Recipe #3 - Who's runnin' the tea?

[Stoned Coder]

Just wondering if anyone is running the LC's tea recipe #3? Is this a good recipe? How's it workin for ya? How's it smoke? Any pics of the results?

RECIPE #3 (My favorite)
If you want to use guano tea and kelp...

Guano Tea and Kelp:

Seedlings less than 1 month old nute tea mix-
Mix 1 cup earthworm castings into 5 gallons of water to make the tea.
Add 5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses.
Use it to water your seedlings with every 3rd watering.

Veg mix-
1/3 cup Peruvian Seabird Guano (PSG)
1/3 cup High N Bat Guano (Mexican)
1/3 cup Earth Worm Castings (EWC)
5 tsp. Maxicrop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
(That makes the "dry mix". You can make all you want and save it to use later.)
Mix with water @ 1 cup of dry mix into 5 gallons of water to make the tea.
To that 5 gallons of tea add:
5 tbs. Liquid Karma
5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses
Use it to water with every 3rd watering.

Flowering nute tea mix:
2/3 cup Peruvian Seabird Guano
2/3 cup Earth Worm Castings
2/3 cup High P Guano (Indonesian or Jamaican)
5 tsp. Maxicrop 1-0-4 powdered kelp extract
(That makes the "dry mix". You can make all you want and save it to use later.)
Mix with water @ 2 cups of dry mix into 5 gallons of water to make the tea.
To that 5 gallons of tea add:
5 tbs. Liquid Karma
5 tbs. Black Strap Molasses
Use it to water with EVERY watering.

You can use queen size knee high nylon stockings for tea bags. 3 pair for a dollar at the dollar store. Tell 'em you use them for paint strainers. Put the recommended tea in the stocking, tie a loop knot in it and hang it in your tea bucket. The tea should look like a mud puddle. Agitate the bag in the water vigorously. An aquarium pump and air stone will dissolve oxygen into the solution and keep the good bacteria (microherd) alive and thriving. Let it bubble a day or two before you use it. If you find you are making too much tea and having to throw it out, use 2 1/2 gallons of water and cut the nute amount by half.

 

[Stoned Coder]

Also forgot to mention that obviously the tea is a lot more work, but I'm also wondering how it compares to a simple top dress guano method like used by Crazy Composer in this thread:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=152752

Thanks for any insight

 

[trichome]

the tea awesome, i still use pretty much this exact tea to supplement my high feeding sativas

 

[Ribsauce]

works real good used this recipe outdoors for most of my stuff this year and they loved it... its a little more messy and a little more work than just top dressing but if you can incorporate some beneficial Micro organisms into a good organic way to feed your plants than why not??? only thing ya gotta make sure to do is provide enough oxygen to keep the tea from going anaerobic and realize that if you use too much molasses it will speed up MO growth along with higher temps while bubbling...if it sits for awhile and it starts to smell horrible pitch it and start again cause it can do as much harm as good if its anaerobic

after posting that i read the thread you posted from CC i really like his technique...might have to try this indoors and see what happens with a couple girls...thanks for posting the link

 

[Microbeman]

Also forgot to mention that obviously the tea is a lot more work, but I'm also wondering how it compares to a simple top dress guano method like used by Crazy Composer in this thread:

https://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=152752

Thanks for any insight

This method by Crazy does work and I myself have long advocated topdressing raw organic matter, however there is a problem with the thread. I noticed premises in what Crazy wrote which were scientifically inaccurate and pointed them out. These posts were removed by Crazy in his role of moderator. He removed all my posts which discussed soil as a living thing. He referred to these as personal attacks, although this was untrue. He removed posts by Jack the Grower (and I believe tried to ban him). There was misbehavior by other members but not by me. Crazy even sent me threatening PMs for having a different point of view regarding some minor points.


Just be aware that Crazy has cleaned up the thread to make himself look 100% loved and the info is one-sided and in my opinion, some of the premise is not accurate.

 

[Microbeman]

PS. If you are using an aquarium pump to aerate compost tea, keep the volume to one or two gallons and restrict the compost or guano input to 2% by volume. OR you can make a liquid compost extract type tea by just stirring your ingredients rapidly as much as possible of 4 to 8 hours, then apply (strained or unstrained).

Also a paint strainer is a million times superior to nylon stockings.

 

[NUG-JUG]

That indonesian guano is fine like flour. I think that top-dressing that would be very effective done early in flower. just my opinion but the peruvian is pelletized and very hard. I'd think it would take awhile to break down, even in a tea.

 

[ZENARCADE]

This method by Crazy does work and I myself have long advocated topdressing raw organic matter, however there is a problem with the thread. I noticed premises in what Crazy wrote which were scientifically inaccurate and pointed them out. These posts were removed by Crazy in his role of moderator. He removed all my posts which discussed soil as a living thing. He referred to these as personal attacks, although this was untrue. He removed posts by Jack the Grower (and I believe tried to ban him). There was misbehavior by other members but not by me. Crazy even sent me threatening PMs for having a different point of view regarding some minor points.


Just be aware that Crazy has cleaned up the thread to make himself look 100% loved and the info is one-sided and in my opinion, some of the premise is not accurate.

I remember when all that was going on in that thread, however I don't remember your exact points. Care to elaborate? I have always had good luck with top dressing guano in my past soil grows and such but I usually water it in with some ewc tea to help speed things up. What's your take on the whole thing? I'd be eager to learn any improvements on the methods mentioned in that thread.

 

[Microbeman]

I remember when all that was going on in that thread, however I don't remember your exact points. Care to elaborate? I have always had good luck with top dressing guano in my past soil grows and such but I usually water it in with some ewc tea to help speed things up. What's your take on the whole thing? I'd be eager to learn any improvements on the methods mentioned in that thread.

