DonTesla
Well-Known Member
It will only be detrimental if you allow your medium to over dry and kill all your beneficial bacteria / microbes, and have no top dress / protective mulch game planned. 15 gal is a decently darn good size to buffer the medium from drying out too much. 20 or 25 would be better but 15 is much better than 5 or 7.
Seedlings probably shouldn't go into 15 gal containers from the get go, but thats ok, if the environment is dialled in and has full spectrum, it will get going quite quickly, but the more gas exchanges and moist cycles the more often the better, so over watering becomes the danger is all, and therefore lockouts and stunted growth. Its "nailable" but trickier, same time. Although letting beer cups not dry out can be a challenge in a hot climate when plant count is high, too, so to each their own here.
You said 1/4 per gallon of water of coco, 1/4 tsp, 1/4 TBSP, or 1/4 Cup, or 1/4 Litre, bud?
I like coco nut water over SST's and teas, myself, they are clean, simpler, and I also enjoy coconut myself, whereas I dont like to drink SST's but I only use 1 TBSP per gallon, or so, (of pure young coco water)
and no more than once a month.
Less is more, here.
Another chitin boost is insect frass, that is the easiest way to get SST results without brewing soaking rinsing a thing. Staggering number of spores per gram as well.
Also, you can aerate anything with or without a $10 pump from Walmart...simply by stirring 100x each way each day which only takes 1 minute really. IF you did 24 hour brews you would only have to store once or twice really. 36 hour brew, 3 times or so, aka 300x2 manual stirs. 3 minutes total exercise.
However, with that said, I agree with RR et al, that teas are unnecessary and un-ideal, especially if using your own fresh live castings and not being cheap with kelp and neem, and if you have strong fungal/ microbe populations, to begin with.
For me, I would say, if you are growing the herbs to smoke yourself, just watch how much you topdressing with EWC.. commercial or otherwise. I think its best to keep the total volume of castings to under 20%, with 15% being my personal ideal and goal for my own medicine...better burn and better flavour.
As for alfalfa meal, I would only use alfalfa seed sprout tea (vs alfafa meal or pellets etc) during stretch if you do not have COBs to drop down in heights and counter the stretch, yes it may have TRIA hormone but some experimenters believe it can up your leafage too, so it makes for a longer trim and more labour.. I now prefer to keep the calyx to leaf ratio as high as possible and omit the Alf. meal from the soil mix itself.
Your aloe regime looks on point, though, and your labs (lacto bacillus serum) is a good idea too.. it could be used twice daily or once a week, anywhere in there.. more often if you have pests and no other controlling agents to work into your pest management regime.
Just to give you some more viewpoints to ponder. Hope this helps a bit.
DT
