Post your Organic Tea Recipe!

I found soil worm casting tea bags for sale in two packs at my local nursery the other day. Has anyone ever used this type of product. The brand was Living Soil, I think.

 

ocitown

That's correct. These teas are not fertilizers or nutrients in the sense that we've become accustomed to in the cannabis growing paradigm. They are inoculants, i.e. energizing the micro-herd in the organic compost that you've added to your soil mix. There is no benefit to applying these teas over and over. Maybe twice in the entire grow/flower cycle. Usually only once.

When you spray the teas on the branches & leaves, you are setting up colonies of aerobic fungai - the good guys. Aerobic is stronger in anaerobic in the world of bacteria & fungai as things turn out. By establishing these colonies it is almost impossible for anaerobic fungai (powdery mildew for example) to get established. If you do see a slight re-infestation then another application may be required.

Same thing when you apply the teas to the soil. The aerobic micro-herd kick-start the (sometimes) dormant microbes in your compost and/or earthworm castings and in a couple of days (sometimes within 12 hours) the good guys are in charge with bacteria breaking down the nutrients in the soil mix.

Digested nitrogen is easily assimilated by a plant directly from the bacterial 'exude' or 'slime' - getting nitrogen to a plant is a no-brainer. Phosphorus is a different matter and it would take pages and pages of explanation but here's the Reader's Digest condensed version.

Bacteria has to break down the 'stuff' in the soil. Some things digested by bacteria and floating in the exude like 'N' & 'K' can be absorbed by the plant's root hairs. Phosphorus is broken down into a form that certain fungai can use. It's these fungai strains which then move a new digested form into the plant directly - kind of like a heroin junkie mainlining.

So back to your question about watering. Since we're not trying to high-dose a plant but rather keep the micro-herd alive above and below the soil line, a weekly soil soak and foliar spray of fish enzyme and seaweed extract is all that's necessary along with 1 tsp. of livestock molasses per gallon. That's it. Straight water as needed.

HTH

LumperDawgz

Here's a good fish enzyme product which has the seaweed extract already added. Down-To-Earth Liquid Fish & Kelp and should run under $25.00 per gallon and you use 1 oz. (2 tablespoons) per gallon of water so that will give you 128 gallons for $25.00 and the livestock molasses at the feed/farm store will cost you about $10.00 for 3 gallons. Your great grandchildren will be trying to finish off your bucket of molasses.

Lot cheaper than 'Carbo-Load' or 'Sweet Leaf' eh?

 

So im assuming adding anything should be done with care so not to kill any "good" microbes/bactirias?

 

Exactly.

 

Homemade plant liquid fertilizer for outdoors (slurry):

Place 1kg of fresh nettles or Russian comfrey (etc...) in 1O liters (2,5 gallons) of rain water, fresh outdoor water, (if you need to use tap water: leave open for 24 hours to evaporate the Chlorine).
Use a 5 gallon plastic container (not metal).
Cover with cloth or loose lid (so flies don't fall in)
To allow best fermentation 20C. Around 30C it rots (no good).
Do not put in direct sun.
Mix twice a week.
It shouldn't smell really bad (rotten) when it's done well. It should smell like cow urine apparently haha. Takes 1-2 weeks. If it takes much longer, it means it's not working right.
Filter to keep longer.
Keep in closed jerricans in a cool dry place. Don't leave much air in (like for wine).
Dosage for nettles, russian comfrey etc...: 10% for teas, 20% for foliar feeding.
Use every 2-3 weeks.

 

hey lumperdawgz how did you come to know all this stuff?

and i just ordered that book haha

 

Book learnin'

Jethro Bodine was a personal hero of mine as a young kid - 'Commence cipherin' Jethro!' still sends a thrill up my leg.

In all seriousness it's been through working with other farmers in experimental programs through Oregon State University's Agriculture Extension Program in the attempt to get a handle on the various fungai that we have to deal with, especially 'powdery mildew' for which there are thousands of strains & types. It's not like 'red spider mites' where you're dealing with one specific invader.

