Yea lots of great info in here. Thanks Stow.
Hey, I want to revisit that AACT discussion and clarify things a bit without the bickering. When making a compost tea, we need to keep in mind what the goal is. We are trying to multiply, and extract the microbes that are present in the compost/vermicompost that is being used for the tea. To do this we only need two things (aside from the mechanisms used to brew the AACT): A *quality* source of compost, and a food stock(s). Rrog knows Microbeman (Tim) on a personal level, and will vouch for what I'm saying here .... which is essentially just echoing Tim's words. Molasses is all that's needed to brew an effective ACT. You can use other items if you wish, but keep in mind that these items are not intended to "feed" the plant, but instead they are used/added as a food source for the microbes during their short multiplication cycle. With that said, any food stock that is added should further your goal of microbial multiplication, otherwise it is counter productive. IMO, without a microscope and lots of time to test each food stock individually and use a microscope to verify that this particular item is effectively multiplying bacteria and/or fungi, then you're throwing mud at a wall .... and could actually be hindering the process as some ingredients (ie humic acid) actually suppress this process.
If you have brewed a good compost tea, adding this to your medium will speed up the process of breaking down, and making bio available the organic ingredients that you have already added to your soil by virtue of increasing the microbial population in your container by millions (or billions). I like to inoculate my soil by wetting it down with a compost tea while it's "cooking" for the 6-8 week period. I will use one or two more during veg and early flower, but that's it for me. I have to believe at a certain point there will be plenty of micro-life in my containers doing their thing and adding more is really unnecessary. If you are starting out with a good source of compost as part of your base soil, then it could be argued that compost teas are really not needed at all as your medium is already loaded with an abundance of beneficial microbes.
So, imo, there is nothing wrong with experimenting with different ingredients .... just keep in mind what the intended purpose of an ACT is and try your best not to add stuff that will work against you. Tim has already done a lot of this work for us, and has some good recipes on his website that you can assume have been well vetted.
Happy brewing!
