Trying to ease my way into the art of tea brewing with a scientific understanding of the goals, but no practical experience. I'm making small 1 gallon batches because I simply cannot use 5 gallons in any kind of timely manner, but I'm having a tough time figuring the rhyme and reason to dilution rates. Any suggestions on how to apply this brew or things to do differently would be appreciated. At the moment I'm using: 1 cup EWC 1 tbs Molasses 1/4 cup Kelp Meal 1/8 cup Alfalfa Meal 1/8 cup 10-6-2 Bat guano .....and experimenting with diluting the finished tea at a rate of 1-2 cups/gallon. Am I even in the ballpark???
In the last three years i have made a great number of teas with many ingredients, and diluted anywhere from no dilution to 3/1. The plants have responded to the diluted teas just like the full strength teas. In winter when the teas only feed a hanfull of indoor plants a 1 gallon tea could dilute to 5 gallons with no problems at all. BTW you might want ot reconsider using guano in a microbe type tea, as the guano could be too strong for the microbes, it works better as a top dress.....MIW
Thank you MIW, greatly appreciated. My inclusion of guano is kind of a paranoid and probably misguided response to the fact that I am making a shift sort of mid grow. I hadn't considered that it might introduce factors that inhibit microbial growth rates. I have been using some inorganic nutes for several months during veg on some indoor plants, and upon transplanting to much larger containers I began wondering if the inclusion of new, un-chemically adulterated soil would be a good point to transition to an organic method. Since my apparent favorite method to learn is the hard way, I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm not confident that the microbial community (in particularly mycos) will have sufficiently built up around the crtitcal established root system in the older soil (if at all in the obvious case of some organisms) enough to rely purely on microbial nutrient cycling. Probably overthinking it per norm; thanks again though! I'll leave it out next batch.