At any rate after all of the other 'cures' which never worked very well after October 1 when the rain season starts in the Pacific Northwest were exhausted and we began the application of high-fungai aerated compost teas applied on a regular basis throughout the growing season right up to harvest, it only took the first season to convince almost all of us that this was the ticket.

Then the search began through Dr. Elaine Ingham's work at the 'Soil Feed Web' group and their extensive number of peer-reviewed documents on 'feeding the soil to feed the plant' and things progressed.

Finding suitable compost was the first challenge. Earthworm castings are preferred because they're almost always perfect. Better earthworm castings are offered by companies who offer the analysis on the level of microbe activity in their products. Here's such an analysis on the castings one might find in the Pacific Northwest - Yelms Earthworms

Then it was on to building a brewer which was an interesting learning process on why it's sometimes better to buy an item that has already been engineered by experts. Tea brewers were expensive when the information first began spilling out of a handful of universities around the world. Now you can buy them for $150.00 which is a nice deal.

Keep in mind that this science of using ACT is not even 14 years old. Much of the real work has been in the last 5 years having said that. Especially with regard to how to brew a 'high-fungal tea' vs. a 'high-protozoa tea' or why you would or would not want to do that, i.e. those kinds of issues as well as the addition of 'outside agents' like aloe vera juice or yucca extract, et al.

HTH

LD

 

Be the first on your block to build a professional compost tea brewer: link

This is the set of plans developed by a research assistant at Oregon State University on building a tea brewer. It cost less than $25.00 though you will have to get an air pump of suitable size for this amount of water.

The link is to a PDF document if that's important. The document is sitting on the university's servers if you're concerned about that as well.

Cheers!

LD

 

Lumperdawgz,
That air pump that was linked in the OSU PDF you posted was quite expensive. Do you think one like this would work good enough?

 

ElDiablo

Thank you for linking to that specific product and style of aquarium pump. While that pump would not be suitable for a 25-gallon brewer, it is PERFECT for brewing 5-gallons and you could find some who would argue that it would work for up to a 10-gallon.

Still - 5-gallons of properly made aerated compost tea is a LOT of tea. That amount of tea, assuming that you did all of your homework on the ingredients (like not adding molasses and/or bat or bird guanos), then the microbe level in that 5-gallons exceeds the amount of microbes in a ton of compost. Most commercial applications of compost teas are diluted 1:10 so that 5-gallons for even a huge indoor grow is overkill.

It's about inoculation and not feeding the plants directly with nutrients. As far as an N-P-K there probably is none in compost teas.

MarineDepot.com is a good source for the same style of pumps (they appear to be made in the same factory in fact) and here's one example - link

In buying a pump, what you're looking for is the amount of air that the pump produces, i.e. the GPM rate of air. All of these pumps have a low P.S.I. which is what you want.

Good products which should last you several years. Again - look at the 'GPM' rating in the specs of any pump you're considering.

HTH

LumperDawgz

 

donedeal

It's the other way around. The mesh bag is to allow the flow of certain fungai free from the compost and into the general tea. It's necessary to use a 400-mesh product. Smaller than that and you begin to break up the fungai strands.

The simplest explanation is that when you brew the tea, one of the actions necessary is to free the various micro-herd free from the compost/EWC. Fungai, for the sake of this discussion regarding this environment, cannot be created via reproduction like the other microbes - especially bacteria.

Fungai can be increased in size and they grow in very long strands at a very fast rate. A mesh bag smaller than 400 will limit their ability to move from the compost in the bag out into the general area and cause them to break into small pieces.

One of the primary goals in brewing compost teas is for the high-fungai levels that will be produced and sprayed on your plants. Properly made, compost teas will have fungai up to 18" in length which has definite benefits for setting up the colonies above and below the soil line. Absorbing phosphorus is one benefit for someone growing flowers, nuts & fruits.

