Biocast applications:
AGRICULTURE
Introduction
Biocast is a versatile biostimulant that aids plant establishment, vitality, resilience, and soil building.
The synergistic, all-natural compounds within Biocast support your plants, working with them make the best of the season. When combined with the right management, it can be used to improve yield, promote flowering, promote root growth and rhizosheath development, enhance nutrient uptake to reduce fertiliser reliance, improve palatability/ flavour of forage and produce, improve produce shelf life, discourage pest and disease attack, and more. Benefits are expected to be cumulative over time.
Biocast is a probiotic product with a broad array of beneficial microbes proliferated by the gut of your ultimate agricultural friend, the earthworm. These are supportive of important soil health processes such as rhizosheath formation, the rhizophagy cycle, and mycorrhizal fungi networks. These processes allow plants and microbes to work together to unlock nutrition already in your soil and supply your plant with what it needs in the right balance for that plant. This kind of unforced nutrition leads to healthy, nutrient-dense plants with their own strong immune system to fend off pests and diseases. Biocast is fungally dominant, which is important for repairing damaged soil ecosystems and supporting diverse pastures. As an added bonus, adding Biocast to the leaf surface provides microbial competition to diseases. A common observation by Biocast users on their paddocks is that the leaves appear greener. This is thanks to the overall plant health and the natural fulvic acid in Biocast shuttling nutrients, microbes and their life-signalling byproducts (such as plant hormones) through cell walls. It equates to greater photosynthesis, meaning that there is greater energy in the plant to carry out its functions, including seed production and soil building.
Biocast will produce varied results according to your soil type, the existing state of your soil and plant microbiome, and the season. Other farm management practices like the use of fertilisers and trace minerals, pesticides and medications, grazing regimes and machinery, and more will also impact outcomes. Biocast will work with your conditions to help your plant achieve its best health and vigour within the circumstances. It is common for farmers to only notice a visual difference in times of abiotic stress, though you may find improvements in factors such as brix or soil water holding capacity (for example) if measured. We encourage you to conduct your own trials, especially if you are running a farm enterprise where productivity needs to be maintained and you want to use Biocast to help transition through other chances such as reducing your fertiliser use. You are welcome to call Lee and discuss your program and requirements.
Biocast is made from 100% finished worm castings in a process-controlled environment. There is no leachate, and no other additives. Everything in Biocast has been synthesised by the worm, who knows best.
Signs your pasture or crop could benefit from the addition of Biocast:
- Soil tests reveal high total nutrient (e.g. phosphorus) and low available nutrient
- Plants are showing signs of deficiency in a mineral, despite it having being added
- Plants have a low brix level while photosynthesising
- Leaf litter sits on the ground for a long time and greys, it doesn’t decompose
- Plants are afflicted by diseases and insect pests
- Yield has decreased over time, despite managing it the same or even increasing inputs
- Absence of earth worms
- Plants wilt easily
- Plant roots come out clean rather than covered in ‘dredlocks’ (a film of soil, pictured right)
Suggested uses:
Foliar spray
Advantages
- Crop and pasture production becomes less susceptible to dry spells
- Provides resilience to pest pressure
- Facilitates balanced plant nutrition, which flows on to better nutrition for grazing animals and human consumers.
- Beneficial for reducing disease incidence, especially when used prophylactically.
- Natural fulvic acid content (approx. 2%) makes Biocast a good compliment for other foliar products, please chat with us to discuss your program.
What is it good for
- All pasture and cropping, including cereal, tree and vine crops
How to apply
- Can be used with existing irrigation systems, won’t block spray
- Dilute as needed to apply at 5 L per hectare for general use on pasture/ cereal crops. For areas showing signs of poor health apply at 7 L/ha
- Apply during the growing season for best effect
- Apply to plants from the 3 leaf stage
- It can stimulate flowering when applied to mature plants in the flowering season – consider whether this will be beneficial or not for your production setting and do a trial on your property
For detailed information on using Biocast as a foliar, see this post:
Seed inoculation
Advantages
- A very efficient way of adding microbes and their life-stimulating signals to your soil
- Sends seeds out with microbes directly in the root zone – you will likely see microbial ‘dredlocks’ on the first roots.
- Typically, Biocast will promote accelerated root growth, providing some resilience to the seed against abiotic stress and foraging creatures.
- Promotes rapid seed establishment and has been used to successfully establish seeds into existing vigorous pasture.
What is it good for
- Any seed being added to pastures, crop planting, and interrow covers, including cereals, legumes and forbs.
How to apply
- Be sure to start with uncoated seed.
- Can be applied from as low as 5 L per tonne if you are able to mix thoroughly, for example with an auger. Less efficient methods will require 10 L/t. These rates will not block your seeder.
- For liquid inject apply at 5 L/ha.
- Seeds don’t need to be soaked, just coated. It can be done several days in advance if allowed to dry properly to avoid germination or spoilage.
For detailed information on using Biocast as a seed inoculate, see this post:
Order your Biocast today!
Please contact us if you wish to discuss your particular growing situation and work out how much you need and how often. Lee can be reached on 0429 197 596.
Please note that postage rates are very variable in regional areas, so please contact us to place your order by emailing lee@islandbiologicals.com.au. We will send you an invoice including the agreed courier cost. Alternatively you can click the product below and pay via our online shop, and you will be invoiced separately for postage. Free pick up is available from Oxley Island NSW. Large orders are made fresh, so please allow two weeks lead time for brewing and freight. Due to quarantine restrictions we only post within Australia, excluding Tasmania and Western Australia.
“No reasonable person can expect our soil systems to be managed another 50 years as they have been managed for the last 50 years – not when deserts expand, subsoil replaces topsoil, aquifers go dry, oceans become polluted, the air poisons our cells, and produce from the land becomes empty of nutrition.”
– Charles Walters, Minerals for the Genetic Code