I’m gathering a list of supplies to make a microbe tea for foliar and soil application to increase disease and pest resistance. I’ve got a few questions though to get the recipe and application process down pat. If I’m brewing microbe tea with worm castings, kelp, and fish hydrolysate is it safe to spray without diluting? If not what is the recommended dilution rate?
I’m planning to brew in a 5 gallon bucket with a 400 mesh brew bag for a small indoor garden. I’ve got a high powered aquarium pump that will go in the bottom of the bucket to prevent heavy particles from settling and 4 air stones to keep it oxygenated.
So far I’ve got kelp meal, fish hydrolysate, worm castings, and compost in my cart. Are these safe ingrdients to use for foliar application without burning the leaves or should I keep it basic using only EWC and fish hydrolysate? I’m on the fence about blackstrap molasses because from my understanding the microbes will use the fish hydrolysate as a food source and the BM is not needed. As you can see I’m a little overwhelmed with information at the moment.
Any help the tea guru’s can toss my way is much appreciated.
4 gallons of water
Quality ewc
Few tablespoons molasses
Few tablespoons of fish hydrolysate
If using during flower add 1/4 cup oat flour for more fungal dominant
12-24 hours for more bacterial
48-72 hours more fungal
If you want to increase disease and pest resistance, I would add insect frass to your tea. It’s hard to burn with a tea but it is possible especially with with a bunch of kelp, guanos and fish products. A good rule of thumb is less is more and to keep it simple.
I’ve been looking at a recipe similar to this without the molasses. From what I’ve read molasses is food for bacterial growth and humic acid or fish emulsion is food for fungal growth. My goal is to make a fungi rich tea with kelp as a growth stimulator that I can apply to the leaves and roots.
I see someone has been reading Teaming With Microbes
I do plan to add some compost, oats, and moisture into an airtight container stored in darkness for 3-5 days to jump start the fungal population as Jeff Lowenfels discusses in TWM. Once it has a nice layer of fuzz on top I’ll add that to the tea bag.
So far I’ve got the following in my cart:
5# Down to earth kelp meal
Neptune harvest fish emulsion 36oz
Sorry. OG won’t let me post more than 2 links. You can find it on amazon for about $25.
30# Worm castings
And I’m thinking about buying this metal container to hang on the inside of the bucket with the kelp meal and worm castings. It’s 400 micron so it’s perfect for compost / microbe tea. Not sure if I wanna shell out $45 for it yet though.
My cart total is $80 without the bags so if I add a cheap 2 pack of 400 micron filter bags I’ll be a shade under $95 with everything. I’m pulling the trigger tonight and plan to brew my first batch on Wednesday to use on Thursday after a 24 hour brew. Going longer makes me worry a bit about it going anaerobic and losing the batch. I’ll try out a 24 hour brew then I’ll try 48 hours on the 2nd brew.
I’ll look into adding insect frass. I’m a huge fan of “less is more.” Too often people assume more is better.
"It’s hard to burn with a tea but it is possible especially with with a bunch of kelp, guanos and fish products."
For my fungal tea I’ll be using kelp meal rather than concentrated liquid kelp which I’m hoping will provide a gentle yet effective amount of growth stimulation. I’ll be using the fish emulsion in a very minimal amount to feed the fungal microbes. You’re on point about the guano and fish inputs though. They can easily fry healthy plants in one application if used incorrectly.
Read this: http://www.microbeorganics.com/ and never look back. Adding a bunch of shit to your compost teas can actually be detrimental to the life in said tea.
Four gallons of clean water, 1.5 cups of compost/EWC and 1/3 cup of molasses is all you need. Make sure you have a proper brewer (little aquarium air stones won’t cut it). Brew for thirty hours, then water. No need to dilute it, even if you’re gonna foliar with it.
That’s a great website. I just bookmarked it and plan to use it as my reference. I like your style using a simple recipe like that and I want it to be safe to spray allover the plants. My hope is that the beneficial microbes will strengthen the overall health of the plant so they can more effectively fight off pests. That’s my hope anyways.
I think you’re right about keeping my first tea simple. If I damaged my plants I’d be devastated. I’m pulling the trigger on the 30# bag of EWC, 400 mesh brew bags, and the neptune harvest organic cold pressed fish. I’ll follow your recommendation though and start with the basics before I start adding more input material. EWC & Molasses.
