Tea Article

[Phenome]

ahhh coolio i like that! i hadn't focused on the microbial potential of botanicals before. i think you've inspired a new topic of research for me

i don't have the tools to measure dissolved oxygen and biological populations at my disposal, so i rely on microbe man's recipe which is shared in this thread and on his website microbeorganics dot com.



edit: now that i posted this i'm realizing i often leave out the kelp and i never use the srp. how do you think this might be effecting my brew mm?

Wow didnt realize. I was looking into keep it simple commercial aact pumps the teaming with microbes book regards as the best pumps, when i stumbled upon that site. Thank you microbeman i that conversion is more helpful than anything else i have found on tea. I made a chart using your percentages after i found it. mm, do you use neptunes harvest hydrolyzed fish?

 

[heady blunts]

iirc KIS organics is CT guy's site---the OP of this thread!

 

[Phenome]

iirc KIS organics is CT guy's site---the OP of this thread!

Lol i should have been on this site a long time ago, that diy air lift thread you have is going to have me at homedepot all weekend. Very good thread

 

[Microbeman]

Heady; I leave out the kelp and SRP myself with no major changes to the microbial population, except it may finish sooner and there may be a few different species with SRP that could help against PM.

Phenome: I have only tested Organic Gem and Great Pacific Bio as Neptune product is not available in my area. I'd be interested in hearing if some have experimented with fish meal since it dawned on me the amount of Phosphorous acid used in FH is considerable.

 

[Phenome]

Heady; I leave out the kelp and SRP myself with no major changes to the microbial population, except it may finish sooner and there may be a few different species with SRP that could help against PM.

Phenome: I have only tested Organic Gem and Great Pacific Bio as Neptune product is not available in my area. I'd be interested in hearing if some have experimented with fish meal since it dawned on me the amount of Phosphorous acid used in FH is considerable.

Me too, before i knew about the difference of hydrolyzed fish and meal, i accidentally was using down to earths fish meal in the ratio you supply for the recipie. They stayed alive for weeks but looked unhealthy. I did not get to see any controlled results. All i seen the poor vigor in veg that i figured was due to a aphid issue and PM that kept getting worse ( and realized i was using the wrong stuff), had to take cuts and cut the room..... Took a cut from a friend, always no good.Thank you for the reply.

 

[abl12]

great article thankyou

 

[vikinglace]

So much info, hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, thanks to microbeman and CT For knowledge share and patience! This link may add some interesting reading to kick starting ewc.
https://www.thenutrientcompany.com/horticulture-blog/supercharge-worm-castings-get-vermicompost/

 

[Mikell]

^this guy gets it.

Oatmeal is great stuff. Leaf mould and oatmeal are like peas and carrots

 

[xmobotx]

it would be better to share the info than link the site however.

 

[vikinglace]

it would be better to share the info than link the site however.

Fair enough... By Nigel Davenport - how to supercharge EWC


Many of us already know the virtues of worm castings present in your growing medium. They’re especially helpful when we’re growing in an environment where it isn’t practical to naturally encourage the worms in to the rhizosphere – or at least not in the numbers we’d like! Indoor gardening, container gardening and hydroponics would be 3 such examples. Worm castings produced in your own farm or even the worm castings for sale at TNC offer an opportunity to add this beneficial life that the worms leave behind in to the root zone.

You can increase the life in the worm castings before you add them!

By adding some extra ingredients to the worm castings and setting them aside for a day or so you can multiply the life within this already top notch input. You can also do this before brewing them up in to a compost tea.

Image of worm castings with a scoop Supercharging your worm castings is a fairly straightforward process. The three main ingredients are Worm castings – of course, Oatmeal and molasses.
Firstly find yourself a source of oatmeal, I prefer to grind my own from oats – this gives me a fine powder that I can mix evenly through the worm castings. This puts a source of food for the fungi contained within the compost throughout the mix as opposed to random sites if you just add oats.
It also increases the surface area of the oatmeal overall increasing it’s efficacy.
Next the molasses. Make a fairly dilute solution with water at about 500:1 or so and spray on to your castings. Just enough to make them damp. You don’t want pools to occur or to clog up the pores in the castings too much. This will provide a food source for the bacteria – if you’re used to brewing compost teas you may think that this step is unnecessary and you’d be half right – you don’t need to mess with your vermicompost just like you don’t need to add high octane fuel to your car – but if you want to squeeze every last ounce of performance out – it’s worth it.

Image of supercharged worm castings in a potFinally place a secure lid on your mixture and place it in a reasonably warm dark place away from anything that can get at it. I personally add air holes to my pots with cotton wool acting as a breathable membrane. This keeps things aerobic whilst keeping anything unwanted out of the mix.
After 3-4 days or however long you’re happy with you should now have a mix with visible fungal hyphae. If you chose not to grind your oats you’ll find this concentrated at the sites of the food source, but if you mixed the powdered meal through it will be all over. You’ll have also kick started other life within the worm castings too! The bacteria will already be an order of magnitude above what it was before and if you place a sample under the microscope you may be surprised to see more nematodes than you are used to if you simply brew your tea with standard vermicompost. All because you gave a kick start to the soil food web, either before you add it back in to the rhizosphere or before you go on to brew it up as a tea.

