Aerated Compost Tea Recipes Help

yeah this was posted in the general section with no avail so we try it again here

Not really sure what you are asking.

I brew my own tea! And I have no secret recipe here. But if I can offer some advice it would be to start simple. That way you can learn how each component affects your plants.

What kind of medium are you growing in? That often dictates what your tea needs to contain. For example if you are growing in Subs super soil you are not going to want to use a complex tea high in NPK. If you are growing soiless organic your teas are going to need to be a lot different than if your plants are deriving their nutrition from the soil.

I'd add some kelp meal / seaweed extract to that myself.

So far the teas i've made have been made of VermiCasts and alphalpha, but yesterday i bought bloodmeal (14-0-0) and bone meal (8-7-0) - all i need to complete it is the kelp meal which the store didn't have - IIRC the kelp meal is excellent for flowering (High K)

I can't get guano myself, but wouldn't use it if i could unless it was waste from some industry. I think removing the guano disrupts nature and there are plenty of other places to get, well, turds

i was more or less wanting to start a thread for everyone to share there recipes and methods of useing teas. I know theres a ton of people how make there own here,but theres almost no info on 'em.

I grow in a soilless (sunshine mix). Do most of the ingredients have a NPK on the label to make mixing them for flower/ veg easier?

pretty much everything you purchase should have an npk rating, look up the alphalpha thread for the npk value of that, and the benefits of using it

Alfalfa.

NPK doesn't matter a huge deal in tea brewing. Typically the foremost goal is microbial proliferation and diversity; you can have teas which are dominated by bacteria, or by fungi, or balanced. It is much easier to end up with a bacterial-dominated tea because bacteria tend to reproduce quicker. Essentially all that is needed as ingredients for a tea is an inoculant and a food source or more. Healthy compost is thoroughly decayed organic matter which should be teeming with microbial activity, and there is your inoculant. Molasses is a source of minerals and high energy carbohydrates which bacteria love. Other ingredients such as guano provide nutrition as well as organic matter which gives the microbes something to stick to. Guano itself is often a source of microbial activity, and certain guano such as seabird guano can further help balance the pH of the tea naturally.
Like most other forms of animal excrement used in gardening, guano should be properly aged or even fossilized or semi-fossilized ('ancient' bat/seabird guano). Plenty of guano is also sustainably harvested in an ecologically sound manner, especially brands labeled OMRI (sustainability is at the root of organics). As far as I am concerned companies which harvest guano should have a vested interest in protecting the animals which are eventually providing for their livelihood.

In am in the process of trying to compile a small log of ingredients and the tea which results. I have a small grow and only brew by the rough gallon. Here is an example for the veg stage:

• 1 cup Alaskan forest humus (excellent inoculant, Humega is a liquid version and also works well) AND/OR 1 cup Earthworm castings
• 1-2 tbs Peruvian seabird guano
• 1 tbs or less Mexican bat or similar high N guano OR 1 tbsp Earth Juice Grow
• 20 ml Earth Juice Molasses for plants
• 1 cap Maxicrop Liquid Seaweed OR Earth Juice Catalyst

After a good shaking the foaming starts, and after aerating for several hours it is usually foaming over tremendously. Note that you want to keep your brew at around room temperature; between 68-72 degrees.

The key is to have the air moving through the tea bag so the colonies are displaced into the water.

Earthworm castings are a great way to make a bacterial dominant tea. Alfalfa tea produces an abundance of protozoa. Follow a bacterial dominant tea with a protozoa dominant tea to unlock all the nitrogen that the bacteria tie up. The protozoa seek out and eat the bacteria and excrete nitrogen.

You would do best to add the fungi as a drench or at the end of the brewing process. If you do brew with the spores/inoculant add some rockdust so the fungi can set up shop. If the fungi doesn't have some sort of material to colonize they will remain in a lower population and the bacteria will dominate. The main way I have read about to get a fungal dominant tea is to inoculate baby oatmeal with the fungi and allow it to grow. Then to make the tea with the mycelium but be careful the hyphae are delicate and will be destroyed by to much aeration.

