For teas you can do alfalfa and barley sprout teas. You can start when they show true leaves but they should still be happy in the mix. I usually start on week 3 of veg. The alfalfa is a root and growth booster. The Barley more of growth / veg booster. You can feed popcorn sprout tea on week 2/3 of flower to help with the stretch growth.
Castings it’s best to try make your own. I make 2 boxes, one has mostly leafy things and the other has mostly fruit and veggies in it. Use the leafy one for the seedling mix and top dress with the fruit / veg one during flower plus teas with it. I use a mix of both when I mix up a batch of soil.
I don’t use perlite but I do always aerate my water so it’s oxygen rich. All those ingredients sound great for a soil mix.
Yes, it is the basis of most of these natural farming techniques. I just made a fresh batch myself. 
Less than 30 seconds in the woods and I stumble upon this. going to collect a lot of rotten wood today
As soon as I’m done collecting rotten wood I’m going to get some rice and make some LAB. 10 to 1 ratio milk to Rice?
Hi @Upstate…
That rotten wood has gotten the neurones jumping …
Now I’m thinking of trying a Hügelkultur style guerrilla grow , but instead of building a large raised bed - I’ll experiment with it in reverse
You’ve got my attention on that one as well LOL. I really ought to put a picture of this in my tips on growing in wet and humid climate thread. This is the type of stuff I’ve been using on site for 2 9 years. As my back has gotten worse, the amount of on-site material I’ve used has gotten greater. I don’t know if you have beavers in your area but the work is already done if you do.
I’m glad you brought that up. I’ve been wanting to research it but couldn’t remember the name. I’ve never done this exclusively, as I’ve always addedin my own nutrients. I would love to get to the point where I have to bring little or nothing in
I think @lotus710 is M.I.A.
Was wondering about that… that knf thread was started a long time ago.
10 to 1 milk to rice water AFTER the rice water has sat 2-7 days and is teeming with LABs (it’ll have a slight sour smell), the it gets added to the milk and left for another few days.
Here’s a good guide:
https://blog.bolandbol.com/2017/04/24/more-knf-introducing-the-fabulous-lab-lactic-aid-bacteria/
I’ve been using labs for a couple weeks now after a few people recommended it for eradicating powdery mildew. So far I’ve been watering it in and foliar spraying it once a week, what’s the reapplication schedule generally like?
@beacher nailed it.
Thanks @ beacher. I’m making some now. Seems easy enough. I have everything laying around. have you noticed any Improvement using that as a spray regarding the powdery mildew?
Well I was spraying with potassium bicarbonate regularly before LABs, and the PM would usually show up in 8-10 days again, I’ve been hitting the labs every 7 days and not a speck so far!
I’m really tempted to leave them longer and see if it shows up again, it’s hard to find info on application schedules and how long the LABs itself will thrive on leaf surfaces.
I would be tempted to leave it as well and see how well it worked, but you’ve had this problem for so long maybe you should just double dose it to be safe???
This is rotted wood from four different logs. Does anyone know if the different colors mean anything? I honestly don’t know what type of wood it all was, but most likely Birch or hemlock/ fir. Except for the dark one. That was from a silver maple or what some might call a swamp maple . Looks like possibly four different types of mycelium were eating the wood? I don’t think it was four different types of trees? Now what do I do with this? Should I be adding this in together for its own compost, should I be adding it into my compost pile? Thanks for any help guys! It’s not everyday that everything learned in a day is completely new to you after growing for almost 30 years. This is fun stuff!
I’d just add it to any bed or potting mix ,you probably have good fungal colonies already adding it to compost that’s cooking more than likely would kill them off . You can use it as starter for already finished compost.
Just different rates of decomposition would be my guess I just got done raking off 4-6 inches of just mulched leaves from last fall off my garden boxes I was surprised how much chocolate looking compost was underneath it’s all going on my front flower beds that have a nice layer of wood chips from several years back that’s decomposing nicely . Just dumped some ash from a burn yesterday with last years grasses and vines that was cleaned up .
What do you mean use as a starter for last years compost. Do you mean as a fungal inoculant at planting time like mycorrizae? Just a handful or two? Is there a rate of decomposition which is better? For example the more rotted or the least rotted material?