Key takeaways
- Stash Blend is a fertilizer with microbes in it: the label reads 2-1-5 with 3% humic acid and 0.5% soluble silicon. Recharge carries no N-P-K at all.
- Recharge puts its weight into microbe feed instead: 12% kelp, 6% molasses and 5% humic acid, with two bacteria at 100 million CFU per gram each.
- Both go in at about half a teaspoon per gallon, once a week. Stash Blend goes in last and does not move your pH.
- If root colonization is the goal, read the propagule count. Stash Blend carries 28 propagules per gram across four species; a single-species inoculant carries 300.
- Stash Blend counts as part of your feed, so subtract its nitrogen and potassium from the rest of the program rather than adding it on top.
Growers keep asking the same question about these two powders: if I already run one, do I need the other? They look alike in the bag and they both promise microbes, but their labels are built on different ideas. One is a fertilizer that happens to carry biology. The other is biology with nothing to feed the plant directly.
This guide is the decision, not the brochure. It puts both labels side by side, explains what each ingredient is doing, gives the mixing rates from the makers themselves, and says plainly where each one fits — including the two cases where neither is the right tool.
Stash Blend vs Recharge: The Two Labels Side by Side
Everything below comes from the two products' own guaranteed analyses, not from marketing copy. The difference shows up in the first line: Stash Blend is registered as a fertilizer, Recharge is not.
| On the label | Stash Blend | Recharge |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Dry fertilizer with microbes | Dry microbial inoculant |
| N-P-K | 2-1-5 | None listed |
| Derived from | Corn steep liquor, seaweed extract (Ascophyllum nodosum), potassium hydroxide | Kelp 12%, molasses 6% |
| Humic acid | 3.0% | 5.0% |
| Soluble silicon | 0.5% | None listed |
| Bacteria | Bacillus licheniformis 100M CFU/g, B. pasteurii 10M, B. subtilis 7M, Paenibacillus azotofixans 5.5M | Bacillus subtilis 100M CFU/g, B. megaterium 100M |
| Mycorrhizae | Four Glomus species, 7 propagules/g each | Four Glomus species, 6.4 CFU/g each |
| Rate | ½ to 1 tsp per gallon, added last | ½ tsp per gallon |
| Frequency | Weekly, seedling through week 6 to 8 of bloom | Weekly, until two weeks before harvest |
| Sizes we carry | 8 oz, 1 lb and 3 lb | Not carried here |
Two practical points come straight out of that table. First, Stash Blend feeds the plant, so it belongs in your nutrient math; Recharge does not, so it sits on top of whatever you already feed. Second, the microbe lists overlap but are not the same: both lean on Bacillus and the same four Glomus species, while Stash Blend adds a nitrogen-fixing Paenibacillus and Recharge adds molasses to feed what is already in the soil.
What Is in Stash Blend, and What Each Part Does
The formula is short enough to read in one breath, and every line on it has a job. Corn steep liquor and seaweed extract carry the nutrition, humic acid and silicon do the soil and structure work, and the microbes handle the root zone.
Corn steep liquor is the leftover steeping water from wet milling maize, and it is rich in soluble nitrogen and amino acids. Together with the seaweed extract and potassium hydroxide, it produces the 2.0% nitrogen, 1.0% phosphate and 5.0% potash on the label. That potassium-forward ratio is why the makers point it at flowering plants rather than seedlings alone.
Humic acid at 3% is the part with the strongest research behind it. A 2024 meta-analysis in Agronomy pooled 120 studies and 479 paired observations and found humic-acid fertilizers raised crop yield by about 12% and nitrogen use efficiency by about 27%. That is a soil-and-uptake effect rather than a nutrient in its own right.
Soluble silicon at 0.5% is a small number doing structural work. Plants deposit silicon as phytoliths just beneath the cell wall, and a 2022 review in Frontiers in Plant Science credits that deposit with easing salinity, drought, heat and heavy-metal stress. Our guide to growing with silica goes deeper into rates and timing.
The bacteria are the usual root-zone workers, led by Bacillus licheniformis at 100 million CFU per gram. Paenibacillus azotofixans is the interesting one, since it fixes nitrogen in the root zone rather than solubilizing what is already there. The mycorrhizae are four Glomus species at 7 propagules per gram each, which is a starter dose rather than a heavy inoculation, and the next section explains why that matters.
Is Stash Blend organic?
