Compost-Guano Tea Tastes Yummie!

[Blaze]

I don't believe you need a separate tea recipe for veg or flower. I can expand on this if people are interested in what I mean.

Please do.

 

[leadsled]

I don't believe you need a separate tea recipe for veg or flower. I can expand on this if people are interested in what I mean.

Yes Please!!

 

[CT Guy]

Okay, it was just a bit to write out my thoughts on this, but here goes:

When talking about adding biology (I'm not talking nutrients here), the point is to increase the biological diversity and beneficial bio-mass on the leaf surface and in the soil (rhizosphere). The benefit of this is to allow for better utilization of nutrients through nutrient cycling (aka "microbial loop"). It is true that plants will prefer a fungally dominant soil or a bacterial dominant soil based on where they fall on the plant succession table (you can google "plant succession table"). Basically, grasses and annuals prefer more bacteria and trees and perennials prefer more fungi.

But the key part to this is THE PLANT IS IN CONTROL! In organics, the plant controls what organisms it wants in the rhizosphere based on the exudates it puts out (sugars for bacteria, carbons for fungi). It can regulate this down to even an hourly basis!

With aerated compost tea, we're just putting all the organisms out there and then letting the plant take control.

I think we get caught up in a chemical mindset that plants need NPK and it's our job to provide it to them in the proper amounts. However, when we put out organic fertilizer we're not feeding out plants. We're feeding microbes! (which are then cycling the nutrients into plant available forms).

For this reason, I believe a balanced tea that contains bacteria/archea, fungi, and protozoa is best applied during all stages of plant growth.

Which brings me to another related topic....why are we trying to feed N during veg and P during flower? In nature, there's no one going around doing this. Let's make a healthy living soil that has all the nutrients and minerals the plant is going to need throughout it's life cycle and then provide small inputs (seaweed, ACT, etc...), rather than spending our time trying to correct deficiencies after they occur.

I see so many people on this site recommending different nutrient lines and products. My opinion? Spend all that money on your soil! Get really good EWC and compost, and amend your soil before planting. (this is probably another thread topic though)

 

[Blaze]

Which brings me to another related topic....why are we trying to feed N during veg and P during flower? In nature, there's no one going around doing this. Let's make a healthy living soil that has all the nutrients and minerals the plant is going to need throughout it's life cycle and then provide small inputs (seaweed, ACT, etc...), rather than spending our time trying to correct deficiencies after they occur.

"You must spread more mana around before giving it to CT Guy again"

Even without using ACT or organics I have see thru sap testing that the plants do indeed self-adjust uptake. As they transition from veg to flower you can see the N drop and the K increase even if the nutrients the plant is being fed are the same. It will and can happen even in straight chem/hydro type set ups from what I have seen. In theory it would be possible to feed just with something like a 3-3-3 or a 20-20-20 all the way form veg to flower even without the use of ACT.

My goal for this next year is to focus more on the soil prep and the use of ACT and less on nutrients. Since I've started using ACT I've been able to cut my nutrient costs considerably. I am using less than half the amount of liquid fertilizers than I was two years ago and getting better growth and yield. The plan for this next year is to finally be totally off the hydro nutrients and to feed the plant mostly with the soil prep and regular applications of ACT. I figure if real farmers all over the world are growing this way with great success there must be something to it. How often do you see a 100 acre patch of tomatoes getting fed Advanced Nutrients or Fox Farm after all?

 

[froggy]

Very good read CT. +rep.
Not sure if you covered this somewhere else, but I would very much be interested in your soil recepies/amendings. Do you think you may be able to provide us with your soil recepies?

I also have a question for you CT. Would the same philosiphy of making a well balanced tea(of nutrients not beneficials) also apply when feeding mother plants? or would you suggest something else?

Also, when thinking about feeding plants,(more specifically mothers), wouldn't the nutrients and minerals that the plant is not using eventually become over abundant and begin to accumulate creating issues with nutrient uptake or issues in the soil?

 

[CT Guy]

Very good read CT. +rep.
Not sure if you covered this somewhere else, but I would very much be interested in your soil recepies/amendings. Do you think you may be able to provide us with your soil recepies?

I also have a question for you CT. Would the same philosiphy of making a well balanced tea(of nutrients not beneficials) also apply when feeding mother plants? or would you suggest something else?

Also, when thinking about feeding plants,(more specifically mothers), wouldn't the nutrients and minerals that the plant is not using eventually become over abundant and begin to accumulate creating issues with nutrient uptake or issues in the soil?

Froggy,

Most nutrients and minerals in an organic system need to be cycled in order to be made available to the plant anyway. Sure, you could over-do it, that's entirely possible as well. If you kept adding certain nutrients and minerals, at some point you'll begin to damage the plant and microbes. The principles I'm talking about relate to growing any plants. Cannabis is not some magic plant that has crazy needs to grow. It grew in the wild long before mankind invented General Hydro or Advanced Nutrients and all their associated products.

In nature, a plant grows just fine in healthy soil without human inputs. Of course, one big difference here is that we're trying to maximize our plant growth and yield, and we're also removing organic matter. It's similar to a garden in that as we harvest the plants, we'll need to replace the nutrients/minerals that we've now removed from our original soil mix.

