[BillFarthing]

With a little work, your favorite organic recipe can work in organic hydroponics. The process mimics a sewage treatment plant or milk house waste management to make nutrients available to plants. It does this by processing your organic inputs anaerobically, then aerobically for use in hydroculture.

Fill your anaerobic container roughly 1/3 full of inputs, keeping in mind that it is going to be diluted later. I use a 5 gallon bucket with a lid. I like to use this list to hit a target NPK: https://www.lundproduce.com/N-P-K-Val...verything.html I also like to do a significant portion of finished compost or castings for the humus content. Add a lactobacillus source like yogurt, kefir or milk with active cultures and top up with dechlorinated tap or spring water. Stir and put on the lid. Stir once a week for a few weeks until inputs like they are breaking down and reducing in volume.

At this point we are going to add the entire container to our aerobic processing container. I like to use a 55-gallon drum. Top up 10 parts unchlorinated water to 1 part solution. Add your favorite soil inoculant as recommended on the package or beneficial indigenous microbes (BIM) and aerate. Aerate for a few days until it looks like the microbial activity has peaked so the pH stabilizes. Strain it through cheese cloth or a paint strainer, dilute to target EC, and keep it aerated until ready to use. That's it! You have an organic hydroponic solution.

You can treat it just like a traditional hydroponic solution. As far as EC, I keep mine about 1.5 EC in veg and 1.7-2.0 EC in flower. There is a lot more variability as far as pH, so as long as it doesn't drift too far out, your garden should be happy.

Take special note about nitrogen content. This process converts nitrates to a usable form. There might be a need to dial back hot sources of nitrogen like fish or guanos.

Use your favorite recipe, but here's the recipe that I like to use:

1 gal. compost or EWC
2 c. insect frass
2 c. rice hulls or horse tail
1 c. alfalfa meal
1 c. kelp meal
1 c. neem seed meal
1 c. molasses
1/2 c. garden lime
1/2 c. gypsum
1/2 c. steamed bone meal
1/2 c. azomite

[cyat]

Sounds cool. What type of hydro are you using it in?

[BillFarthing]

Originally Posted by cyat

Sounds cool. What type of hydro are you using it in?

Hey cyat- I like it in DWC or RDWC. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures.

I did see a cat on Reddit doing virtually the exact same thing with NFT channels here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hydro/comme...e_compost_tea/

[cyat]

Incredible! Rdwc is my favorite. For one plant my system holds 40 gallon of water, so I imagine I would be making that often.

I've experimented with adding jobs spikes into my aqauponic system and it worked well, this was with tomatoes though.

[BillFarthing]

That's really cool Cyat.

I also see some potential for this:
https://www.bio-clean.com/whatisbioclean.php

It's septic system enzymes and bacteria that would help speed up the aerobic portion of digestion. I should probably also post this in the Cheaper Enzymes thread.

This has been a fun project.