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Compost Teas

Posted: Thu 13-Jan-2022, 10:53
by tracezleelast
I have an indoor tent with some cannabis plants and companion plants alongside, as well as cover crops, worms and all those goodies. Will you be providing tea recipes here?

Some other sources I use mostly supply amendment recipe blends of rock dusts, kelp, malted barley, silica etc.

I am running out of amendments now and don't want to buy more of the same if you have good suggestions to share with us. On one of your IG videos your growing method shown looked pretty simple.

Meanwhile, my garden bed is 3' x 3' to fit the tent snugly, so its nice for the worms and microbiology to have room to play and grow. I have a bunch of bokashi juice sitting in my bins that i haven't used since my first bin got full, i hope it's still active and alive and can be diluted to feed through the veg and flower stages.

Re: Compost Teas

Posted: Wed 19-Jan-2022, 18:38
by TomF
Teas can be tricky and you hear lots of failures with biologic amendments and teas out there. Also many videos on compost teas that do not mention the risks and critical need of aeration and preventing anaerobic conditions. A true compost tea should start from good compost with the right anaerobic microorganisms present. This is hard to two without a microscope or sourcing from someone like Andres who will know it is good. If you add molasses to grow the bacteria, some folks recommend way too much, the bacteria will go nuts and this can make the tea anaerobic as the bacteria are multiplying really fast and will consume all the oxygen. You can use fresh green material as bacteria food but you don'e need much and usually the goal is to increase the bacteria- good aerobic bacteria. If you do not clean your tea brew vessel, any air lines and such, a bio film will form and that can create an anaerobic condition in your next batch so cleanliness is key. You want the aerobic microorganisms. Teas are best used for foliar sprays.

Anaerobic teas are where you may take some plant material, like comfry or similar and put it in water and let it sit. It will start to break down in the water but will likely go anaerobic, once the breakdown has completed, the mix will slowly go back to an aerobic mix when the biological activity has stopped and the smell becomes something you can tolerate. These take a long time to brew to go through all the stages and ensure there are not the anaerobic biology going into you beds. Alternately if done really quick with fresh green materials where the sugars and high nitrogen, soluble materials are extracted from the plant material and any biology that was on the plant surfaces released and applied right away, that acts as a bacterial food for the life in your soil.

An extract done with a good biologic compost or worm castings is relatively simple as you just need to add it to good water (no chlorine or chloramine which will kill the biology, also applies to making teas) You can either put the castings or compost in a compost tea bag (a fabric that has a pore size fo at lest 400 microns) and milk the contents in the bag with your hands to release the biology into the water and simply pour that onto you soil to add the biology into your soil. The used compost can go back into your compost pile to have the biology reintroduced into the material and worm castings can just be used as a slurry and added straight into the water too.

Now I am sure Andrew has a lot to offer here too being a veteran with many tests under his belt already. I'm still a neophyte fresh out of school tea wise.

Re: Compost Teas

Posted: Mon 21-Feb-2022, 08:39
by Andrew
As Tom mentions, teas are tricky, because the results are rarely consistent due to so many factors.

A basic recipe that I find that works well for a 19L / 5 gallon bucket:

1 cup of vermicompost
1 cup of compost
1/2 cup of kelp meal
1/2 cup of alfalfa meal
1/2 cup of biochar
1/2 cup of oyster shell flour or pulverized egg shells (very small particle size)
60g of SEA-90
1-2 tbsp of epsom salt
1/2 cup of insect frass (add during last 6h)
2 tbsp of brown sugar or molasses - be careful, less is more.

For brew times, I wouldn't go over 24h. I find the most consistent results with 18-24h teas.

Extracts are going to get you the most consistent result.