I'm in the testing phase right now on this, as I'm trying to develop a soil mix that would need only watering for medical patients to use. The mix would have all the nutrients and minerals the plant would need for an entire cycle and could be amended with another mix of minerals/nutes and re-used. I think that hydro shops in general are overpriced and full of misinformation. An old war veteran with severe pain may want to grow his own MJ and walking into your average hydro shop, they'd convince him he would need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on bottled nutrients and such to do so. My goal is to have an inexpensive soil that would only require him to water the plant. If he wanted to really get more involved, I have a few products such as aerated compost tea and seaweed extract powder and a chelated humic acid that I would recommend with waterings, but overall the goal is to come up with something simple.

Since I haven't completed the testing (I'm just starting on this), I don't have any definitive results, though I have done a lot of reading and research on this and been in the organic industry for years now. Also, since I do hope to market this as a product at some point in the future, some of the information is going to be proprietary, though I feel crappy writing that.

If you have a soil mix, I'd be happy to comment on it though!

Cheers,
CT

 

[CT Guy]

Very good read CT. +rep.
Not sure if you covered this somewhere else, but I would very much be interested in your soil recepies/amendings. Do you think you may be able to provide us with your soil recepies?

I also have a question for you CT. Would the same philosiphy of making a well balanced tea(of nutrients not beneficials) also apply when feeding mother plants? or would you suggest something else?

Also, when thinking about feeding plants,(more specifically mothers), wouldn't the nutrients and minerals that the plant is not using eventually become over abundant and begin to accumulate creating issues with nutrient uptake or issues in the soil?

Realized I didn't completely answer your question either. I've seen the same tea (made from the same compost/foods and in the same brewers) be used on vineyards, turf, cannabis, gardens, trees, etc....with good results.

 

[jack_ripa]

I couldn't agree with your points more CT. My best plants I ever grew were with my two year old wormy compost pile (table scraps, chicken poop and meat processing wastes and yard debris) mixed with sand, bark chips and perilite that cooked for a couple months. Just add water and some lime.

Something I have found to be almost universally true, if you want your plants to have resistance to local pests and fungus, they NEED local ingredients that already contain the balancing factors to those things.

I think it gets really funny when people think "that's gross, I would never feed that to my plants". It just shows a fundamental misunderstanding of biology when we try to give our girls a sterile environment. It's no surprise when one little bug flies in to your crop and TAKES OVER.

 

[TapwaterKiller]

Great thread! Thank you CT, Blaze, and OpTikFiber!

 

[500lbs Guerilla]

Quick question on the re-read......why do you wait until 2 hours before using the tea to add Great White??? Why not add at the start with all the other ingredients to maximize the Beni population??

Thanks

~D~

I've heard its because the mycos won't survive for long in water alone without soil or roots.

 

[froggy]

Thanks for the info CT. And good luck to you with your entrepreneurial endeavors. Simple is very good thing and would love to see what you come up with.

I use Subcools Super Soil recepie:

8 large bags of high quality organic potting soil with coco and Mycorrhizae
25-50 lbs. of organic worm castings
5 lbs. of Blood meal 12-0-0
5 lbs. Bat guano 0-5-0
5 lbs. Fish Bone Meal 3-16-0
¾ cup Epsom salt
1 cup Sweet lime (Dolomite)
½ cup Azomite ( Trace element)
2 Tbs. powdered Humic acid


Would be interested in knowing what you think and if there is anything you might add or take away. Feel free to PM if there is info you would rather not share with the public.

keep up the good work!

 

[jack_ripa]

Not that I can fault subcool for a second but that seems like too much blood meal to me.

 

[CT Guy]

I'll admit that I'm not that great at proportions. I don't know how much that stuff weighs. I typically do things as a % or as cups/sq ft.

Two things that stood out right away to me is that there's no alfalfa meal or kelp meal. Those would be 2 of my must-have ingredients in a soil mix. Maybe a calcium source as well, like oyster shell powder or crustacean meal....

 

[CT Guy]

Oh, and I wouldn't assume that just because a commercial soil mix lists "mycorrhizae" on it, means that it's sufficient for your plant. I know some of them just put enough in to get it on the label. I'd do a separate application of myco when planting just to be sure.

 

[Tsunami Rose]

Very interesting read, super happy I found it :]

 

[Morals]

Good read and info here. Teas done properly def lead to the best flavor and cleanest burn however I like to supplement with a few extra additives to increase yield and bud density.

 

[CT Guy]

Morals,

What do you mean by you "like to supplement with a few extra additives to increase yield and bud density"?

I feel like you may be missing the purpose/benefits of aerated compost teas...

 

[PorchMonkey4Life]

this thread is interesting becuase i have done alot of things not recommended with great results like one i called swamp juice growing.......With 2k of my room .......I used a brute trash can and dumped in a cup of indo bat shit and Jamaican and mexican and perv pellets.......dump mychomadness in and mollasis with air stones..............for the first 4 weeks of bloom i feed this then the last at week 4-6 just the high phospho jam and indo turds.....cutt out the mexican and peruv........... the test was to see if i ever had to change my water,,,,I did not once threw the whole 6 weeks and even longer, just each week i dump another cup full of turds in to refresh and carbs................other then making a mess of my sump pump and having to water with out a wand head on my wand........i never needed any nutes or top dressing, plant grew huge and healthy as if i was using pbp or dm gold or flora nova

 

[Blaze]

From what I've noticed most of the methods of making ACT, even those that are not recommended, will still produce some benefit for the plant. However some methods provide greater benefits and are more effective than others.

 

[T1420]

Teas are the bees knees