Nutrient Source For Act With Caps

[OGlover1224]

Hey farmers I'm not positive if this is the best place for this thread but it seems like this section is the closest to what I'm asking. I've been reading in the forum about teas and caps bennies for the past couple weeks and am still not quite sure on a couple of things.

I'll give you guys a little backround on my growing "style" I guess you'd call it. I have a small 4 plant 400 watt setup and grow from seed. I like to pop them in light warrior in beer cups for about 2.5 weeks or so then transplant into a mix of about 3/4 bag light warrior to 1 bag of roots organic original soil with 1 bag of perlite. I will then veg for another 3 weeks then flip. I use distiller water from supermarket because I have a water softener in my house.

Basically I don't like my current regimen of feeding in flower and has led to early yellowing my last 2 runs and also want to go the organic route so figured I'd look into teas.

Now I understand how to brew a tea and have seen plenty of basic recipes such as worm casting molasses maybe some kelp and the bennies. But can I also use the teas as a nutrient feed instead of just mixing my bottled nutes into distilled and watering? (Bio bizz bio bloom). I always seem to be unsure of how much to use and how much camag to use. Not to mention the GO CaMg I use brings the distilled water ph down to 5 so I'm always hesitant even though I've heard you don't need to ph with organics but I'm not confident that my feeding regimen is "organic enough" to not worry about ph and if I use caps bennies I'll be confident I have enough beneficial bacteria for ph to not be an issue.

So how would I go about a nutrient source? Should I amend the soil more than it already is? And with what? I only veg for 3 weeks in it once transplanted out of light warrior then flower. Or should I not amend and add ewc,kelp,guano etc (whichever are beneficial for flower) to the tea and feed that way through flower? Or could I utilize the bio bloom in a tea as a nutrient source?

I'm sorry if rambled or repeated myself a bit. I plan on buying the roots and nute pack and saw a product called earth syrup from progress earth which is a molasses based powder but have a bunch of other goodies in it such as whey, fish powder, humates, soft rock phosphates, fether meal, worm castings, kelp, diomatacious earth, yucca, and mycos.

Happy farming!

 

[bigdaddyg8]

brew your tea and add to your normal nute schedule .OR,
that earth syrup sounds pretty good maybe half strength .

 

[Seamaiden]

Short answer is yes.

Also, are you able to get to the tap before the water softener, or is it plumbed in such a manner that even outside hose bibs are on the softened route? If so, then you can easily start mixing the store-bought water (you should be getting RO/reverse osmosis, not distilled, distilled water is a solvent, leaches minerals and nutrients out of soils, etc). That very well may be a huge part of your problem.

Many of the things you list are excellent additions to the soil. The SRT (soft rock phosphate) is not biologically available for around 2yrs, so if you use it then you want to be reusing that soil. IMO and IME organic is the best way, especially if you use NO chemical salts in the media at all, because that means no flushing.

What I like to do is brew my tea and add stuff like liquid kelp (though I actually use a powdered form most often), guanos, etc, just before it's fed to the plants.

Just remember that the more stuff you add to the tea, the greater a microbial concoction it becomes and if it EVER smells badly, then you know you've probably got bad critters goin' on in there. That's why Microbeman's or Cap's basic teas are the best way to start, and then stuff like extra sugars (grow bacteria, not fungi, for example, whereas hydrolized fish grows fungi) at the end and let the microbial action occur in the media.

Btw, the above is really mostly my opinion, not fact. There are many, many others who do things differently than I and they do just fine. EG brew guano teas often. There are many ways to skin that cat.

 

[OGlover1224]

Short answer is yes.

Also, are you able to get to the tap before the water softener, or is it plumbed in such a manner that even outside hose bibs are on the softened route? If so, then you can easily start mixing the store-bought water (you should be getting RO/reverse osmosis, not distilled, distilled water is a solvent, leaches minerals and nutrients out of soils, etc). That very well may be a huge part of your problem.

Many of the things you list are excellent additions to the soil. The SRT (soft rock phosphate) is not biologically available for around 2yrs, so if you use it then you want to be reusing that soil. IMO and IME organic is the best way, especially if you use NO chemical salts in the media at all, because that means no flushing.

What I like to do is brew my tea and add stuff like liquid kelp (though I actually use a powdered form most often), guanos, etc, just before it's fed to the plants.

Just remember that the more stuff you add to the tea, the greater a microbial concoction it becomes and if it EVER smells badly, then you know you've probably got bad critters goin' on in there. That's why Microbeman's or Cap's basic teas are the best way to start, and then stuff like extra sugars (grow bacteria, not fungi, for example, whereas hydrolized fish grows fungi) at the end and let the microbial action occur in the media.

Btw, the above is really mostly my opinion, not fact. There are many, many others who do things differently than I and they do just fine. EG brew guano teas often. There are many ways to skin that cat.

Hey thanks man I appreciate the input. I've never heard that about distilled water thought it was damn close to the same as r/o. Unfortunately it's about my only option other than buying an RO system which id really like to avoid being that I only run 2-4 plants at a time. If I'm not mistaken in the reading and research I've done, I believe I saw a few farmers ask cap and some other fellows online if distilled was ok to use for teas and they said it was just fine, in fact I remember seeing a recipe or 2 that lists distilled water. If anyone else could chime in on this that'd be great, not that I don't trust your input, but hey 2 or 3 is better than 1 right?

I am on day 36 of my current run and things are starting to go downhill with a good amount of yellowing so I figured what the hell why not try out a tea at this point as a little learning experience for next run.