If you don't plan on spraying your teas onto your plants and simply want to use the tea as a soil soak then you wouldn't need a bag at all. Just bubble it out and dip and pour with a water-can that has a large opening.

But if you want to spray then you have to filter out the large particles from the compost and that's why a 400-mesh bag is suggested to prevent clogging up your sprayer which will get clogged regardless to some degree. Murphy's Law and all.

HTH

LD

 

Lol when I read that I missed it's title (I'm high right now) and thought that it was a recipe for the tea itself. That would be a nasty cup of tea!

 

chunk

From Dr. Elaine Ingham's organization, Soil Food Web, and their web site is this cite regarding your specific question:

There is a tea brewer from a company out of Eugene, Oregon called Growing Solutions which manufacturers several brewers from 10-gallon up to a 500-gallon model. The entry price into this line is $495.00 - that used to be the price (like 2 weeks ago) for their 5-gallon model which has been discontinued.

These units use a 'micro-size air stone' and each and every model failed the field tests conducted by Soil Food Web. They only produced bacteria and it was anaerobic bacteria to boot.

A product from another company in the Pacific Northwest, Keep-It-Simple sells a model for $140.00 (they dropped their price by $10.00 recently) and it passed with flying colors.

So I would say that it's best to avoid any tea brewer on the market which brags that they're using 'micro-size air bubbles' to brew the teas in their machines.

HTH

LD

 

IIRC my hydro pump moves~70 lph @3psi,its an Alita AL-60 IIRC.

Would this be too big for small batches in a home-made tea maker?

Its 68 lpm/2.4cfm,60 watts and 2.18 psi...sorry.

The 25 gal. home-made system needs a 50 watt pump.

 

It's the 'lpm' number that's important. That size pump will work perfectly for 10-gallons or less. Preferably around 5-gallons for maximum performance.

Basically you want 1.5 gallons of air per gallon of water per minute. Your pump is rated at 68 lpm and I'll do some goofy metric conversion and we'll say for sake of this discussion, you're able to produce about 18 gallons air per minute. Let's knock off 20% of the pump's rating for 'overstating of facts' by the manufacturer and we're safely at 10-gallons or so.

Let me give you a point of reference. In a commercial organic farming application of ACTs, a 5-gallon batch is made and then diluted 50% with clear water resulting in 10-gallons of tea.

10 gallons is the amount used on a full acre of plants up to 5'0" - just given as a point of reference.

"Aerated compost teas are about inoculation and not feeding, per se"

 

ocitown

Before you get too far in your project, it's probably a good time to discuss water quality.

As we all know chlorine is added to most public water systems to kill bacteria and other bad things. And as we all know, aeration will remove almost all of the chlorine and with a pump the size you're talking about using that will happen in 20-30 minutes. No problem!

Next up is chloramine which is used by many, but not all, water districts. You need to call your local water company and see if they use this in their system. The ammonia in chloramine is the real bad one here.

Wine makers use a product known as 'Camden tablets' but the problem here is that this is an agent used to kill wild yeasts, fungai and bacteria - not exactly what you want if you're trying to make a brew to grow their cousins.

An easy way is to take a couple of tablespoons of quality earthworm castings and put them into your mesh bag and bubble it out for about 1 hour. The organic material in the earthworm castings will activate the chloramine causing it to convert chlorine and the aeration process will remove both the chlorine and ammonia.

That or go and buy distilled water, which if one lives in or near a major population center given the usual quality of water out of the tap, may be the best option.

You only need to apply these teas once (maybe twice) in a 12-week veg/flower growing cycle.

HTH

LumperDawgz

 

I have a commercial R/O system,wont this be easier?

 

ocitown

Give me a couple of hours and I'll find the extract from a testing done with various 'filtered' water sources which included R/O

I was stunned by the results and you will be as well. I don't want to start quoting until I find this article (published by University of Washington-Pullman if I recall correctly.

BRB

LumperDawgz

 

Im thinkin R/O is a poor source for organic growing?

Great for dead chemical growing.