I read on here in one of the threads, some back and forths about the pro's and con's of using products aimed at growing with molasses from companies who focus on grow products vs plain molasses (like blackstrap unsulphered grocery store kind). The gist was that hydro products with molasses could be treated(?) in some way so as to not cause the slime that sometimes occurs when adding molasses. I had great results with just "regular" molasses but then the last two times I added it, both times runing sterile res hydro-grow with DM Zone, that I had a slime/goop problem. I have since wanted to explore what might have caused that reaction after so many grows, in hydro, with molasses and no slime probs.
Very intricate interactions go on, as I am sure everyone knows, whether running sterile, and definitely when running live res's. I was wondering a couple things. Maybe I had a slime problem from some sort of anaerobic reaction the times it happened, but I would think sterile is sterile to aerobic and anaerobic. But that's a very un-educated guess. Whether or not this applies to using Alfalfa Tea in hydro is just something I am not ready to take on right now. I want to get a microscope.
I do know that when I make Alfalfa tea I get a wonderful head of foam going and I have read that this is a byproduct of free amino's and proteins from microbe growth. I posted a link in Caps Tea thread about that. On that point i wonder what microbes would be contained in Alfalfa Meal, but that would have a lot of variables I suppose.
I want a microscope really bad. Soon I can though.
I don't know if anyone has heard of iTunes U. If you have iTunes on your computer you go to the iTune's store and look up top and there is a link named iTunes U. It contains many college courses, either in their entirety, or special lecture series. Most come from a thing called OpenCourseware which is a project many colleges participate in and they record, either just audio or audio/visual courses from many big and small colleges. I am currently watching Biology 1a and 1b from Berkeley and it's a great intro Biology course if you have some basic understanding of Chemistry. Anyway, it's FREE. Participating colleges range worldwide, and some examples of the USA ones are MIT, Berkeley, almost every college in California, Harvard, UNC, UVA, VA Tech, and on and on.... I am surprised I don't here more about it. If anyone is interested but cannot find it, or you don't have iTunes, you can Google "opencourseware" and then go through the results or just bump this thread and let me know and I will put some links in.
Here is the one to the different Bio courses from Berkeley that are just on the web for a starter. The Bio 1a is sort of slow going but in Bio 1b he starts on fungi and things that interest me on the microbe front.
http://distancelearn.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=distancelearn&cdn=education&tm=9&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_p897.12.342.ip_&tt=11&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//webcast.berkeley.edu/