The brand describes it as organic-based, and most of the inputs are: corn steep liquor, seaweed, humic acid from lignite and living microbes. The potassium hydroxide in the derived-from line is a mineral input, and neither the label nor the brand's own pages claim an OMRI listing. So it is fair to call it natural-input feeding, and not fair to call it certified organic.
What Recharge Does Differently
Recharge is built as an instant compost tea. Real Growers' label carries no N-P-K, and the bulk of the bag is microbe food rather than plant food: kelp at 12%, molasses at 6% and humic acid at 5%.
The live part is narrower and more concentrated than Stash Blend's. Two bacteria, Bacillus subtilis and Bacillus megaterium, are listed at 100 million CFU per gram each, alongside the same four Glomus species at 6.4 CFU per gram. The molasses is there to wake up the microbes already living in your soil, which is the whole point of a compost-tea product.
Real Growers direct growers to mix half a teaspoon per gallon once a week through the cycle and to stop about two weeks before harvest. They also ask that the mix be used within an hour, because a brewed microbe solution does not keep. We do not carry Recharge, so this comparison is drawn from their published label rather than from a listing of ours.
Read that way, the two products are not really rivals. Recharge revives biology in tired soil. Stash Blend feeds the plant while adding biology, which is a different job in the same watering can.
How to Use Stash Blend
The mixing instructions are short and the brand's own help pages fill in the rest. Half a teaspoon to one teaspoon per gallon of water, stirred in until the powder dissolves, applied as a soil drench.
- Add it last. Mix your base nutrients, any pH adjuster and chelates first, then stir Stash Blend in at the end.
- Weekly, from the seedling stage. The brand's help pages run it once a week and stop around week 6 to 8 of bloom.
- No pH correction needed. The makers state it does not shift the pH of your water once mixed.
- Drench, don't brew. It behaves like an instant tea, so there is no steeping step. Foliar and top-dress use will not hurt anything, but a soil drench puts it where the roots are.
- Not for deep water culture. Some ingredients are not immediately soluble, so the brand advises against it in DWC.
- Storage. Keep the bag closed in a cool, dry place. It may clump; the listing puts the shelf life at two years and says clumping does not affect performance.
Can you run Stash Blend and Recharge together?
Nothing on either label prevents it, and plenty of growers alternate them week to week. The one thing to watch is arithmetic: Stash Blend is a fertilizer, so its nitrogen and potassium count toward your feed. If you stack it on a full synthetic schedule without adjusting, you are feeding more than you think, especially potassium in late bloom.
If You Want Mycorrhizae, Check the Propagule Count
This is where honest comparison matters more than brand loyalty. Four species at 7 propagules per gram works out to 28 propagules in a gram of Stash Blend, and Recharge's four at 6.4 lands in the same neighbourhood. A dedicated inoculant carries about ten times as much.
Colonization is a contact sport. Spores have to physically touch root tissue to colonize, which is why dusting the surface of a finished pot does very little and why transplant day is the moment that counts. If you are inoculating at transplant, use a product built for it: Great White for a multi-species powder, Orca for the liquid version with four endo species and eleven bacteria strains, or Mykos when you want the count concentrated in one species.
Then treat the mycorrhizae in Stash Blend or Recharge as a weekly top-up rather than the main event. Our article on mycorrhizal fungi and nutrient absorption covers how the symbiosis works and what it does for phosphorus uptake, and the Mammoth P guide covers the bacterial side of the same problem.
What the Michigan Grow Off Result Actually Says
Stash Blend's best-known result is a competition win, and it is worth reading carefully rather than repeating as a slogan. The event asked a field of cultivators to grow the same mystery clone and submit it for laboratory testing.
Lyra, an organic living-soil grower, took first place at 31.76% essential oil, with two Farm2Flame entries behind at 31.23% and 29.84%. The detail that makes it interesting is procedural: while other entrants isolated their competition plant and babied it, Lyra's plant went into the normal production line with no change to their formulas or technique.
What it is not is a controlled trial. There was no side-by-side plant grown without Stash Blend, the margin over second place was about half a percentage point, and genetics, media and environment all differed between entrants. It is a good sign that the program works in a real room. It is not proof that one additive produced the win.