 

[heady blunts]

oats make pretty fuzzies

 

[TheCatDaddy]

Quick question, I got this air pump (not from this site) as I was at a grow store out of town as they dont have any local. Im getting a new one, but for the mean time can I even make a successful half gallon aact with it? I have an air stone, I could make the vortex like I plan on with my new pump if it would work?

http://www.hydrogalaxy.com/hydropon...let-3-watts/?gclid=CNCMhcPP0MoCFQ2HaQodMA8COQ

 

[heady blunts]

yea that'll work for a half gallon TCD.

 

[Microbeman]

So much info, hard to sort the wheat from the chaff, thanks to microbeman and CT For knowledge share and patience! This link may add some interesting reading to kick starting ewc.
https://www.thenutrientcompany.com/horticulture-blog/supercharge-worm-castings-get-vermicompost/

The photo is actually mycelia, not hyphae (per se) Wheat bran works as well or better and no need to do it longer than 24 hours unless trying to grow out nematodes in which case over 8 days is necessary. Nematodes lay eggs and they 'hatch out' so need the length of time necessary. I think I was one of the first to note the nematode increase using this formula.

http://www.microbeorganics.com/#More_on_Compost_Tea_2013_

To spill a small secret, I’ve been pre-feeding or pre-activating [vermi]compost which is not so fresh by mixing in a small amount of wheat bran (livestock store or bulk foods department grocery store) and moistening with very diluted black strap molasses, loosely covered with cloth or paper towel 24 hours ahead of brew. (approximate ratios, wheat bran 1:30 [vermi]compost & BSM 1:300 water).

This has, so far resulted in (most of the time) attaining the desired microbial population at 24 hours brew time rather than the usual 36 to 42 hours.

http://www.microbeorganics.com/#Compost_Tea_Recipes
2007

If you see white or blue fuzz growing on the surface turn it under. What we want is transparent and colored microscopic fungal hyphae. A side benefit to this procedure is that if left longer than 10 days I have seen multitudes of bacterial feeding nematodes growing
..........Compost tea is not a good medium for distributing nematodes. Better to distribute them by hand in the compost.

 

[MedResearcher]

Recently read an interesting technique in a composting book. Nothing new, surely, but it was interesting and spawned a few ideas and questions.

The book explained, how you can pull out a clover plant or maybe even a sprout (wasn't to clear about that), then place it in a sealed bag with an amount of soil to inoculate the soil with nitrogen fixing bacteria. Then use the soil where you want to add the bacteria.

I am assuming the bacteria grows on or in the clover/legume, so by putting it in a sealed moist bag of soil, the bacteria multiplies.

The question begins... would this simple technique work in compost tea. If so, would it be so simple as pulling up a piece of clover and tossing it in the brewer? Would you need to scale up the amount of clover to the size of the brew, or would even a little add some diversity?

Since you guys were talking about pre charging the worm castings, curious if you could just throw a couple clover sprouts in with the castings/bran/molasses and get more nitrogen fixing bacteria than without.

Thanks,
Mr^^

 

[Phenome]

Recently read an interesting technique in a composting book. Nothing new, surely, but it was interesting and spawned a few ideas and questions.

Good question. Just out of curiosity what book are you referring to?

 

[MedResearcher]

"The Complete Compost Gardening Guide" by Barbara Pleasant & Deborah L. Martin.

Pretty good read. I reread the small section about "expanding" the nitrogen fixing bacteria again. Seems like the actual plant is not needed but the soil it was growing in. So you grow a legume, not just sprout it, but grow it to some point of maturity, then use the soil it was grown in.

Still an interesting concept, and waiting to see what the pros think about using it in tea or to pre charge worm castings. I guess instead of adding the plant, you could add a bit of the soil instead.

I have a gut feeling, that I may have read somewhere that the nitrogen fixing bacteria gets out competed easily. So maybe its a fools errand after all.

The book is pretty good though, my composting skills seem to be improving slowly after reading it.

Mr^^

 

[ValleyKush]

I was under the inpression that only legumes (and maybe a few others?) could be hosts to those types of bacteria and the bacteria need the legumes to play a role in the collecting of nitrogen or something.

 

[Granger2]

Some work in conjunction with legumes, some are independent. -granger

 

[Phenome]

"The Complete Compost Gardening Guide" by Barbara Pleasant & Deborah L. Martin.

Pretty good read. I reread the small section about "expanding" the nitrogen fixing bacteria again. Seems like the actual plant is not needed but the soil it was growing in. So you grow a legume, not just sprout it, but grow it to some point of maturity, then use the soil it was grown in.

Still an interesting concept, and waiting to see what the pros think about using it in tea or to pre charge worm castings. I guess instead of adding the plant, you could add a bit of the soil instead.

I have a gut feeling, that I may have read somewhere that the nitrogen fixing bacteria gets out competed easily. So maybe its a fools errand after all.

The book is pretty good though, my composting skills seem to be improving slowly after reading it.

Mr^^

Thank you for the reply. Good to know what book.interesting concept. Almost reminds me of crop rotation.