The molasses is food for the bacteria and some fungi. It is what allows the populations to soar. Organic unsulphered blackstrap molasses is a good food.

My most recent recipe~

1 Gallon water dechloraminated phed to 6.5-7
1/2 cup Organic Earthworm Casting
1/2 cup Organic Alfalfa
1 Heaping Tablespoon Organic Blackstrap Molasses
1 Teaspoon of Fungi Perfecti's MycoGrow™Soluble (Only used to setup the mycosphere on clones and transplants)
1 Tablespoon Organic Cold Processed Kelp

I have been using this tea all over my gardens. From med's to veggies.

The book teaming with microbes has a wealth of information about this subject. Well worth the read. They are able to break it down and explain the soil food web in great detail.

where do you find alfalfa I was at the nursery yesterday looking at there supplies and dont remember seeing it.

Yep, alfalfa and kelp would help that tea out. You can get alfalfa pellets from a pet food store or from a feed supply store. I've used alfalfa hay as well for teas, but the pellets or meal are preferable. My hydro shop recently started carrying carrying alfalfa meal for pretty cheap, so you may want to check places like that. I don't think a nursery will have it.

mrduke said:

where do you find alfalfa I was at the nursery yesterday looking at there supplies and dont remember seeing it.

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Feed store.

Rabbit food, horse food, just read the labels. Should be $15-$20 for a 50LB bag.

Wet

I have been experimenting with that Kellogs Organic All Purpose Fert in my teas. its 4-4-4. OMRI listed and on sale at Home Depot for like 3$ for a 4 lb bag. Its chock full of poop and meals. Its also full of all the CFU microbes and them lil benefial thingys. Word to the wise though. In a concentrated tea of 3 gallons in a 5 gal pail. the foam overflowed into the tub that i put the pail in. 100x's more foamy than my regular brew. But thats all healthy and my veggies love it to!

al right i've been shopping around for a couple days now and believe I have found some good ingrediants for my tea, now its up to you to tell me its not.

the base will be a compost call mango mulch which has a mix of guanos and earthworm castings as well as alphalfa and rice hulls.
http://www.grabngrowsoil.com/mango.htm
then add seaweed extract, molasses and a 1/4 scoop of great white

THANK YOU for making this thread. And THANK YOU for those who responded. Keep em coming. I too need help in making teas.

so i went ahead to day and mixed up a batch of brew. 3 g RO. water and about 1/2g mango mulch, 15ml cold pressed kelp and 1/2cup brown sugar (i forgot to get molasess) and off we go.I got 2 pumps both dual outputs one has 2-1" stones in the compost bag the pther is 2-6" on the bottom of the bucket

mrduke said:

I got 2 pumps both dual outputs one has 2-1" stones in the compost bag the pther is 2-6" on the bottom of the bucket

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You should get a tee for a line going into the bag and attach 2 of the little 1 inch stones to it and then you can use that 3rd line to put another 6 inch stone on and put into your bucket....mo bubbles.

And get the molasses....your taking alot away from the tea without it.

yeah i got molasses the next dayand added a couple teaspoons.

How long can i leave this shit brewing? i started with 3g and used and replaced one 2 days after start then again 4 days after start. Can i just keep doing this and add a new tea bag every week or so?

Up to 48 hours, perhaps even longer. If you're using a mycorrhizae product (Great White?) there isn't really any use in adding it to a tea during brewing. The spores will just end up destroyed, they can be added after the tea is done brewing.

I've heard of people just addingback and keeping it brewing all the live long day, isthere any problem to this?? it seem like it would still have all the microb's as when it started and be way easier to do.

To my understanding yes you can keep topping off like a normal rez....with a recirculating style tub,don't know about a bubbler though

By starting fresh each brew i'm a bit more confident in what i'll end up with.Where if i was adding to top off i don't know exactly what is going on with what is left over....if that makes any sense.Without a microscope we are really only guessing that our teas are full of life.

I feel ya though,would make things a bit more convenient

It's questions like this that make me want to buy a microscope.....like bad..