BuildASoil Craft Blend - Nutrient Pack

No proprietary blend language and nothing hidden behind a trade secret claim. This is also the hardest part of making it: sixteen ingredients means sixteen suppliers, sixteen lead times, and sixteen minimum orders landing at one building in western Colorado. Any one of them showing up late holds the whole run.

No confined animal farms. That is the rule for this blend, and this is what it rules out. A bag can say organic and still be full of things you would not want near food. "Organic" on a fertilizer label usually means approved for organic use. It almost never means the ingredient came from an organic source.

• OUTSteamed bone mealA byproduct of confined cattle and pig operations. Cheap phosphorus on a supply chain we will not stand behind. We pay for wild caught fish bone instead.
• OUTBlood mealSame source, same problem. Fast nitrogen out of the same confined animal system, with no traceability.
• OUTChicken manureIt comes out of confined poultry operations, and it carries whatever those birds were fed and whatever was administered to them. You are importing that supply chain into your soil, including heavy metals.
• OUTFeather mealSame birds, same operations, same possibilities.
• OUTBiosolidsTreated human sewage sludge, sold to soil companies at volume. It carries whatever the municipality's waste stream carried but treated so it's "safe"

We wrote the whole disccussion up. Read the Labels is free and it will change how you shop for amendments, including ours.

A guaranteed analysis is a legal promise printed on a bag. We set ours deliberately low, because bags get printed in big runs and organic inputs vary batch to batch, and we never want to be the company explaining why a bag came in under its own label.

So the guarantee is a number every batch clears, and then we show you the actual lab work. Here is a recent batch, tested by Spectrum Analytic, an independent lab in Ohio that we do not own and cannot lean on.

The label is the floor, not the forecast. Organic inputs move around, so treat 2-4-2 as what you are guaranteed and the lab result as what that batch actually did.

Heavy metals, same batch

To be clear about what this table is: these are contaminants we test for, not ingredients we put in. Every soil amendment on earth carries trace metals, because they come out of the ground. The only question is how much, and almost nobody publishes the answer.

This is the part nobody publishes. If a blend leans on biosolids, cheap phosphate rock, or rendered livestock, this is the table that gives it away.

Two things before you read it. This is one batch, not a permanent specification. Rock dusts, marine inputs, and mined minerals are natural materials, and their trace metal content moves from lot to lot no matter who is blending them. Anyone quoting you a fixed heavy metal number is quoting you one test. Second, if you are growing under compliance testing, arsenic and cadmium are the two that matter. Those are the ones that cause problems. We source with that in mind, we buy from the cleaner end of every material we can, and we test rather than assume.

All figures in mg/kg, which is the same as parts per million. Limits are from AAPFCO SUIP #25, the model heavy metal rule states adopt to decide whether a fertilizer is legally adulterated, calculated at the 6.0 percent P₂O₅ minimum multiplier the rule requires. Cobalt, molybdenum, nickel, and copper are plant micronutrients, so finding them here is expected and useful rather than a problem. Results are specific to the batch tested. We publish what we find instead of promising a number we cannot guarantee across every lot.
Lab: Spectrum Analytic Inc., Washington Court House, OH. Sample CRAFT 0304, Lab No. FF71627. Sampled 03-12-2026, tested 03-13-2026. Analysis by EPA SW-846 methods 3050B, 6010D, and 7471B.

Rates below are for a full top dress. Start at these numbers, watch the plant, and adjust from there.

Not sure how much soil you are working with? Run the soil volume calculator, then come back and dose off the cubic feet.

Use at 1/2 ton per acre. Contact us for bulk pricing at that volume, and ask about the 1 yard super sack rather than buying bags.

Washington state growers: do not apply more than 5,000 lbs per acre per year.

It helps, but be realistic about it. Craft Blend is designed for living soil, and living soil is what makes it work: biology breaks the amendments down and hands the nutrition to the plant over time. Straight coco coir does not have that biology to start with.

In coco, add compost or worm castings along with it so there is something alive in there to do the work. It will contribute real nutrition and minerals. It probably will not be enough on its own to let you stop feeding entirely.

If your goal is to get off a bottled schedule, the honest answer is to move toward a living soil rather than trying to make coco behave like one.

Craft Blend is not vegan. It contains fish bone meal, fish meal, crustacean meal, oyster shell flour and insect frass. We would rather say that plainly than let anyone find out later.

On oyster shell specifically: Some vegans do include bivalves on the grounds that they lack a centralized nervous system, and oyster shell flour is the shell rather than the flesh, a byproduct of the seafood trade. That is a line you get to draw, not us.

If you want to build something close to this without the animal inputs, here is how the pieces map:

• Fish bone meal is calcium and phosphorus. Rice bran covers the phosphorus. Gypsum and wollastonite cover the calcium without touching pH.
• Fish meal is fast nitrogen. Seed meals do the same job: alfalfa and organic soybean meal.
• Crustacean meal is calcium and chitin. Insect frass is the closest chitin source if insects clear your bar. If not, leave it out and lean on the minerals above.
• Oyster shell flour is slow calcium carbonate. Gypsum and wollastonite already cover calcium if you are excluding it.