Filling Out the Rest of the Program
Stash Blend is an additive, not a feeding program. The same line covers the other two jobs with dry amendments you mix into the soil rather than the water.
| Product | Analysis | Main inputs | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stash Blend | 2-1-5, 3% humic, 0.5% Si | Corn steep liquor, seaweed extract, potassium hydroxide, microbes | In the water, weekly |
| Stash Base | 2.2-4.0-2.3 | Calcium phosphate, biochar, crustacean, feather and fishbone meals, rock dusts, alfalfa, insect frass, kelp meal, neem seed kernel meal, oyster shell | Mixed into the media, re-applied every 2 to 3 weeks |
| Stash Bloom | 2.0-8.0-6.0, 9% calcium | Sulfate of potash, calcium sulfate, fish bone meal, alfalfa meal, insect frass, volcanic calcium metasilicates | From late veg through flower |
| Stash kits | All three together | Budget starter, starter grow and medium pro sizes | A full program in one box |
One more powder worth knowing if your media is tired rather than hungry: STAX raises the cation exchange capacity of the media itself, so the nutrients you already apply stay available instead of washing through. It is a different lever from either microbes or fertilizer.
Which One to Use
Three situations cover most gardens, and the label tells you which one you are in.
- You already feed a complete program and the soil feels flat. A microbe-only product such as Recharge adds biology without touching your numbers.
- You want fewer bottles. Stash Blend rolls kelp, humic acid, silicon, bacteria and a light mycorrhizal dose into one weekly scoop, and it feeds while it does it.
- You are planting out or transplanting. Neither is the right tool. Use a dedicated mycorrhizal inoculant in the planting hole, then go back to the weekly additive.
Outdoors, the practical advantage of Stash Blend is that potassium-forward 2-1-5 in mid to late season, when plants are flowering hard and the soil has already given up most of what it had. Indoors on a synthetic schedule, the same nutrition can become a double dose, so check your feed chart before adding it.
Frequently Asked Questions
The questions growers type into search before they land on this page, answered in a few lines each.
Is Stash Blend better than Recharge?
They do different jobs. Stash Blend feeds the plant a 2-1-5 while adding microbes, silicon and humic acid. Recharge adds microbes and their food with no fertilizer value. If you want one product to simplify a program, Stash Blend does more per scoop; if you only want biology, Recharge stays out of your nutrient math.
What is in Stash Blend?
Corn steep liquor, seaweed extract from Ascophyllum nodosum and potassium hydroxide make the 2-1-5. It also carries 3% humic acid, 0.5% soluble silicon, four bacteria and four Glomus mycorrhizal species.
How much Stash Blend per gallon?
Half a teaspoon to one teaspoon per gallon of water, added last when you mix a nutrient solution, once a week. Larger plants and active growth take the higher rate.
Can I use it with synthetic nutrients?
Yes. The makers state it works with both synthetic base nutrients and organic living soil. Just remember its own nitrogen and potassium are part of the total you are feeding.
Does Stash Blend change pH?
No. The brand states it does not alter the pH of your water once mixed, so no correction step is needed after it goes in.
Do I still need a dedicated mycorrhizal inoculant?
If you want real colonization at transplant, yes. Stash Blend carries 28 propagules per gram across four species and Recharge is in the same range, while a single-species product such as Mykos carries 300. Inoculate in the planting hole, then use the weekly additive to keep topping it up.
Does it make sense in a living-soil bed that already has biology?
Then what earns its place is the fertilizer and the silicon, not the microbes. A bed with active biology gets less from another small microbe dose; the 2-1-5 and the 0.5% silicon are what still earn their place. That is also the case where a molasses-based product such as Recharge, which feeds what is already there, has a clearer job.
Can I use Stash Blend in hydro or DWC?
Not in deep water culture. Some of the ingredients are not immediately soluble, so the brand advises against it there. A soil or coco drench is what the product is built around.
Do I need to brew it like a compost tea?
No. It behaves like an instant tea: mix it into water and feed. Recharge works the same way, though its makers ask you to use the mix within an hour.
How long does it keep, and why did mine clump?
The listing puts the shelf life at about two years in a cool, dry place with the bag closed. Clumping is normal for a powder with this much organic content and does not affect how it works; break it up before mixing.
When is Stash Blend the wrong choice?
Three cases. In deep water culture, because not everything dissolves. At transplant, where a dedicated inoculant does the job better. And on a full synthetic schedule already heavy in potassium, where the 2-1-5 stacks on top of what you are feeding.
Where can I read the guaranteed analysis?
On the back of the bag, and on the product page, which reproduces the full analysis including CFU and propagule counts. The label image at the top of this article is the same panel.