Score: 3/5
Aurora Innovations is a Eugene, Oregon-based company, created more than 20 years ago by a group of dedicated organic growers with a grassroots approach that involved their local community. Aurora Innovation’s dedication to sustainable practices that respect ecosystems reflects in the high quality of their products, which are all organic and free from chemicals.
The Aurora Master Pack is a liquid and dry nutrients “player pack,” designed for new gardeners who are looking for a full pack of nutrients at a reasonable price, or for more experienced gardeners who want to do side-by-side comparisons with different organic nutrients. It is recommended for use with potting soil.
The Aurora Master Pack includes 10 liquid and 4 dry nutrient Aurora products that cover the plants’ lifecycle from seedlings to late bloom and flush. When buying online, it can be hard to understand which nutrients exactly are contained in the pack, especially if you are a new gardener. The company lists the included products by their brand names and not by the nutrients they include. Thankfully, this review does the hard work for you.
The Aurora Master Pack is, indeed, a nutrient supercharger, packed with a large variety of minerals, guano, meals, and symbiotic microorganisms. It comes with a nutrients feeding schedule to follow. Most of the ingredients follow a 5ml dosage (thus you will also find the product online as a “5ml pack”.)
While each product included in the pack is ready to use, you need to read the feeding schedule carefully to use it correctly according to the life stage of your plants and the size of your pots. You also need to top your plants with a coco fiber layer mulch before you start using any of the included nutrients. If you are a first-time gardener, you may find all these instructions too complicated to follow.
The pack comes in a handy package for $82.99. It is not on the cheap side, but it makes for a veritably rich and complete nutrient program that is worth the cost if you start using it from seedlings. Even so, it may expensive for something that is, effectively, a collection of sample packs.
Ingredients
Base and Composts
The Aurora Master Pack is a pack of soil amendments. As such, it contains no base or compost. Aurora Innovations suggest that it should be used with potting soil, which you should top with 2-3 inches of coco fiber as a mulch to avoid soil compaction and to keep the soil hydrated.
Minerals
The Aurora Master Pack contains Roots Organics Elemental (4oz), a mix of natural ingredients that supplement calcium and magnesium to the plants. Calcium helps the plant develop a healthy cellular structure, while magnesium is a central component of the chlorophyll molecule. Both ingredients promote larger yields and help plants grow strong. The Elemental formula contains calcitic and dolomitic lime, which help regulate the soil’s pH and provide micronutrients to the plants. It also contains gypsum, a rich in trace elements ingredient that also enhances soil structure and increases water penetration and retention.
Langbeinite can be found in many of the products included in the pack, such as HP2, Roots Organics Uprising Grow, Roots Organics Uprising Bloom, and Roots Organics Uprising Foundation. Langbeinite is a pH neutral, long-lasting, and readily available source of low-chloride potassium, magnesium, and sulfur. Potassium helps plants deal with environmental stresses such as compacted, dry, or cold soils.
Other products in the Aurora Master Pack, such as Budha Bloom, Ancient Amber, HP2, and HPK, contain finely grounded phosphate rock. This acts like a nutrients storage and delivers nutrients to the plants in the long term, as they are decomposed by the soil’s microorganisms.
Soil Amendments
The Aurora Master Pack includes some of the more complex amendments produced by Aurora Innovations, combining a multitude of meals, guanos, and natural plant and sea extracts. Some of these products are designed as multi-nutrients and concern a particular lifecycle phase of the plants. Others are designed to provide more of a specific type of nutrients (e.g. vegetal-derived nutrients, animal-derived nutrients, guanos, microorganisms, etc).
Most ingredients are present in several of the products but in different dosages, depending on the focus of each product.
Some of the included products are full solutions with a very wide array of ingredients, like Roots Organics Buddha Grow (NPK/2 – 0.25 – 2, 16 oz included in the pack) and Buddha Bloom (NPK/ 0.5 – 2 – 1, 16 oz included in the pack). Both contain different mixes of mostly vegetal-derived nutrients and guanos to promote vigor, increase yields, and enhance flavor:
- bat guano, which acts as a natural fertilizer, fungicide, and inoculant.
- kelp meal, made from various dried kelp and seaweed species, is an essential source of potassium, phosphorus, and nitrogen.
- soybean meal, a protein-rich byproduct of cold-pressing soybeans, provides nitrogen to the plants when decomposed by microorganisms.
