How Necessary Is Act?

[Seamaiden]

Hey sea! Are u talking sea 90 as in the fertilizer or sea 90 the boogie brew product. Both awesome imo but very different. The fertilizer well I guess that speaks for itself. Lol. And the boogie brew is minerals well sea salt. Anyway just curious. I add the boogie version to all teas. This round I have brewed less and top dressed more so hard to say if u should spend the money bro. Whichever u choose good luck and positive vibes to all!

Sea-90 the sea salt stuff. Never quite heard of boogie brew. :) I don't add salt to teas while they're brewing, it goes into direct root drenches or foliars.

View attachment 493210

Whoa.. that's repackaged. Still looks damn near the same to me, though.

I think I have a video of my homemade brewer up on YT, lemme see if I can find it. I spent a fraction of what oscar discusses. I used a square footprint rolling trashcan, 1" PVC and some flexible braided vinyl hose. Configured the PVC to make a type of grid on the floor of the trash can, drilled holes, dry fitted all together, et voila, tea brewer. Mm... ok, I guess I didn't make a video of it while filling, just while running. I got an EcoPlus air pump, loud as fuck. I really like that I got a rolling trash can, makes certain things a lot easier.

 

[organicpanic]

Bottom line is that its not absolutely necessary in a NO TILL system. Last run I think I gave one tea at about 3 weeks from seed once. My soil mix managed to give me 21 ounces of fat crystally buds off a 1k. I know im not crushing it in the yield department but thats fair considering im not mixing nutes every 3 days and making teas. Again I understand the power of teas. I started using teas and microbes in 1998 or so. In nursery and landscape applications. I know first hand what there are capable of over a large spectrum of plants and situations.

 

[nightmarecreature]

Black Gold EWC sucks balls. It looks like peat moss. It had what appeared to be root aphid adult fliers in the bag. Just a warning, dont buy that stuff to make any teas. Bugs + bad quality Peat moss, not EWC.

 

[north knect]

Dont wanna steal the thread lol but if somebody here can PM me I'm trying to figure out how much of wat to put in..il let ya kno wat I'm working with when pm'd thx happy farming :D

 

[oscar169]

Look locally there are farm warmers all over in every state

 

[north knect]

Look locally there are farm warmers all over in every state

Doesn't help if ur way up in Canada lmao..

 

[organicpanic]

I haven't found a ewc out of the bag thats quality. @north knect looks an like rocky mountain worm company has a good product. Ive only seen pics and testimony online ive never used it.

 

[north knect]

I haven't found a ewc out of the bag thats quality. @north knect looks an like rocky mountain worm company has a good product. Ive only seen pics and testimony online ive never used it.

I actually grab mine from my local bait shop that my buddy owns..he just gives it to me for a bag of the end results lol..he has a large red wringler farm and has more thAn enough for me lol..he is all about the outdoors and organics..feeds them all the small veggies from his garden so it's decent and free for me lol
Edit: the worms are Spanish lol..wether it makes a difference idk but his fishing clientele swear buy them so that's wat he farms

 

[organicpanic]

Sounds like a good thing @north knect and I just noticed you were looking for recipes not ewc my bad lol. Im guessing worms all shit the same just as we do.

 

[north knect]

;)Well from wat I've read they don't lol..who wooda guessed eh..supposed it makes sence if one worm ate McDonalds apposed to a vegan worm lmao..I'd rather use the vegan worms poop :D..but ya was looking for a little recipe gidance which a fellow reputable farmer PM'ed me..gotta love this place;)

 

[north knect]

And IMO ACT is not a waste of time..plant are ment to grow with wat Mother Nature gives them..not the big names bottle nutes..top dressing and ACT is like mother natures kick ass sister..more natural/organic IMO..can't go wrong with it and very cost efficient in the long run

 

[organicpanic]

Havent mother nature rain act on the earth yet.

 

[Tnelz]

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never realized boogie brew was just the distributor. Lol. This is like my 4th bag in a year. Love this stuff.

 

[legaleyes13]

So to all of you guys who swear by ACTs, does that mean there is no good reason for me to buy a blumats system for my beds? If I'm gonna have to brew teas and teas don't work with blumats then that would pretty much make the blumats useless... correct?

However, I've heard people say they use blumats but also water with teas pretty religiously... I don't get it. If you're gonna go through all of the trouble of making teas a couple times a week, why even have a blumats system?

 

[Tnelz]

So to all of you guys who swear by ACTs, does that mean there is no good reason for me to buy a blumats system for my beds? If I'm gonna have to brew teas and teas don't work with blumats then that would pretty much make the blumats useless... correct?

