Dry amendments in tea

Adding dry amendments to worm tea like Gaia green flower nutrients .... will it work better then top dressing or make the tea better ?

crownroyal said:

Adding dry amendments to worm tea like Gaia green flower nutrients .... will it work better then top dressing or make the tea better ?

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There's a lot of people around here that have me sold on just adding the dry amendments as a top dress instead of making a tea out of them. I have used things like alfalfa and kelp in a standard ewc/molasses tea before, but it's been a long time since I brewed any sort of tea to be honest. The last couple I did brew were as basic as I could make them though, just ewc and molasses.

My thought, from reading around here a lot, is that adding them as a topdress will give you a more natural release of the nutrients while also providing a longer lasting food source for all the good soil life to stay active and thriving instead of force feeding what becomes available to the plant in that 24-36 hour brew. Making a tea is somewhat a shot in the dark as there is no way to really quantify what we are actually brewing up and every tea will result in something very different depending upon the compost source (I would even venture to guess that each scoop from the same compost source will produce vastly different results on the microbial level if we could analyze it). I also read that kelp specifically can hinder the reproduction of the microbes initially in a brewed tea. I read through microbeman's write up on his site and found it as a good guide with lots on info when I was making teas.

All that said, I don't think that brewing teas are detrimental or a bad thing to do by any means. I think teas, whether brewed or just a simple nutrient tea (just dry amendments added to water to soak for a day or two with a few stirs everyday) have their place, but aren't necessary for a successful grow. I'm learning in my current grow that having the plants in the largest container possible for the situation helps alleviate a lot of "secondary feeding" needs.

Sorry for the long rant, but just my take on teas in general. I'm no source of expertise on any of it though and for what it's worth my plants, weed along with all sorts of garden plants at the time, seemed to enjoy and pray when the tea was applied. I may start playing around with teas again this summer, but will most likely only use them on some outdoor veggies/garden plants since that soil will be freshly made using some store bought compost instead of fresh ewc/compost that I used on the soils I have indoors which have gone through tons of different cycles over a couple years.

It depends!

I use Worm Tea mostly for microbes, not to provide nutrients to the plants. Years ago some guys (maybe Microbe Man?) said that too many amendments in your work tea would harm/limit your microbe population. So based on that old info, No, extra dry amendments won't make Worm Tea "better."

You can also make Nutrient Tea to provide nutrients. You can use all kinds of stuff like guano, kelp, all in ones like gia green, whatever. Adding worm castings to the nutrient tea definitely makes it better. Maybe the nutrients become more available? But supposedly heavily amended nutrient teas with EWC only have like 1/3 the microbes of lightly amended Worm Tea. Typing this out, it seems kind of ridiculous. "The Rev" uses teas like this in his True Living Organics approach.

Teas and top dressing both work pretty well. Teas work faster (sometime overnight) but are used up faster too. Top dressing takes longer to take effect (maybe a week) but continues to feed gradually for longer than tea.

Tea is more of a process to make than top dressing, so top dressing is good for a small plant count. But it's easier to feed a whole bunch of plants with tea than to top dress many plants.

What brewing certain amendments in a tea does is begin decomposition before it hits the soil. Whatever npk value is in whatever you added will become available faster. Top dressing is slower release but that’s exactly what you want sometimes.

youraveragehorticulturist said:

It depends!

I use Worm Tea mostly for microbes, not to provide nutrients to the plants. Years ago some guys (maybe Microbe Man?) said that too many amendments in your work tea would harm/limit your microbe population. So based on that old info, No, extra dry amendments won't make Worm Tea "better."

You can also make Nutrient Tea to provide nutrients. You can use all kinds of stuff like guano, kelp, all in ones like gia green, whatever. Adding worm castings to the nutrient tea definitely makes it better. Maybe the nutrients become more available? But supposedly heavily amended nutrient teas with EWC only have like 1/3 the microbes of lightly amended Worm Tea. Typing this out, it seems kind of ridiculous. "The Rev" uses teas like this in his True Living Organics approach.

Teas and top dressing both work pretty well. Teas work faster (sometime overnight) but are used up faster too. Top dressing takes longer to take effect (maybe a week) but continues to feed gradually for longer than tea.

Tea is more of a process to make than top dressing, so top dressing is good for a small plant count. But it's easier to feed a whole bunch of plants with tea than to top dress many plants.

Click to expand...

Yep the Revs tea recipes contain a ridiculous amount of stuff in them. I have spent time brewing more than a few of these concoctions and notice very little difference between a tea with 20 ingredients or a simple ewc, kelp, and molasses recipe. Keep it simple; amend the soil after each run, top dress as needed, and then maintain it with the occasional aact.