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Originally Posted by nizmo
1) When using these tea's, does the same principle apply where you said that the plant uses it as it needs it, thus making it hard to get nute burn? Or do i need to be very conservative like with bottled shit?
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Compost teas are quite concentrated, so it
is possible to burn your plants with them, depending on the tea, and the plant. I'm happy with the 1:4 ratio for compost/wormcast teas. A lot of the tea's power comes from the way it activates other nutients available in the soil/other ingredients, so a little goes a long way. How you make your tea has an impact, too. Pure guano teas (without compost) can be diluted maybe 1:1, but I haven't experimented much with those.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nizmo
2) Why do you need the air pump? Is that just to speed up the growth of bacteria and/or mix everything better?
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Yes, it's to make the bacteria replicate quickly, particularly the aerobic (read: good) bacteria. The more oxygen dissolved in the water, the more aerobic it will be. This is good. You could get off with giving it a whisk every few hours, if you don't have an air-pump. They are very cheap, though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nizmo
3) Why can i not just pour the tea straight onto the soil? If it needs diluting, then surely diluting it with further nutrients (namely comfrey liquid) wouldnt actually be diluting at all?
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Well, let's say you were looking to make five litres of "feed". Wait a minute, this will also cover question 4, I'll skip down to there...
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Originally Posted by nizmo
4) I know it all depends on the setup and how old and what condition the plants are in but i would like some advice from your supreme knowledge (for which i will not hold responsible at all if it all turns pear shaped) about my situation. I have 2 plants about 5 weeks into flowering under a 600watt hps and they are going okay, a few leaves are yellowing and some of the lower smaller leaves are curling under (which may be because theres not as much light getting there). Plants are roughly 4-5 feet high and averagely bushy. What ingredients would you recommend for a tea for these ladies?
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Low light probably isn't the issue. But at this stage of the game, I wouldn't worry too much. Get the tea in there and they'll be fine.
Let's say you were looking to make five litres of "feed"...
You've got a nice three litres of tea that's been brewing for a day or more. You added a spoon of vintage bat guano, a handful of wormcast, tsp molasses, and a few goodies, like yeast extract (marmite), dash of lemon, dash of urine, tsp concentrated comfrey liquid, tsp seaweed extract, etc, and now it smells lovely! (it really does!)
In a bucket you pour a litre of this tea. Because it's around week five you want to add lots of immediately available P + K (and personally, I'd start doing that earlier, in
preparation), so you dump another spoon of the guano in there (which is still proabbly less than the label tells you to), and then some comfrey brew. This stuff is usually diluted 1:20-1:50, so you treat the rest of the solution as plain water, and base the concentration on that. So that's 100-250ml of comfrey brew.
Any extras can be added like this, treating the total volume as plain water and calculating the amount required from that. In practice you'll usually need less because of the synergistic effect of the other ingredients. With
any regime, it's best to start with smaller amounts, and gradually increase the strength until you're happy with it. Watch your plants.
Once all your extras are in, you top up to the required five litres with plain water, whisk it all together, and feed immediately. I make a three litre tea because I usually need around 9-12 litres of feed at one time, and I don't like to waste any of the tea.
Left-over tea can be used on houseplants, compost heaps, etc. Any solids can by chucked on top of your soil as a tasty top-dressing for your ladies, perhaps sprinked around the stem.
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Originally Posted by nizmo
5) When i get home im going to fish out some worms from the garden and throw them onto my soil... do i want big worms or small worms?
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Wrong kind of worms. Regular garden worms are too fat and slow, and their casts aren't of a high enough quality for our needs; you want "red wrigglers" or equivalent. You can either a) buy some. They are quite cheap. Or b) grab some out of a compost heap.
A grocery bag (sort of size) of compost from a good compost heap will get you around 30-100 worms (and quite a few eggs). If you know someone with a sizable compost heap, ask them for a bagful of the stuff. You can use these worms to start your own worm bin. They reproduce pretty quickly, so it won't be long before you have your own wormcast to play with.
A few in your soil is a good idea, particularly if you grow in a large soil bed. Any more than one, and they will reproduce (I sometimes put only one in a small pot, so it
won't reproduce). I dropped ten red wrigglers into my new 200L flower bed about five weeks ago, there's probably dozens now.
Big worms are best, but small worms get big fairly quickly. Every time I stir my compost I pull out a handful of big fat ones - they seem to sprout from nowhere - and drop them in a worm bin. Workers, that's what they are.
Have fun!
-mu