EWC aerated tea

[SupraSPL]

I found a lot of good info and recipes and combined a few to come up with this brewer and tea. $10 for the air pump, tubing and airstone.

It is a 1 gal PET jug (half full) and using the $6 air pump from walmart (1200cc/min - .04cfm - 3 watts). Since the pump is small I figured brew a small tea and a little goes a long way (2000 sq ft/gal!). Better off to brew a small tea and water it down afterward than to brew a large tea with insufficient oxygen.

2 liters well water
5ml EWC
2ml molasses
1ml BMO Super Plant Tonic (for microbe diversity)
1ml kelp meal (Thorvin)
.5ml azomite
brewing temp ~17c/63f
brewing time ~30 hours

I know MM recommends more EWC and molasses but since I am on the lower end as far as dissolved oxygen I used less and I am brewing at the low range of temps.

Not sure what else I can do to improve it. Im looking around for things to add diversity and thought about using a pinch of fresh canna roots. Would the canna specific beneficials on the roots multiply or would the fresh roots in the tea cause problems somehow? Maybe I could just remove them after a few hours.

Hanging around I have Epsoma Plant Tone with BioTone, Epsoma Organic potting soil with Myco-tone (peat/compost based soil), Thorvin kelp meal and a whole forest full of hardwoods I can get soil from under the leaves. I could add a little of each or just change it up once in awhile.

The plants look awesome with or without the ACT but I havent done a real side by side yet. I bought bags of Roots Organics because I needed a lot of soil and did not have enough time to make my own. I am sure Roots has plenty of microbes in it already but Roots + ACT should be great together.

 

[guest2012y]

Sounds like you got it figured out. Go for that soil under leaves,recycle your soil and re-amend,let it cook before planting.

 

[Pseudo]

works great in an aerocloner, stops pythium

 

[SupraSPL]

Definitely will be recycling and re-amending. I was doing it on a small scale for years but I finally ordered everything in bulk. EWC, plant tone 5-3-3, leonardite, azomite, kelp meal and maybe some pulverized dolomite. The soil I have been recycling for years will just get rolled into the mix.

Good point about the aero and pythium. I added the fresh canna roots to the tea but I will fish them out this time.

 

[big ballin 88]

If you can, you should build an air lift which utlizes some cheap PVC or tubing if you'd like. I utlize a 1 gal milk jug, you could try a half gal one and fill it up.... Besides that sounds pretty good. I love using Epsoma Biotone Starter Plus for teas. They should call it Compost Tea Starter, instead of Starter Plus lol.

 

[mad librettist]

i put a bit of biotone in my teas as well. I substitute it for kelp meal when using microbeman's recipe.

 

[heady blunts]

Better off to brew a small tea and water it down afterward than to brew a large tea with insufficient oxygen.

very true

 

[SupraSPL]

After a few brews I noticed the airstone has quite a lot of biofilm and may soon be clogged. So I took bigballins advice and took the airstone off. I cut an 8" length of 5"8 thick tubing and now it as an airlift tube.

I was surprised how much water came out from a 3 watt air pump it seems very efficient. So far the tea has been brewing for about 24 hours at ~60f and it still smells sweet. I will let it go at least 36 hours.

2 liters well water
6ml EWC
5ml kelp meal (crushed)
4ml blackstrap
1ml BMO Super Plant Tonic
1 pinch Plant Tone
1 pinch azomite
dash of yeast

 

[vonforne]

I like the dash of yeast in the mix! Sounds like we are bakers now. lol

V

 

[love2gro]

how often would you use a tea like this? and how much?

 

[SupraSPL]

Yea its sad but true V I now have a bunch of poo recipes

I noticed the yeast additive in GO Bioroot and Liquid Karma. Yeast is half protein by weight and loaded with B complex. I assume it has other fancy compounds that could be helpful. I brew unfiltered wheat beer which is a great source of nutrition and great tasting beer.

 

[SupraSPL]

So when it comes to microbe tea I think I have a fair understanding. But when it comes to nutrient tea I am still studying. Some growers have been talking about the P myth lately. The idea is that he high P percentage during flowering only makes sense when growing outdoors because the P gets leached out. I use the 3 little birds advice and no longer worry about runoff when watering so there is no worries about leaching out P indoors.

So maybe loading up on Indonesian 0-12-0 will not help yields and could even hurt yields. Instead I will try leaning on blackstrap and kelp meal more with a small amount Indonesian to balance it out.

So can microbe tea serve both purposes without guano, microbes and nutrients? That may have something to do with your question Love2Grow. 5 gallons of compost tea as a foliar spray covers 1 acre. 20 gallons covers 1 acre as a soil drench. That works out to 500 sq ft/liter. That may be sufficient to provide microbes but as a supplemental fertilizer maybe a higher concentration could be beneficial?

 

[love2gro]

Yes im wondering if more would be beneficial as a supplemental fertilizer