Lately I have been brewing my own teas. Different ingredients for different stages of growth. For instance, right now on my indoor I'm in early bloom(6 days 12/12) and I'm brewing a weaker tea according to the plants nutrient intake. My current brew I have going consists of mainly 3 ingredients;

1. Happy Frog bat guano 0-5-0, I choose this for early bloom at a rate of 1-3 tbs/gal depending on plant needs. It has a lower phosphorus value than my Indonesian bat guano(which I brew at mid-late bloom), so it is better suited for early bloom. Two, it comes with 15 different species of mycorrhizae and 5 different species of beneficial bacteria. In essence, you get the added benefit of early bloom inoculation!

2. AN Mother Earth super tea(blended compost tea)bloom 3-2-5, I add this at a rate of 2 tsp-2 tbs/gal depending on plant needs because it too has beneficial microbes as well as some alfalfa extract for increased Co2 uptake! This additive fills in the N and K values missing from the Happy Frog.

3. Earth Juice Hi-Brix molasses 0-0-3, You guys already know why we add this... Food for the beneficials! Plus the added benefit of some potassium. I add 1 tsp every 18 hours to keep the colony thriving!

After aerating for a minimum of 48 hours, I strain the brew after removing the aerator and add 1 tsp of Liquid Karma, 1.5 tsp of General Organics CaMg+(because I use RO water) and every third watering I use Rhino Skin(potassium silicate) to strengthen the plants cell walls/stalks.

You would not believe how much my plants react to this brew. It's like steroids for organics! I have to LST like crazy when I start using this stuff!

Isn't it nice to make your own nutes from raw ingredients? Now if I could only find a nice bat cave so I don't have to buy guano... Batman, where are you when we need you! LOL.

Peace, E1

I'm doing an organic run of five plants. Previously I've grown in soil feeding with the Age Old liquids plus beneficials and molasses. I never brewed it with an airstone though, I just mixed it up and used it immediately. This time i want to take it a level further.

The plants are already vegging in some un-amended Roots. First feeding plan- to 1 gallon of water (yea that's all I'll need for one feeding right now)
10 ml Age Old grow
3ml Age Old liquid kelp
Roots Oregonism (recommended amount)
10 ml molasses
Would it help to bubble this mix for a day or two?

Once they are ready to transplant into the 3 gallon pots I want to amend the soil. Heres the plan-
1 bag of roots = 1.5 cubic feet = 11.2 gallons
+2 cups worm castings
1/2 cup guano (0-5-0)
1/2 cup kelp meal
1/2 cup bone meal (3-15-0)
and the recommended amounts (not sure off tops) of the 'Tarantula' and 'Pirahna' bacteria and fungi combo.

Heres a question - how much beneficials do I need? The guano I have is fox farm 0-5-0 plus myco and humic acid. The Pirahna and Tarantula will be in the soil. I have the Oregonism to use in the liquid teas later as well. The more the merrier?

Liquid Tea recipe for mid to late bloom-
to 5 gallons water
+5tbsp guano
5tbsp kelp meal
5tbsp molasses
1 cup worm castings
recommended amount of Oregonism
Heres a question on the tea - Should I add some bone meal? Maybe just if I notice some P deficiency? Or should it be top dressed with bone meal if needed?

This whole thing is basically OG's mix, so big thanks to him for getting me started. I found the bone meal in a hand me down box of grow shit so I figured I should use it. I also thought about getting some bagged compost from the garden center to add to the teas. Would it be worth the effort?

Thanks for any feedback you can give. I'll be taking pics along the way and posting them at the end.

Oh yea, fyi my water is sediment and carbon filtered. Not RO.

The more varieties of compost, the better your tea will turn out. Forest soil, under the leaf litter is one of the better sources. Look under conifers mulch too for different varieties of fungi innoculum. Non-animal compost is also good, not to say manures are bad, they're also great.


I have less "food" ingredients in my compost teas, but many sources of microbiology.

Fish Hydrolysate (or even emulsion) NPK
Kelp solution PK-micros
Blackstrap Molasses Simple sugars-micros
Crab and Shrimp powder (provides surface areas and chitins for fungi growth) NP-chitin
Dash of humic acid, to chelate and avoid salt formation.

Then it's mainly worm castings, sheep cow horse manure, as innoculum (few handfuls each in the teabag), also as innoculum I grab forest compost from around a few different trees as mentionned above, a handful of 2yr finished compost(for actinomycetes) and a bit of this year's compost, some mesophilic from the outside of the pile (must be unreconizable "compost looking" material), some thermophilic from the 60*C inside of the pile.

With all those sources of life, you're sure to take off a few decades in the regeneration of your soil.