- molasses are high in calcium, magnesium, iron, potassium, and sulfur. They encourage the growth of beneficial microorganisms.
- yucca extract contains saponins that have anti-microbial, anti-fungal, antioxidant, and anti-bacterial properties. This is a great protector for the delicate rooting system of seedlings.
- Both products also contain earthworm castings, an optimal soil enricher that holds nitrates, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and phosphorus, but not too much nitrogen. They are also effective for repelling pests that feed on plants, such as aphids and spider mites.
Other formulas included in the pack are rich solely in botanical nutrients and focus on specific functions rather than growing phases:
- Trinity (16oz) is high on kelp, soy and yucca extracts, as well as triterpenes. It is a nutrient that also helps regulate the soil microbial and other microorganism population.
- Extreme Serene (8oz) is a kelp and spirulina seaweed solution for foliar application, treated for maximal absorption to encourage root growth.
- Ancient Amber (8oz) is a distinctly active source of nitrogen, extracted from fermented (non-GMO) soybean and nettle meals. It is used through foliar application.
- Amino Aide (8oz) is a complex amino acid blend based on kelp and yucca extracts, specifically formulated to feed the soil’s microorganisms. When decomposed by bacteria, these ingredients provide mild forms of nitrogen to the plants.
- Soul Big Swell (8oz) is a formula of powerful natural botanical extracts, amino acids, and molasses, combined to yield mostly phosphorus and potassium.
Two formulas mostly contain guanos:
- HP2 (8oz) consists mostly of liquid seabird guano, a natural source of phosphorus. It should be used mainly during flowering and fruiting.
- HPK (8oz) is a liquid bloom booster. It is a combination of seabird guano, phosphate rock, and langbeinite, to provide potassium and magnesium to plants.
Finally, in the Aurora Master Pack, you will find four dry nutrients. These are rich blends of mostly animal origin meals and compost, microorganisms, and symbiotic fungi:
- Roots Organics Uprising Grow (2oz), Roots Organics Uprising Bloom (2oz), and Roots Organics Uprising Foundation are all complete nutrient blends of 100% natural and organic ingredients. Although they contain similar ingredients, their formulas have been adjusted to different plant growth phases. They contain mostly animal source meals, such as feather meal, fish meal, crab meal, blood meal, and fishbone meal. On the animal manure side, the mix contains bat guano, chicken manure, and earthworm castings. The formula also includes symbiotic bacteria and fungi along with rock dust, volcanic ash, soybean, and alfalfa meal.
- Roots Organics OregonismXL (1.8oz) is a root growth enhancer that colonizes the root system with symbiotic fungi. These increase root mass and bacteria that decompose humic acids into plant palatable nitrogen. The mix is a custom blend of mycorrhizae, bacillus bacteria, pseudomonas bacteria, and humic acids derived from leonardite. Microorganisms in the mix include funneliformis mosseae, rhizophagus aggregatum, rhizophagus intraradices, septoglomus deserticola, bacillus amyloliquefaciens, bacillus licheniformis, bacillus megaterium, bacillus pumilus, bacillus simplex, bacillus subtilis, and pseudomonas fluorescens.
It is obvious that the Aurora Master Pack contains nutrients of a wide variety and high quality. However, as some of the ingredients are present to many products in the pack, you must adhere to the directions on when and how to use each of them, to avoid burning your plants.
Quick Summary—Pros and Cons
Pros
- Made by a reputable company dedicated to organic growing for over 20 years.
- Contains an impressive range of organic nutrients, minerals, and beneficial microorganisms.
- The most iconic Aurora Innovations products feature in the pack.
- The accompanying feeding schedule provides first-time gardeners with easy instructions on how and when to use each product contained in the pack.
Cons
- It can be hard to understand which nutrients the pack includes since it consists of several Aurora Innovations products. You need to check each of the products to identify the nutrients contained in the pack, which is not very practical.
- The nutrients master plan and the content of the pack are not 100% identical. For example, there is no hygrozyme nor worms in the pack, although they figure in the schedule. Also, there are no instructions on using Elemental, a product included in the pack.
- Compared to complex amendments that are ready to use and good for the whole plant lifecycle, this is a complicated process to feed your plants.
- The product was out of stock, even on the Aurora Innovations website, at the time of the review.