However, I've heard people say they use blumats but also water with teas pretty religiously... I don't get it. If you're gonna go through all of the trouble of making teas a couple times a week, why even have a blumats system?

U can use blue mats and hand water teas. Nothing wrong with that. Teas r Def not necessary multiple times a week. Although that wouldn't be a bad thing either. U should do what u want to do. All this thread is is opinion. Use the blumats and if u feel like reving up the biological activity in ur medium hand water some tea once or twice a month. Or don't. Lol. Only thing an actual aact tea is for is adding beneficial microbes by the million to ur medium. Not gonna make or break ur grow. Will def be beneficial but if u didn't want to do it ur plants will be fine.

 

[organicpanic]

I like what Tnelz said.

 

[legaleyes13]

U can use blue mats and hand water teas. Nothing wrong with that. Teas r Def not necessary multiple times a week. Although that wouldn't be a bad thing either. U should do what u want to do. All this thread is is opinion. Use the blumats and if u feel like reving up the biological activity in ur medium hand water some tea once or twice a month. Or don't. Lol. Only thing an actual aact tea is for is adding beneficial microbes by the million to ur medium. Not gonna make or break ur grow. Will def be beneficial but if u didn't want to do it ur plants will be fine.

Cool, I like the sound of this. I mentioned a couple times a week because I'm gonna be adding other teas like SSTs and some nute teas as well, and I know those wont work with the blumats either, but screw it, I'll just hand water those

And if I recall you're growing in beds... What kind of blumats system would you recommend for beds?

 

[Tnelz]

Cool, I like the sound of this. I mentioned a couple times a week because I'm gonna be adding other teas like SSTs and some nute teas as well, and I know those wont work with the blumats either, but screw it, I'll just hand water those

And if I recall you're growing in beds... What kind of blumats system would you recommend for beds?

No beds here bro. I grow in air pots for the most part. You know those funky pots with all the holes. As for blumats I don't have any experience with them. I had planned to give them a shot a while ago but didn't. I enjoy dtw due to the control I have. It seems like most people use the large patio set. Sorry I can't be more helps here bro. However there is tons of threads between this forum and ic mag that u can Def use as reference points. Good luck to u!

 

[Reeferkief]

Something to keep in mind is that when using tea's your goal is to create beneficial life and a arrangement at that. Tea's can be done with out a nice system I personally don't brew, due to not owning a scope currently and if I ever want a spike of microbial life I do a slurry(Still I don't do it often at all, and I use a lot of active ferments so full of life). So to answer your question Tea's are not mandatory and are really only necessary if your lacking at maintaining a highly active food web. I would only use tea's at the beginning of any run to charge my soil with life(Fresh Batches, Also for fungal or bacterial dominant tea's used during certain plant stages). Something most people don't realize is how much your humus brings to the plate, a high quality EWC is like the foundation to a house for a living organic soil, how you apply it after establishing your medium is up to you I personally top dress twice during a grow once at the beginning and once before flower for the most part. Some people prefer the brews and there is a lot of potential in the brews so really it's a win win either way your going just comes down to time spent dialing it in and cost on brewer/supplies.

I prefer top dressing, again only reason is because I don't own a scope or I would be brewing and scoping all the time! This is my top dress changes little depending the on stage of life and on biodynamic accumulators on hand:

After fresh top dress I like to do a LIGHT mulch of Alfalfa Hay and water in. Apply a topdress beginning of vegetation(and flower if possible) and a fresh top dress CLOSE TO* every four weeks throughout plant life.

80 % Humus (Drench with SST to charge)

10 % SPM

10 % Bio Char(Inoculated)

1% by VOLUME of biodynamic accumulators

1/2 Cup Kelp Per CF

1/2 Cup Neem/Karnja Per CF

1 Cup Rock Dust Mix Per CF

1/4 Cup Insect Frass/Bokashi Per CF

1 TSP TM-7

1-2 Inch layer mulched

Inoculated with BIM

 

[Patanjali]

Cool, I like the sound of this. I mentioned a couple times a week because I'm gonna be adding other teas like SSTs and some nute teas as well, and I know those wont work with the blumats either, but screw it, I'll just hand water those

And if I recall you're growing in beds... What kind of blumats system would you recommend for beds?

If you want to skip the SST's, you can grind up malted grains and just top dress them on your pots. You could do kind of the same kind of thing with the nutes. I've been known to pull back my mulch later, add some kelp, neem, comfrey, etc. Add a thin layer of castings, recover with mulch, water in with an act, let the blumats do the rest. I dunno, that's what I would do.

hth,

P-