What’s your $.02 on putting the materials into a mesh bag versus free floating with a paint strainer wrapped around the airstones and water pump? These brew bags seem expensive for what they are. I also saw a 400 micron mesh 5 gallon bucket insert that I could put in another 5 gallon bucket then pour the brewed juice through it. I’ve got my amazon cart on standby. Need expert advice
Update: I wound up ordering these 400 micron honey sieves for $12.99/2pack. I plan to wrap my 200 micron paint strainer around my 300gph water pump with 2 airstones in the brew bucket so the pump and stones don’t get covered in sediment. Once the brew is done I’ll place the 400 micron strainer in another 5 gallon bucket, pour the sediment filled tea into this bucket, then pull the bag and all the debris out. Done and done. No buying endless cheap mesh bags.
BTW, have you gotten into any of Paul Stamets’ work?
I recommend that everybody read Mycelium Running. Stamets is one of those people who discovered what he was put on earth to do, and does it passionately.
And his mushroom hat is literally the coolest.
It’s not my style, dude haha. It’s the “style” that I learned about from reading that website. And from years of making compost teas with only those two ingredients and watching the plants explode after watering with it.
What difference does it make if it’s your first tea or your five-thousandth? A good compost tea is a good compost tea, no matter how many times you’ve brewed one haha.
Four gallons of water, 1.5 cups of compost/EWC and 1/3 cup of molasses, dude. I really can’t emphasize enough that that’s all you need.
Compost teas are not “nutrient teas.” They’re two totally different things, used for completely different reasons.
I don’t use them. I just fill a five-gallon bucket with four gallons of water, 1.5 cups of compost/EWC and 1/3 cup of molasses. That’s my mantra haha.
Seriously, though, that’s all I use. No mesh bags or anything.
I took some 48 hours “before/after” shots of some plants I watered with a compost tea, but I can’t remember now which grow log it was haha. I’ll see if I can find it (maybe not tonight haha) and post those pics here. The difference is striking. Plants exploded.
The thing you need to really keep in mind with compost teas is that it’s not something you dump into your soil every week or whatever (they’re not nutrient teas! haha). Once in veg and once early on in flower (the first week or so) is enough.
Sure, yeah, I eat shrooms every now and then haha, why do you ask?
I don’t watch lectures or listen to podcasts and whatever, simply because you can’t listen to music and watch a lecture/listen to a podcast at the same time (priority number one for me is always listening to music). You can, however, read as much as you want with music in the background (or loud as fuck haha), so that’s what I do. I’ve read a couple of Paul Stamets’ books; I like him. He’s also one of maybe twenty people I follow on IG.
I’m aware of him. But I don’t feel like I need his “guidance” or whatever to act like a decent human being haha. His observations regarding fungi are, obviously, very interesting and I make a note of all of them, but I feel fairly comfortable with where I’m at as far as humanity is concerned haha…
I’d say he’s a contributor to the natural cause.
He’s an advocate for nature… yeah that benefits humans, but that’s because humans have been shitty to the natural order and fucked it all up… if we move toward regenerating nature, of course it benefits humans, but only humans would think that’s the reason to do it, and forget that we’re the reason it has to be done
It’s been downhill since the discovery of petroleum. I use to work in an oil change shop and we’d do 30-40 cars per day. The amount of environmental waste produced on a single day at a single oil change shop was incredible. We produced an immense amount of dirty waste oil, empty plastic bottles with oil residue coating the inside, paper towels to wipe up used oil, and the used oil filters. When oil spilled on the floor we’d soak it up with paper towels, throw those in the trash, then scrub the floors at the end of the day pushing all of that contaminated water right down the sewer drain. And there are probably 100,000 facilities that change oil throughout the country on a daily basis.
Paul Stamets did an experiment where he inoculated a pile of dirt contaminated with petroleum products with mycelium spores. The results were monumental. The spores ate the petroleum products and brought life to the contaminated pile of dirt. He shows the before and after pictures and it’s pretty cool. If anyone wants to see the experiment he discusses it in the video above. Fungi can save the planet.
The discovery of Penicillin came from fungi. How many lives has it saved over the years?
Penicillium is a genus of ascomycetous fungi that is part of the mycobiome of many species and is of major importance in the natural environment, in food spoilage, and in food and drug production.
Some members of the genus produce penicillin, a molecule that is used as an antibiotic, which kills or stops the growth of certain kinds of bacteria.