You will not land in exactly the same place, particularly on the chitin, but you will get a genuinely good vegan blend out of it.

It began as equal parts of every single ingredient. Then we tripled the fish bone meal to bring the phosphorus up. That is the whole origin of the recipe.

If you want to build it at home, you can get very close with equal parts of everything and triple the fish bone meal. We would rather tell you that than pretend there is a secret in here. The hard part was never the perfect ratio. It is sourcing sixteen ingredients this clean and getting them to one building.

Craft Blend is the balanced all-arounder. Here is when to reach for it and when not to.

Because the label is a guarantee and we intend to keep it. Bags get printed in large runs and organic inputs vary from batch to batch, so a label set at the average is a label you will eventually fall short of. We set ours at a number every batch clears, then publish the actual lab results so you can see the real numbers.

No. Craft Blend is a complete amendment for the whole grow, not a flowering booster. Put it down at transplant and again at flowering, and every two to four weeks in between if you are top dressing. Same bag the entire time.

The 2-4-2 throws people because the middle number is the biggest. That is a guaranteed analysis, which is a legal floor printed on a bag, not a feeding strategy. Living soil does not work like a bottled schedule where you swap products at flip. You feed the soil a complete diet and the plant draws what it needs when it needs it.

Phosphorus is not a flowering-only nutrient either. Roots run on it from the first week.

It is far more forgiving than a salt fertilizer because almost nothing in it is immediately plant available. The soil biology has to process it first, which means the release follows the plant's demand instead of your calendar. That said, more is not better. Stay in the stated range, especially with young plants and small containers.

It depends which rate you are using, and for the one nearly everyone uses, no.

Top dressing: no wait. Scratch it into the mulch layer around plants that are already growing and carry on. It is safe and forgiving because almost nothing in it is immediately plant available. The biology has to break it down first, so it releases on the plant's schedule instead of arriving all at once at the roots.

Mixing a new soil from scratch: give it one to two weeks, or until the temperature comes back down. At 4 cups per cubic foot going into fresh material, the pile heats up as biology works through all that carbon and nitrogen. Let it cool before you plant into it.

What we do care about is mulch, and we care about it on day one. Set the mulch layer as soon as the amendment goes down. It keeps the surface moist and biologically active from the start, which is how you avoid ever getting behind.

Open the bag and you will smell it, but it is not strong. It smells like the land and the ocean, which is exactly what is in there: alfalfa, milled grain and bran on one side, kelp, crustacean and fish bone on the other.

If you are smelling it after it goes down, it is usually sitting too exposed on top of the mulch. Work it into the soil, or cover it with a compost layer like BuildAFlower. That will not eliminate the odor, but it turns the volume way down, and indoors that is normally all you need.

If it ever goes sour or foul rather than earthy, that is not the amendment. The soil is too wet and not getting air.

It is food for soil, not a pesticide, but dogs are drawn to the fish and crustacean meal and will dig for it. Work it into the soil rather than leaving it sitting on the surface, and cover with mulch.

Stored sealed, cool, and dry it holds for a long time. Moisture is the enemy, not time. If it gets damp it will clump and start composting in the bag. Keep it off a concrete floor and out of the sun.

All of it. Vegetables, fruit trees, ornamentals, houseplants, indoor containers, raised beds. Scale the rate to the container size using the table above. Houseplants get the low end.

Rough math: one 4x4 bed takes about 8 cups for a full re-amend, so a 10 lb bag covers roughly three of those. If you are running more than a couple of beds or containers, the 44 lb bag is a significantly better price per cup and it stores fine. Commercial growers should look at the 1 yard super sack or talk to us about wholesale.

Fish are killed and processed, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The line we draw is not about whether an animal died. It is about what rides along with the material and which industry it funds.

Blood meal, steamed bone meal, feather meal, and chicken manure come out of confined animal farms. Those animals eat conventional feed crops, and whatever was in that feed, or was administered to the animal, concentrates into the byproduct. Buying those amendments means importing that entire upstream supply chain into your soil.

Our fish bone is wild caught, and it is a byproduct of fish already processed for human food. Nobody is catching fish to make this. Commercial fishing has real problems of its own and we are not going to wave them away, but between funding a feedlot fed on herbicide-treated grain and using the bone left after the fillets came off, we made a call. We would rather tell you plainly what the call was than quietly leave the ingredient off the list.

Yes, and it will again any time we find something better. The current formula has been running for a while now and it is the cleanest version we have made. The most recent revisions: malted barley became three malted grains milled to flour, camelina meal came out because the press cake was too coarse to meter accurately into a blend, and our old volcanic tuff was replaced with paramagnetic basalt flour and wollastonite when that material stopped being available. The label also moved to a more conservative guarantee so it holds on every batch.

We have never revised this blend to cut cost. Every change has gone the other direction.