to carry it you would be asked to measure a millionth of a teaspoon and then somehow distribute that evenly through a gallon of water. Nobody can do that. The carrier is what makes a dose measurable with a kitchen spoon, holds the organisms dry and dormant on the shelf for the life of the product, and disperses them through your water instead of letting them clump in one corner of the bucket.
So the real question is not how much carrier. It is which carrier. Plenty of products in this category use talc, because it is cheap and it flows well. Talc is also a mined mineral whose purity depends entirely on the deposit it came out of, and it carries a long, well documented history of contamination problems. Diatomaceous earth costs more and it is clean.
That is the trade Rootwise made and we think it is the right one. When you are putting something into the root zone of a plant you intend to consume, the inert ingredient deserves as much scrutiny as the active one.
CFU per gram. Four species of endomycorrhizae plus Trichoderma on the fungal side, fifteen bacteria across the nitrogen fixing, phosphorus solubilizing, and organic matter decomposing groups.
That list matters less than the proportions between the things on it. Twenty organisms held in the right balance behave like a functioning soil community. The same twenty at random ratios behave like a fight. The formulation is the work, not the roster.
Do not stack inoculants
This is why we never recommend buying several microbe products and mixing them together. It feels like more biology for your money, and it is one of the most common mistakes we see growers make.
What you are actually doing is layering unknown ratios on top of a formulation somebody spent years balancing. You end up heavily overweighted on whichever species happen to overlap between the products, and you have no way of knowing what community you just built. Loading up on any one organism throws the system sideways the same way loading up on any one mineral does.
Mycrobe Complete is already balanced. You do not need to supplement it with another inoculant, and we would rather you did not.
What it does pair with is the rest of its own system. Rootwise is the only line we know of where the phosphorus product and the enzymes were formulated against this exact blend. Bio-Phos carries the same balanced approach weighted toward flower, and Bio-Catalyst is the enzyme output of these same organisms. That is what makes this a complete program rather than a shelf full of guesses.
Here is the uncomfortable part of this category. A species list on a bag is just text. Printing twenty organisms and a CFU count next to each one costs nothing, and independent testing of commercial microbial products has turned up plenty of bags that did not contain what the label claimed, at counts nowhere near what was promised, and in some cases nothing viable at all.
A lot of that traces straight back to sourcing. It is common in this industry to buy microbial powder from an overseas broker, print a label, and sell it. If nobody along that chain ever tested anything, the company selling it does not know what is in the bag either. They are repeating a number somebody handed them.
And you cannot check their work. Culturing and identifying twenty different organisms is slow, expensive lab work, nowhere near anything a grower is going to do before buying a bag of inoculant. So what you are really buying is the credibility of whoever grew the biology. That is the honest state of this category.
Why we have stayed with Rootwise
These organisms are grown in the United States by a well regarded lab that uses DNA sequencing in its own process. Not brokered, not imported by the drum from a supplier nobody has ever met. That is unusual in this category, it costs more, and it is the single biggest reason we have worked with Rootwise for over a decade instead of chasing a cheaper inoculant.
When you cannot see, taste, or count what you are buying, the thing protecting you is who made it.
Rootwise makes three products and they are not interchangeable. They also do not all run the whole time. Here is how we sequence them.
| Stage | Mycrobe Complete | Bio-Phos | Bio-Catalyst |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transplant | Every transplant. Clone dip at 1 tsp per gal. | Not yet | Yes |
| Root development and veg | Every 2 weeks. This is its window. | Not yet | Every 2 weeks |
| About 1 week before the flip | Yes, one transitional dose | Yes, one transitional dose | Yes |
| Early flower first few weeks |
Done for the run | Weekly | Weekly |
| Mid to late flower | Done for the run | Every 2 weeks | Every 2 weeks |
| About 2 weeks before harvest | Done for the run | Final application | Final application |
Most indoor growers veg under six weeks, so three or four applications of Mycrobe Complete gets you through a full veg, plus one at each transplant and one at the transition. Then Bio-Phos takes over for flower, when phosphorus demand climbs and you want the organisms that mobilize it. Bio-Catalyst runs the entire time, start to finish, alongside whichever powder you are on.
If you are running no-till beds, perennials, or an outdoor garden without a hard veg and flower split, the sequencing is looser. Keep Mycrobe Complete going on a regular schedule and layer Bio-Phos in as things move toward flower and fruit set.
| Product | Form | What it brings |
|---|---|---|
|
Mycrobe Complete You are here |
Dry powder | The full-spectrum foundation. Twenty species across every function group, including four endomycorrhizae. |
| Bio-Phos | Dry powder | Same full-spectrum approach, weighted toward organisms that mobilize phosphorus already in your soil but locked up. |
| Bio-Catalyst Enzyme Elixir | Liquid | Ten digestive enzymes produced by beneficial cultures, concentrated. Not an inoculant. |
Full guide
The complete stage-by-stage breakdown, including why the timing works the way it does and how to avoid wasting product, is in the Rootwise Deep Dive: How to Use It and When to Apply It in Living Soil.