I just mixed up and am brewing a 1 gallon tea batch with:
6tbs EWC
1.3 tbs of molasses
1ml of gen hydro armor Si silica
10ml bio bloom(kelp)(ascophyllum nodosum)
2ml mad farmer NUTS humic
15ml of strata SOS (beneficial bacteria)

I plan on picking up caps root and nute pack for next run.

Let me know what you guys think of the brew recipe.

 

[OGlover1224]

Here she is a half hour in

 

[OGlover1224]

Just got these freebies from the hydro store, that's the main reason I added the armorSi and mad farmer NUTS. I heard the roots exelurator is great stuff can't wait to use that next run

 

[Seamaiden]

Huh, they're packaging RE in glass bottles now? Used to be metal, that's what I have.

You can keep the kelp back from the tea and just add it at the end, it does nothing beneficial during brewing.

The bit about distilled water is what I learned during my many years as a fish-thing. It's fine if you add stuff to it, but if you're using only that for watering, you're pulling nutrients out of the soil (water soluble, of course). Distilled water is the *only* pure water form, RO is simply very well filtered but it is not pure water, that's the deal there. Even RO/DI isn't pure, it's just extremely low EC, which means it still has, though extremely low, some matter in it, whatever that may be.

 

[OGlover1224]

Huh, they're packaging RE in glass bottles now? Used to be metal, that's what I have.

You can keep the kelp back from the tea and just add it at the end, it does nothing beneficial during brewing.

The bit about distilled water is what I learned during my many years as a fish-thing. It's fine if you add stuff to it, but if you're using only that for watering, you're pulling nutrients out of the soil (water soluble, of course). Distilled water is the *only* pure water form, RO is simply very well filtered but it is not pure water, that's the deal there. Even RO/DI isn't pure, it's just extremely low EC, which means it still has, though extremely low, some matter in it, whatever that may be.

The kelp being added from the beginning won't negatively affect the brew right?

And I only use the distilled by itself A few times in the seedling stage after that I either mix with a bit of molasses and/or GO CaMg if not feeding nutes. The brew is around 22 hours now and it went from smelling of straight molasses and now you can still smell the molasses but not as strong and a somewhat, I guess you could call it earthly, smell has joined the molasses smell. Hopefully it's a decent first time brew! I kind of got ahead of myself and brewed right away not thinking of timing so I will have to use it about 26 hours into the brew. Would have liked to go 36 but will have to wait until next time! I'm hoping this somewhat puts my girls back on the right track for the rest of their time.

Happy farming and any input or organic nute regimens that you guys use in combination with ACT feel free to share!

 

[Seamaiden]

No, I don't think it will negatively affect the brew, it just doesn't add anything, either. If the brew's smelling earthy then that's what you want! Those 'earth' microbes are part and parcel of what gives good friable soil it's wonderful 'earthy' scent. :D

 

[OGlover1224]

No, I don't think it will negatively affect the brew, it just doesn't add anything, either. If the brew's smelling earthy then that's what you want! Those 'earth' microbes are part and parcel of what gives good friable soil it's wonderful 'earthy' scent. :D

I'm hoping what I'm smelling is earthy lol. It certainly doesn't smell bad or rank. Hoping that the fact I still smell the molasses doesn't mean it's not ready yet. I'd say the temps it's being brewed in are around 67-69 degrees.

 

[Seamaiden]

Yeah, you absolutely *will* know when it goes off. Even I can tell... sometimes. Ok, I admit, there are have been times that my husband will come across my tea and ask me what that awful smell is and I can't smell it.

Who'da thunk bein' bitten by a little ol' green rattlesnake coulda caused all that trouble?

 

[OGlover1224]

Yeah, you absolutely *will* know when it goes off. Even I can tell... sometimes. Ok, I admit, there are have been times that my husband will come across my tea and ask me what that awful smell is and I can't smell it.

Who'da thunk bein' bitten by a little ol' green rattlesnake coulda caused all that trouble?

Guess it could've been worse! Thanks for the help!

 

[ttystikk]

Yeah, you absolutely *will* know when it goes off. Even I can tell... sometimes. Ok, I admit, there are have been times that my husband will come across my tea and ask me what that awful smell is and I can't smell it.

Who'da thunk bein' bitten by a little ol' green rattlesnake coulda caused all that trouble?

The catalog of your misfortunes never fails to impress me. When and how did you get bitten? Was this recent?

 

[Seamaiden]

I thought I'd written about it before. This was the weekend of the WTC attacks. I lived in the LA area at the time and when the flights were stopped it *really* freaked me out, so I had to get the hell outta Dodge. My folks have a second home out in the California high desert, near a place called Yucca Valley, so I said, "Who wants to go to Yucca Valley?" My son wanted to and bring a friend of his, and my dad always likes being out there, so we got everything together and off we went.

To make what can be a very long story should I include details, while I was out quadrunning with my son's friend we ran across an incredibly beautiful GREEN snake, that I knew immediately was a rattlesnake. Having handled many snakes before, including rattlers I felt comfortable doing so again. We were cool til about 15-20mins into it, when I relaxed a bit when I got distracted by the boy, and as I looked away I must have let the tail drop because BANG! He got me on the left forefinger, just after the first knuckle.

Spent a week in ICU at the hospital out there, once I finally made it to the hospital, and the rest is history. Couldn't smell a thing at all for 6mos, then gradually my ability to smell came back but it has never been the same since. I miss a lot of smells other people pick up immediately, and that's really the only reason why I know I still experience that after-effect.