I hesitate because there is nothing wrong with the method stated but for clarity as to the premise with which it does work;

Stated by Crazy

“The benefit of this method is the ability to reduce the available food source to the plant before harvest, meaning the soil becomes lean from lack of decomposing organic matter, therefore reducing the amount of available minerals and salts at harvest time, when you don't want the plant having access to these elements. The fewer available minerals and salts in the medium at harvest time, the better the smoke will be. After tending to thousands of plants on an individual, intimate basis, I've come to know this as a fact.”

Although I agree that topdressing of organic raw matter like manures is a good idea, to claim that you deny the plant access to organic nutrients is not sensible and has no evidentiary basis. The reason I support topdressing of manure type substances is that the microbes which exist at the surface area of soil (fungi, bacteria/archaea) are equipped to degrade these substances safely, passing nutrients down the line to other microbes or humifying them without causing a nutrient lock up, which can occurr if these substances are mixed into the soil. Compost and vermicompost, on the other hand can be mixed into the soil/media because the nutrients are already humified (stored to be released by microbial and/or root mineralization) True, there are some ionic (salt/soluble) nutrients which are immediately available to the roots from substances like manure and a few other substances but it is just irresponsible to add these very far along in flower. As far as having “decomposing organic matter” ‘in’ soil, well a properly constructed soil mix should not have any.


Stated by Crazy

“Case in point... even truly organic weed, grown outdoors with ZERO fertilizer amendments whatsoever, can be harsher than is needed. Some of the best and the WORST pot I've ever smoked was grown outdoors, without amendments. The best was grown between two pine groves, in a very sandy, poor soil. ZERO food was given. Some of the worst weed was also grown outdoors, with ZERO food added, in very rich soil on the edge of a swamp. The pot grew HUGE, but tasted like crap. Why did the poor soil plant turn out so great, while the plant by the swamp, with so much available, organic material taste so bad? TOO MUCH SALT AND MINERAL AVAILABLE IN THE SOIL AT THE TIME OF HARVEST.

This has been demonstrated over and over to me as I tended these thousands of plants over the years. Every time there was too much available salt and mineral in the medium (organic or not), the smoke turned out less than perfect. The more salt and mineral, the worse the smoke is.

So what you see here is an SFV OGKush grown in a very lean organic soil, lean enough to be almost completely depleted of available salts and minerals by harvest, yielding plants with very little salt/mineral content. You can see by the even yellowing in the leaves, that this process of slat/mineral depletion is well under way. These plants are in their final stage, what some call the "Flush" period. In the case of this particular style of growing, the flush simply means I withhold the guanos long enough so that the microherd (fungi, bacteria, etc) eats its way through the last dose of guanos, and finds itself without a substantial source of organic matter to break into salts and minerals... therefore creating a "starvation effect".”

I cannot attest to the environments which Crazy has exemplified here but I can state that to the best of my knowledge (and according to scientific evidence) in normal natural growing circumstances there will not be enough bio-available (salts) nutrients in a natural growing condition for the plant to take up without microbial activity and effect the flower tissue as described.

[for all we know, the sand described by Crazy was ancient river silt, some of the most fertile media known and the swamp soil may have high heavy metal content]

I and the charity I grew medicinal cannabis with, grew approximately 45,000 plants over a twelve year period, both outdoor and indoor. Plants were initially grown with chemicals following the typical paradigm of increasing P during flower, flushing and yadayada, then quickly evolving to something similar to what is described by Crazy but with bottled organic nutrients but finally in the last 7 years (via observation of nature) we evolved to mixing soils meant to live forever, topdressing organic matter including (vermi)compost and treating with AEM and ACT. This final method was the most simple and was the most popular with the patients it went to, being described as very clean smoking. One thing I did notice was that the leaves always turned yellow in flower. This is a natural phase the plant enters known as senescence. And here the experts always told us it was the withholding of nitrogen. Also, there was always enough N left in the soil for the vegetative cycle of the rooted cuttings planted for the next round. So much for the “starvation effect” [there was a bit more to it but I’ve described this elsewhere]

In a natural growing system, which includes that described by Crazy, besides the minimal nutrients which are in ionic form (as described above), nutrients which are sequestered in humus, compost and vermicompost are made available to the plant by microbial interactions mostly controlled by the plant itself and to a certain degree (mostly nitrogen) is mineralized and made available by exudates (secretions) from the roots also obviously controlled by the plant (see DON - dissolved organic nitrogen; I thought it was in the Citric Acid thread but its not). So that I might also have a case in point, I’ve successfully grown plants (including tomatoes) in straight vermicompost, from beginning to end. Did the plants suck all the nutrients from the compost?

Contrary to the old paradigm apostilized by many still, including those teaching at supposed universities, we are not ‘so much’ in control of the stages the plant goes through and we are not so much feeding the plant with organic substances as we are feeding the media and microbial population. At least, that’s how I see it.

 

[captinknots]

i am..... im having my first issues now 2 weeks in flower. nothing major, my plants look great, just a bit of twisting im trying to fix. i fed plain water this time in case its just some overfert.... plants look 10x better then shit i grew with recipe 1.

 

[rckymtnthuglife]

I used that recipe for awhile with success. Been using Roots instead of peat or Sunshine and adding a whole bunch of shit like kelp,SRP, alfalfa, greensand and Happy Frog 5-8-4, yield has been bigger and I hardly have to fertilize at all, just some EWC teas , maybe a fish hydroslyate and kelp tea now and again.
Got tired of using guanos mostly because of how nasty it makes the bucket.