When letting ur soil cook u def wanna have ur dry amendments in there, that’s what is gonna be breaking down over the course of the month of cooking, think of it as making a soup, get all the goods in there and let time and heat do the rest. Any top dressings or adding anything after the initial soil build is still gonna take another few weeks to a month to get moving so really depends how ur planning to feed em, if ur just gonna do revs compost teas I’d just build ur soil and rely on the teas every two weeks to keep things happy. If your gonna be top dressing then half strength about a week after transplant should be fine. Rev advises against teas and seedlings but I’ve started tea feedings 5 days into life without ill affects 🤷
When it comes to microbes I say get creative and get as much diversity as possible in there and not just microbes but enzymes, aminos, vitamins. Great examples for both is I would fish at the local swamp and if I caught a largemouth or catfish I would keep it alive, bring it home and throw it in my tea brewer with just water and let it live in that tote all night, next day id release it back but I would immediately throw my tea bag in there loaded up with my typical recipes but doing so added all the aquatic microbes local to my area to my soil mix and giving them a day feeding on the molasses during the brew to really multiply and go nuts, bat guano has another set of microbes so shoot for fresh or Dr earth brand cuz they throw in more microbes. I’ve thrown on occasion guinea pig poo, rabbit poo, SMALL amounts chicken poo, donkey poo, mealworm frass, cricket frass, roach frass and even caterpillar frass finding a nest, all of it just adds to the diversity overtime and as long as it’s been aerated in a tea before soil sees any of it, it helps keep the bad microbes away keeping the o² lovers in abundance. Even in the soil build I’ve used earthworm castings that were fed fan leaves and fridge cleanouts ,steer manure and my two favs of Scotts humus and manure and mushroom compost, just more microbes diversity. This is why I’m a firm believer the soil gets better over time cuz time gives us opportunity to always improve it
When it comes to the enzymes aminos and vitamins my two fav to add are fresh aloe leaves blended into a slurry to add to my teas base at beginning of brew and bee pollen for the pretty much everything under the sun of aminos, enzymes and vitamins
Another thing I’d like to touch on us since ur using peat in your mix u may want to do some research on humic and fulvic acids, that’s what’s gonna help break down the peat and make the hydrophobic properties not such a pain to deal with
Another thing worth clarifying, molasses doesn’t feed ur plants in any shape or form, keeps ur microbes fed and happy and that’s what’s gonna feed ur plants
When u say ur mix is 1:1:1 of substrate, aeration, compost, what’s substrate? Ur peat? I personally go heavier on the compost and do a 1:1:2 coir, perlite, compost. Peat tends to swing ph down as much as 5.0 and coir is more neutral around 7 without the hydrophobic properties so be sure to keep that in mind too, fireplace ash is great for balancing peat based soil back up a lil and coffee grounds are great for coir based to keep it in the acidic side
U sound like ur running in the right path, keep it up!
