hello all, i'm just getting off the ground with my first efforts at making a "perpetual" aerated compost tea. got all the usual suspects in there, liquid seaweed, fish emulsion, molasses etc, and a strong air pump. but i'd like to get the opinions and thoughts of others on a practice that i've not read of anyone else doing: adding *fresh* organic material directly to the compost tea. instead of simply composting things like leftover spinach/swiss chard stems and steeping the compost, i've been mixing all the leftovers with water in a blender, and blending until it's got the "sludgy" consistency of liquid seaweed. i then just pour this directly into the tea. in theory, it seems to me anyway, the same bacteria that are in the compost will be alive and well in the tea, and can do their job just as well in there. at least, that's where my intuition has led me, but i've been led astry before lol. any thoughts, opinions or ideas on this? all are welcome!
Why perpetual? Why not just make it as needed? It sounds like you are almost mixing botanical teas with ACTs by adding veggies. I'm not saying its "wrong" just haven't heard of others doing it. To learn more about true Aerated Compost Tea, go to Microbe Organics dot com. J
But, you are not introducing compost to your 'tea', just blended veggies. And, while there may be some microbes in thereI am reasonably certain that they aren't there in the numbers one would find in and actual compost tea. Like Jerry said, I think you are making a botanical solution.
perpetual just seems more streamlined to me, i'm growing tons of vegetables and culinary/medicinal herbs in soilless media so i'm always feeding something lol. i'm in the process of getting all the knowledge i can on all subjects related to composting/tea brewing and all related. that site you suggested has a staggering amount of info! i like the author's approach too, not declaring his or her info to be biblical truth, makes it much easier to take seriously. i've never heard the term Botanical Tea before, so that's yet another path yet to tread.. with all my plants plus tons of foliage that loves any leftover tea i might have, i figured a perpetual brew makes the most sense, but like i said i've never done this before so if there are drawbacks to a constant brew that could be remedied by making individual batches i very much welcome any insight, even (especially in fact heh) if it involves criticism of my methods. thanks for the insight once again, J
ah, i should've added that i'm also doing the standard "compost in a sock" method, swapping out fresh compost every 5-7 days. you're probably right about the microbes, i'm still waiting on a package of inoculant because i'm using store-bought compost til the homemade stuff is ready and i find it hard to trust that it hasn't been shelved in the sun for several weeks heh. what exactly is a botanical solution? not done searching but google hasn't turned up much so far..
To learn about Botanical Teas read here - http://forum.grasscity.com/organic-growing/951823-botanicals.html Botanical teas are made by essentially soaking assorted "Dynamic Accumulator" plants in water to attain the assorted elements and compounds that the dynamic accumulator plants "mine" out of the earth with thier deep tap root systems. Different accumulators mine different things. Here is a brief chart showing some different accumulators and the elements they mine - Dynamic Accummulator Weeds that site you suggested has a staggering amount of info! i like the author's approach too, not declaring his or her info to be biblical truth, makes it much easier to take The author of that site, Tim Wilson, has done his homework and has the science and proof to back up his claims - you can take that to the bank. If you read something on his website it's because he has done his lab time to back it up.
...holy shit. that's a HUGE chunk of exactly what i'm looking for. the odd thing is that i've come across that thread a couple of times using search but i didn't realize the context i guess? nor what a "dynamic accumulator" was. can't give you +rep again but i really appreciate the shove in the right direction.
tea, solution.. haha it's all semantic to me at this point, this is the first i've read about this method, but it's turning out to be a major puzzle piece
it might be helpful to add here that i'm small potatoes as far as mj growing. to this point i've just been doing one-plant grows from seed in a smallish closet. got a mom now, but still i thought it might be important to note that i'm by no means a "large" operator. thanks for all the input so far
You're not alone. I have a small tent that I run two plants at a time in with a mom out side the tent on a shelf. Im very limited for space. I grew a few ladies outside last year but nosy in-laws became an issue. I found that SCROG'ing really helped me get the most out of two plants.
Just a thought....would it work to brew an ACT tea with compost, get the microbes flourishing, then feed them perpetually with fresh plant matter to keep them alive. It would be a blend of ACT and botanical teas. Theoretically I don't see any reason it wouldn't work.
that's what i'm wondering myself i thought it might be like the normal compost process but way faster, especially since i plan to get a blender dedicated entirely to bizzing up leftover plant matter with water and adding to the tea.. WAY more surface area exposed to the microbes.. and then keep the regular compost/earthworm boxes going, to refresh the tea every week or two? seems like you'd be getting the benefits of all! too good to be true probably, the way things usually go if it's worth doing there's prolly someone out there already doing it haha
another idea i've been tinkering with is algae farming, just a large aquarium with a few goldfish.. feed the goldfish, goldfish poop which provides P, K and others for algae, skim algae/fish poop, add direct to compost tea.. ? i wonder if you can raise sardines in a tank? if so, sadly for the sardines, therein could lie an essentially limitless supply of fish emulsion.. kinda brutal tho :/
If you want to get someone with experience in this area, you can get with Fayn2madness. She has a journal here in oganics. A while ago she talked about how she uses the bio sludge from her koi pond to feed her plants. Maybe not exactly what you are talking about here but it also might be worth a look.
Sure - I see no reason at all why it wouldn't work, but if you're gonna brew an ACT, instead of feeding them veggies, why don't you instead feed them YOUR SOIL. Edit: I don't know about the "perpetual" thing. From all I've read it doesn't work as well as new fresh batches. J
I'm so glad I saved this as a doc on my computer. If you wanna brew perpetually go ahead and experiment, especially if you have a microscope. It's fun. Just don't sell the stuff (unless you check it with a scope) and don't recommend it to others who may create a mess for their garden. To all you all, I'm so sorry I have to be repeating this but it is the easiest way. Also I believe the OP mentioned using raw materials rather than [vermi]compost. The reason to use [vermi]compost is the microbial consortia involved is different after the composting or worm digesting process. My friend Jim Deacon has a pretty good brief; Thermophilic microorganisms
excellent info man, haha this thread turned out to be a gold mine. i would never sell this stuff! happily give it away tho if someone just wanted some starter culture. i think the language i used was rather vague, but i do intend to use my kitchen compost and (eventually) vermicompost. i'm just gonna experiment with adding blended veggie waste scraps directly to the tea, test it out on my basil plants . nothing you'd call scientifically rigorous, but some i'll feed as usual and the rest the ACT. if i get bored enough i might even start up a second tea done with just regular compost lol. either way, hopefully the world learns something
Great info micro. It sounds like it would be more effective to have a perpetual tea using several batches, start one monday to use tuesday/wednesday. Start another Tuesday and so on. It would be like a perpetual harvest where you keep using old batches and starting new ones continually. Probably not the type of perpetual the OP intended.... ,