Did I just poison my plant? (compost tea)

[mostnonymouse]

I just switched to 12/12 last week and wanted to try one of these fungal compost teas I've heard so much about. I mixed some soil and ewc with a bit of oatmeal and a dash of Plant Success in a tupperware container, wet the mix and stuck it in a dark place for a couple days. It was covered in fuzz by the time I dumped it into my compost tea bucket and turned my pump on. I also added a touch of alfalfa at this point. When I went to water my plants today I found, upon pouring it out, globs of mold floating around...like you'd see in a stagnant, forgotten glass of juice. It didn't smell "bad" I guess, but a strangely new spicy/peppery smell that I am not used to. I only applied the tea to one of my two plants, but I am going on vacation tomorrow and I'm wondering if I should expect to return to a rotted, malnourished carcass of a plant or the beautiful girls I left in perfect health...

 

[jaykush]

i doubt your plants are dead, but just so you know, you want strands not fuzz. fuzz is mold, strands that look like cotton are fungi.

 

[mostnonymouse]

i doubt your plants are dead, but just so you know, you want strands not fuzz. fuzz is mold, strands that look like cotton are fungi.

I'd say it was more cotton looking than fuzz. Maybe I chose the wrong word. I'll try to remember to update when I return from my trip. Thanks Jay.

 

[CT Guy]

How strong is your pump? You might have over done it and lowered the DO levels in the water. There shouldn't be chunks of anything in your tea, except for maybe compost (even then you don't want it chunky, you want the greater surface area and exposure to O2).

Might be a good time to review your tea-making procedure and make sure you're following good steps to ensure aerobic microbial life.

Oh, and I doubt you killed anything, but it may or may not have been beneficial. If you soil is healthy, it should be able to buffer an anaerobes you may have applied I'm guessing.

 

[jaykush]

if your going to do the fungal tea thing with the oats you need to see something along the lines of this to ensure propert fungal content.

i find a fungal compost pit provides MUCH better fungal compost than the oats method ( which does work with quality EWC and compost)

 

[mad librettist]

Jay, those are mycelia, but molding is also fungi.

I get filaments like that when I ferment bran sometimes. Once they ran all the way through.


more important, why are we bothering? flowering cannabis doesn't need fungal tea. Good old tea is fine.

 

[jaykush]

i find the "mold teas" dont provide as much fungal activity under the scope.

why bother? fungi are a good part of a recycled ( preferably no till ) soils living system. i cant imagine growing without them for all the benefits they bring.

 

[Microbeman]

officially mold and fungi are synonymous linguistically

 

[mad librettist]

ya ok Jay I understand doing it for some perennials but weed is fine with the fungi you are already brewing in regular tea. I would spray this stuff if my mulch layer were hard to digest. But in my cannabis plantings I mulch with dried cannabis leaves.

 

[jaykush]

to each his own, there's more than one way to grow organic goodness.

 

[mostnonymouse]

if your going to do the fungal tea thing with the oats you need to see something along the lines of this to ensure propert fungal content.

i find a fungal compost pit provides MUCH better fungal compost than the oats method ( which does work with quality EWC and compost)

I opened the tupperware again last night after having left some very slight ewc residue at the bottom of it and this is what I found. I wish I had taken a picture...there was just a CH of ewc stuck to the bottom when I dumped it out and this webby structure had taken over the entire volume of the tupperware. looked like a light cotton candy.

 

[mad librettist]

to each his own, there's more than one way to grow organic goodness.

Yeah think about it though Jay, if you spray anaerobic bad tea on a good grow with good aeration and not too much food available, you won't turn your soil anaerobic in the least. Whatever is in your tea, it can only colonize whatever is in your container.

Spraying fungal tea on soil fed to be bacterial dominated won't change it over to fungal soil overnight. All it can do is introduce biology to the environment. Soil for cannabis should be pretty close to 1:1 bacterial:fungal, slightly on the bacterial side.

An example of a plant that goes from bacterial to fungal soil would be certain trees that like bacterial soil as saplings, then fungal soil as full grown trees. The change takes years of natural mulching and fungal action.

In other words - if there is no oatmeal on your soil what are all those spores doing for you? Fungi do not compete well with bacteria when it's bacteria's turf, and likewise, soil bacteria can't touch fungi when it comes to eating something not buried and breaking down lignin.