Kanzeon
- Posts
- 1,899
- Reactions
- 6,604
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Points
- 263
Thanks man!
Lactobacillus is a bacteria that grows in milk, but it's also got awesome fermenting properties. It's the bacteria that catalyzes salt and cabbage into sauerkraut, soy into miso, and a whole lot more. It's present in some wine fermentation (buttery chardonnay), kimchi, and most everything else fermented and edible. It's apparently excellent in my watering mother, along with active kombucha, ewc, molasses, and (also likely lacto driven) FPJ.
To get that started, I just make sauerkraut. Cut up cabbage and put it in a mason jar with 3% salt by weight of the cabbage, then pack it down and wait a few weeks and there'll be a brine forming. That's full of lactobacillus, but also has salt in it. So then that goes into another container with molasses and water to let the bacteria flourish while diluting the salt. Then into the watering mother, which gets diluted by half before watering. I've been trying to figure out how to make the mother more self-sustaining.
I just found this awesome piece of research last night when researching the bacterial processes of kombucha. I'd been looking into it since last week, when I saw that my last batch was done.
In addition to the CO2 that gets suspended in the liquid and delivered right to the roots, it theoretically regulates soil pH, has phenolic acids that signal plant growth, and creates an environment where bad bacteria and pests are less likely to thrive.
I'll also do a compost tea watering once a month. Essentially I'm trying to make the ecosystem in my soil challenging for pests to live in by washing it with different bacterial solutions.