OM = Organic matter
OM nutrients are (mainly) unavailable to plants.

"Grazers" (aka bacteria+fungi) sequester minerals from OM. Minerals were and are still unavailable to plants. Unless Grazers secretes mineralized nutrients by being crushed or pooping etc. Dead biomass containing minerals are also unavailable to plants, save for some solubility.

"Predators" come in at a bigger scale (larger than bact+fungi smaller than bugs), and instead of sequestering minerals from OM, they predate on grazers. Thus accumulating even greater amounts of minerals. Minerals are again available only on secretion or minutely upon death. Consumption by a higher level predator usually an athropod (bug) at this point ideally cycles back the most plant available nutrients.

So as you see nutrients in an organic soil are EVERYWHERE and could easily constitute an overdose were they all available to the plant at once. But the plant only ever gets the crumbs and offerings (in exchange for sugar from the roots) made by these little buggers, who hold onto their stack of cash and do everything to keep it all to themselves and get more, for their self-centric purposes.

All this to say that the more varied your sources of compost, the more chances you will get some organism who wasn't in that other source of compost. The more sources of life, the more lively the economy of your soil is, holding even more crumbs to be available, if shortly, but more abundantly and voraciously.

TL;DR The more multicultural your soil microbiology is, the more exchanges there are (between themselves or with the roots), and the more likely your plant will get some solubilized nutrients out of it.

great thread you guys have going here,
my recipe is for 5 gallons of dechlorinated Tap water, or rain.

a few handfuls of each
-Worm Castings (my own)
-Aged Compost
-Fresh Compost
-Crushed Oyster Shell

-a large "daaab" of Molasses (im too lazy to measure something that sticky)
-Alfalfa Pellets, a small handful.
-Rolled Oats, a small handful.

3-5 TBSP
-Happy Frog 5-5-5, or 7-4-5.
-Mexican Bat Guano 11-3-1 or something
-Jamaican Bat Guano 0-5-0 (more or less depending on photoperiod)
-Greensand 0-0-5
-Fish Emulsion 3-3-2
-Organicare Bloom 1-5-4 (mostly chicken shit)
-2 TBSP Kelp Extract 2-1-7 ish

and any old fruit or berries lying around, old mushy bananas quite frequently.

then give it a big stir, pop in a few airstones and let brew for 24 hours, although i use it almost immediately sometimes, and have kept them bubbling for almost 2 weeks if the weather is cool.

most of the time i dilute the tea 50/50 with water, but if a plant is hungry i have given them straight tea with no issues.

once again i would like to applaud this thread, (and this Forum) it is a great resource, full of great people.

Happy Brewing.

a great tea to use for PH down is umeboshi.

it is amazing and cheap to make!!!

just find a scoby and make your own. almost every one knows a chick or dude that is big on the japanese umeboshi!!

OG, in another thread you mention that soil needs to be loaded up with lots of food if tea is to be applied on a regular basis. How does this recipe look to you ? ->

5 cups Promix
1 cup worm castings
1 cup vermiculite or perlite (whichever I have on hand)
3 cups compost (I use prepared sheep and fish composts)
10 tbls blood or bone meal

and for flavour I add a few tbls of phosphate in granular form, green earth, and 1 tsp epsom salts

To my water I add 1 tbl fish/kelp per liter, which is then used to prepare the above list of goodies.

Comments ?

My teas are basic: compost, worm castings and molasses.

I've been adding tea on a weekly basis, which turns out to be roughly how often I need to water the pots. Do you think I'm adding too much tea, particularly after 8 weeks growth (12/12) ?

MORE worm castings

edit: you should be fine.

Luzianne

My thanks to Organic Gardener for starting this valuable discussion, and to all the others who have contributed.

There is a lot to be said for the fungal oriented teas (with oats and other starchy additions) and for the teas that are more bacteria focus-ed...my understanding is that each supports different elements of plant growth. I suspect each might benefit plants at certain stages or environments...

Its great to read of tomatopie's and fulvic's scientific additions....and of Doobie Brother conversion to the high church of the micorrhizae...may your studies be rewarded...so many have added I hope to come back and read more.

Been having a little hard luck of late, as my teas are going bad very quickly.

Here's what I've been doing:

Ingredients: compost, worm castings, liquid kelp/fish fert, molasses. Tied off in a stocking, hung in bucket of aerated water, bubbled throughout incubation time. Temp is ~20-22C.

After 1-24 hours it's clear from the odour that anaerobics are growing! Could it be I need more aeration, or mixing perhaps ?

The odd thing is I've been using the same stuff with success, till recently... It may be the compost I'm using, as I have three different commercial sources: ocean, sheep and chicken composts.

Comments?