Bio-Catalyst is not another microbe product. It is the enzyme output of the same organisms that are in this bag, cultured and concentrated. Enzymes are what actually perform the work of unlocking nutrients. Microbes are just the factory that makes them.
So when you apply the enzymes at the same time as the inoculant, the biology gets to work immediately instead of spending its first stretch building up an enzyme supply from scratch. That is the whole reason these two get sold together, and it is why the enzyme runs through both veg and flower while the powders trade off. If you only add one thing to your Mycrobe Complete order, make it the Bio-Catalyst.
This is a dry powder holding dormant organisms, not a live liquid that turns on you in a season. Sealed, dry, and out of the sun, it holds up over the long haul. Buy the size that fits your grow without worrying about racing a clock.
Temperature
Store below 120°F. A closed shed in July will push past that. A closet, basement, or shaded garage shelf is fine.
Light and moisture
Keep away from both. Seal the bag after every use. Moisture in the bag starts waking organisms up with nothing for them to eat.
Mixed solution
Do not store it. Once it is in water the clock is running. Mix only what you will use that day.
Caution, straight off the label: store away from children and pets. Do not ingest.
Buy all three
All three products in matched sizes, from Small up to XXL, at a discount over buying them separately. If you already know you want the full veg-through-flower system, this is the cheaper way to get it.
See the Combo Pack and saveNo, and this one is on the label. Do not tank mix with chemicals or concentrated mineral salts. Salt concentrations that plants handle fine will dehydrate and kill microorganisms on contact. Apply your Rootwise dose as its own watering, separate from your feed. Use clean equipment too, since residue in a sprayer or reservoir from a previous chemical application will do the same thing.
Filtered is best practice, and if you have it, use it. But if you are mixing and applying right away, tap water is almost certainly fine.
Chlorine gets consumed on contact by organic matter, and there is plenty of that in your soil. Do not let your water source become the reason an application does not happen.
It will colonize, but the label is upfront about this and so are we. These rates are designed for soil systems. In hydro and inert media you will likely need to re-inoculate more frequently depending on your media and how much chemical input you are running. These organisms make their living cycling organic matter into plant-available nutrition, so in a medium with nothing to eat and a salt feed working against them, you get root colonization benefits but not the full picture. This product earns its keep in living soil.
The bacteria will. The mycorrhizae depend on what you are growing.
The four Glomus species in here are endomycorrhizae, the type that partners with most annuals and vegetables, cannabis, grasses, and a lot of fruit trees and vines. That covers the large majority of what people actually grow.
They will not colonize plants that partner with ectomycorrhizae instead, which is a different family of fungi altogether. Conifers, oaks, birches, and beeches are the common ones. Blueberries and other ericaceous plants run their own type again, and a few crops like brassicas and beets do not form mycorrhizal partnerships at all.
None of that makes the bag useless on those plants. Sixteen of the twenty organisms in here are bacteria and Trichoderma, none of which are mycorrhizal, and their work of fixing nitrogen, solubilizing phosphorus, and breaking down organic matter helps any plant in any soil. You just will not get the mycorrhizal piece unless your plant is an endo host.
Good compost and castings are the best biology you can get, and nothing here replaces them. What an inoculant does is fill in the function groups your compost may be light on and give you a consistent, known population at the moments that matter, like transplant and the start of a new mix. Think of castings as your baseline and this as targeted reinforcement.
Yes, and it is a good pairing. Just add it at the end rather than the start. Brew your tea the way you normally would, then stir Mycrobe Complete in right before you apply.
The reason is the ratio. A brewer multiplies whatever happens to grow fastest in your particular setup, so anything you put in at the beginning comes out at a very different balance than it went in. You paid for a formulation, and a full brew cycle rewrites it.
The mycorrhizae make the point best. Those organisms cannot reproduce in a bucket at all, because they need a living root to colonize. Running them through a brew costs you viability and gains you nothing.
Tea first, inoculant last, then water it in.
Mostly you waste money. Beyond that, heavy doses of any single input can push things out of balance somewhere else in the system. There is no upside to overdoing it, and given how far a bag goes, there is no reason to. Consistent moderate doses on a schedule beat a heavy hand every time.
No, and this is the most common mistake we see. Once your mycorrhizal network is established there is nothing to gain by reapplying it, and growers waste a lot of product doing exactly that.
What you want instead is one transitional application about a week before you flip, Mycrobe Complete and Bio-Phos together with the enzymes. That bridges you from the biology that builds the network to the biology that mobilizes phosphorus. After that, Mycrobe Complete is done and Bio-Phos carries flower.
For no-till beds, perennials, and outdoor gardens without a clean veg and flower split, keep Mycrobe Complete on a regular schedule year round and layer Bio-Phos in as things move toward flower and fruit set. Bio-Catalyst runs the whole time either way.
Still not sure which size or which product you need? Our whole staff grows, so reach out by chat, email, or phone and we will point you at the right thing even if it is the cheaper one.
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