[-mu]

Originally Posted by nizmo

All sounds good, although i do have a slight problem namely that bat guano isnt very easy to find here.

But you have access to the internet, and it's very easy to send away a money order. Maybe $15 for a kilo, plus postage.

Better idea: find out where bats live. Importantly, you must learn how to extract their guano in a way that causes them no disturbance. I can't stress enough how uncool it is to mess with bats. You might also like to install a bat-box at your home. You can buy or make them, and make them in such a way that you can extract the guano without disturbing the bats. Did I mention how important this is?

At least in the UK, if you erect a bat box, you need to tell the local authorities. Most bats are protected species. But they do welcome anyone doing that. Lack of decent nesting sites is their greatest threat.

There are also local alternatives you could use. If you are serious about near-free organic gardening, start keeping worms. As well as a great way to dispose of your garbage (on top of the compost heap you should definitely have), it's pure manna for your plants. Rabbit guano is very good, too, as are lots of things. I could rabbit on about worms all day, but I won't. Google "vermiculture".

Originally Posted by nizmo

The liquid fertilizers i was referring to were out of the bottle, not teas, by the way. I have no knowledge of making teas (except for the kind you drink).

Well, I don't have any fertilizer in bottles, apart from brews I've made, and a bottle of maxicrop seaweed extract I got as a gift (great stuff!). You can make seaweed extract yourself, though, if you have access to seaweed.

Originally Posted by nizmo

Do you make these tea's and use them instead of liquid fertilizers that you get in a bottle?

Yes.

Originally Posted by nizmo

If so that makes sense, i just need some recipes because i have no idea about quantities (i havent even heard of comfrey liquid) or how often to apply. I dont know how to make these tea's that people speak of. Do you know anywhere i can go to get some?

Make it.

Get a bucket, say 5L. Put in a handful of compost (or wormcast, or guano, depending on the stage of growth your plants are at) add a teaspoon of molasses, top up with water to around 3L. Add an air-line (aquarium pump, with a weight attached to the end of the air-line, keep it down) and let it bubble for 24 hours+

That's it. If you want, you can add a dash of soy, dash of lemon, dash of urine, some sawdust (for fungi), seaweed extract, yeast extract, or any number of things. Basically, you brew your own custom feed.

The above tea would be diluted around 1:4 with plain water, and applied maybe once a week. It's hard to give exact figures because different plants and setups have different requirements. I generally add a further half teaspoon of molasses, because the original molasses will have mostly been used up by the growing bacteria. Hunt around for the 3LB molasses manual. Magical stuff. A jar of good blackstrap molasses is about £1.40, though you can buy spend over £20 on the same amount with a label that says "carbo-load" or "bacterial booster" or whatever. Same stuff.

Instead of all water, you can add other liquids to the tea when you dilute it, and that's the secret of custom feeds. Comfrey liquid is very useful being a complete fertiliser, and very high in Potassium. Check out the link in Sapanishfly's sig for details of how to make comfrey juice (with an addition by me at the end of the thread). It's easy. Lots of other plants can be similarly utilized. Nettle brews make a wonderful veg feed, for instance. As does Urine.

The same basic tea can be diluted differently for different plants, so one batch can not only feed your flowering plants, but your vegging plants, too. Compost is the most important ingredient for the organic gardener. If you don't have a compost heap, start one. You can even do it indoors, in big plastic tubs. Compost is another subject I could go on about until the cows come home.

By the way, that same batch of tea, diluted with twice as much water, will work as a great foliar feed, for any "quick-fix" you might need to provide, or as a general tonic for your plants.

Originally Posted by nizmo

Do you mean add live worms to my soil? Wouldn't they damage roots? Its pretty tightly packed in there...

All the more reason to add worms! One of their main function (apart from shitting pure manna) is to aereate the soil. Damage roots? Are you serious? Roots LOVE IT! It tickles, my plants tell me. At any rate, trust nature, she designed worms to live around roots.

I grow in a 200 Litre "bed". So it's almost like a slice of the outdoors, and stuffed with all sorts of life, invisible and visible; as well as the worms, there are soil mites, other insects, mushrooms, nettles and various "companion" plants, you name it. It's alive!

Originally Posted by nizmo

This does all sound pretty good though. I'd love to be able to ditch my bottled fertilizers and go for organic shit. From the sounds of it, the plants will only use what they need with organics, wheras with bottled shit you can easily burn them...

So many questions... I appreciate your help.

I enjoy helping. As I see it, if even one person ditches their bottles and really gets down with their plants, goes deep organic, my work is more than done.

It's fun. I remember my first compost tea, I didn't have a clue, and put in way too much urine, and yeast extract and the whole thing didn't exactly smell "sweet and earthy" like my more recent teas. But it worked great, and the plants responded with a flush of beautiful growth. Now I just throw a few things in a bucket, whisk it up, chuck in my air-line and leave it. A day later, delicious! And only a couple of minutes "work".

It's easy when you know how.

-mu