Frass - The Next Best Thing in Organic Growing? We'll See...

i haven't done a control study with this so i can't say its not worth the investment. Since my organic grow started i've had zero issues with pests except for those darn knats that come from the soil. I think the frass was supposed to kill these but i just use those sticky yellow sheets to take care of that. My plants have been very healthy and i'll continue to use it. This is my first indoor and organic grow and i'm pretty fortunate not to have problems with pests like spider mites...i took extra precaution and used a mushroom fan filter to filter out the dust and bugs and it works great.

Anyways its supposedly makes a great fungal tea but i'd rather do the root drench and premix my soil with it...i hate making AACT with any poop (frass or guano)...its disgusting to me

how is it in aact?

malignant said:

how is it in aact?

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AACT is an acronym for Active Aerated Compost Tea. I brew my teas with Earthworm Castings, liquid kelp; liquid humic acid and molasses. Alot of people brew theirs with guanos but bubbling bat or insect poop is too disgusting for me....i'd rather do soil drenches than bubble that stuff for 48hrs...it doens't produce a pleasant sent. Without the guano, teas with the earthworm poop have a very sweet, earthy smell - something i can handle.

i like to bubble the nasty shit too, more beni's...

I dumped a whole 2# bag of insect frass into a whole mound of super soil just yesterday during remix. It'll be ready next weekend. Oh man I've been this excited in a long time.

elduece said:

I dumped a whole 2# bag of insect frass into a whole mound of super soil just yesterday during remix. It'll be ready next weekend. Oh man I've been this excited in a long time.

Click to expand...

Are you using the new supersoil recipe, I've only sceen the utube vid of the mix?

I use frass in my teas and it makes everything even more frothy..good surface for the bennies to multiply

2lb bag 16.00 usd wholesale to retailers, 26.49 usd retail price. i see the benefit, just not the expense. aact seems just as good a solution and much less expensive.

i'm pretty new to this organic thing so i didn't even realize that "frass" is bug shit specifically from bugs that are herbivores. i've been looking into some stuff called kricket krap which is basically cricket shit (omnivorous insects), but the company is in georgia and they don't ship (which is absurd considering the demand i've seen for the stuff in certain circles). i've been trying to acquire it for a while and the price of it is way less than the insect frass. at my local shop it's 26 bucks for a 2 pound bag of the frass and the kricket krap is 4 bucks for a 4 pound bag.

so basically i'm wondering if this is the typical grow store outrageous overpricing, or if there is something special about this particular insect poop that i can't get from other insect poops. the npk is a bit different (kricket krap is 3-2-1) and crickets are omnivorous. beyond those differences i can't understand why the frass stuff would be so expensive.

Probably because this insect frass is bit more vegan or maybe not...raising insects for their poop on a large scale can't be so simple.

This is great. I saw this recently at my local shop and thought it would be a great ammendment/addition to my soil and teas. Glad more have picked up on this. I will be picking up a bag this week.

in response to my own question i wondered about earlier, there are no "other insect poops" available besides the kricket krap. all the buzz on google is pretty recent so it appears the frass product hasn't been around for long. apparently it's quite a task to farm raise insects and collect their turds, so i guess that's where the expense comes in, and considering there is zero competition from other brands they have no incentive to lower the price.

i'm going to have to give this stuff a whirl. there's no alternative on the market that i can get around here and i've been wanting to try insect poop for some time.

just one more thing: does it smell? and if so, does the smell go away at some point? i have some chickety doo doo and i can't bear to use it indoors any more. the fish fertilizer is as much stench as i can bear, and at least that goes away.

Frass isn't odorless, but it doesn't have a bad smell. Not like animal frass, lol.

no smell but i would recommend wearing a facial mask anyway to avoid breathing it in.

agreed with dante, this stuff is like fine saw dust, and any movement of the open bag sends a cloud in the air. I wear a face mask whenever i handle frass and dry guano's.

Hey kids, you have heard of chitins from tiny sea crustaceans right? They create an immune response. They will push pineborers right out of a pine tree with it's own sap.
Manufacturers use chemicals to break down the shells of these tiny sea critters to make the chitin available in grow products. Well insects have chitins in their carcasses too but they are easily broken down without toxic chemicals, more bioavailable I guess they call it. So I have been using it.
So back to the grow room, where I'm crawling cleaning out little suckers and I am just about stuck to these plants and the blooms are about three weeks in. whoa. Can you say resin production? I use advanced and bud factor x but I'm teliing you if this ain't the best resin production I'll eat my suckers. (mm steamed greens)

Frass is a great way to boost the diversity in your supersoil mix. Crushed organic eggshells would be perfect for a source of calcium carbonate without much mag.

I got a sample pack for free.

It rocks in ACT.

This is my grow using insect frass only! Fox Farms, Insect Frass, Air Pots, Tap Water, 600hps
all I can say is this stuff works, i am harvesting 12 days early and had no issues throughout the grow
i will do it again and again.

Hmm... It's always interesting to see peoples money making ideas...

I bet that is nothing more than cricket shit from a reptile food supplier. I used to have a chameleon who munched crickets, and they are shitting machines!

I've definitely heard of Insect Frass being used as an amendment. Should work great!