Soil Food Web Gardening with Compost Teas

blueJ said:

Anyone using CAPS bennies? I've been meaning to order them, but my ebay account is jacked up....

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I have used Caps bennies, I use 1 tablespoon per 20 gal and it works great.

Any thing i need to add to my veg brew?

1c/g EWC
2c/g Alaska Humisoil
1 tbsp/g blackstrap molasses

Was a wonderful brew last run, just want to give my tga gear the utmost love!!

Just ordered the CAPS bennies, looking forward to their arrival Also ordered some beneficial nematodes to help keep the dang knats in check

Trichmasta, i add alfalfa meal, ladies lovin' it! i use a 1/2 cup per 5 gallon, but as mentioned above, i do notice they get very dark green lol, I will go down to 1/4 cup and stop by the 4th week in flower.

Thanks blue j!! Gonna give that a try and see what the ladies think

Trichmasta you should also consider adding in a liquid kelp. I use about 1 TBL/gallon. It will mainly give the all important micros that all enzymes are built around. Bacteria will function without producing all their enzymes if the micros are not there to build em with. Kelp is also packed with hormones, growth regulators, and macro nutients. Micros can also be found in soft rock P, glacial rock dust, and ocean/himalayan salt. Make sure they're all available to the herd especially if said meals/dusts/micros are not present in your soil mix.

BlueJ do you ever get tons more slime coating everything in the bucket with alfalfa vs without? I can't figure out if its from using glacial rock dust (more micros for the B/A slime to build itself faster?) or if the alfalfa feeds the B/A better causing more slime, or if the alfalfa micro particles just get caught on the B/A layer. I just worry about my brew getting anaerobic with slime on everything thats submerged. pH is good tho (7ish after 36-48 hours) so maybe I'm stressing for no reason.

Thanks for the tip Kalyx...any particular one you're rocking and liking??

I use the Organa Add as my micro...potent stuff-1-2/5 gal

I like concentrated high quality kelps like technafloras soluble seaweed 1-1-16 (1/8 tsp/gal, dry powder), thrive alive green (1-2ml/L), or GH's Floralicious Plus (1ml/GAL!, it also has humic acid, plant protein hydrolysate AND FPEs; good stuff and lasts forever). The concentrated kelps will cost more per volume but make sense because they are high quality and last a long time. I am currently working thru a bottle of Roots Extreme Serene. I use it at 5ml/gal for direct watering in, and at 15ml/gal in my AACT. I also have and am using Floralicious Plus directly watered in as an additive in veg, then switch to bioboost as my main bloom additive and eliminate most of the kelp except for the techniflora soluble seaweed as part of my KP boost in weeks 3 and 5. Hope this kelps! hehe.

I have both the soluble seaweed thrive alive, so that makes it supa easy to experiment!! Gotta brew going right now-perfect timing!!

Kalyx said:

BlueJ do you ever get tons more slime coating everything in the bucket with alfalfa vs without? I can't figure out if its from using glacial rock dust (more micros for the B/A slime to build itself faster?) or if the alfalfa feeds the B/A better causing more slime, or if the alfalfa micro particles just get caught on the B/A layer. I just worry about my brew getting anaerobic with slime on everything thats submerged. pH is good tho (7ish after 36-48 hours) so maybe I'm stressing for no reason.

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Ya know what, i do think the alfalfa leaves its own unique slime buildup on my stones and sides of the buckets. I also notice when i use EWC vs. compost i get a chunky brown slime buildup and lots of it lol. I alternate buckets so they dry out each time and pull the stones out to clean in the sink once a week (i try to lol) and i never bubble the same brew for more than 24 hours, i get great foamage by 12hrs and this whole process helps to keep the slime buildup to a minimum. The slime is anaerobic and will always be there on the sides/bottoms/stones etc. but isn't bad as long as we're getting healthy frothy sweet smelling tea. If you don't clean and let the slime build up ontop of itself you'll notice unfrothy teas, i've noticed it and thats when i decided that keeping things clean is a very important step to not skip

Alfalfa is some awesome good stuff. I notice with a good strong tea of it, all the leaves lift up and point skyward (more so than they normally do after a good compost tea), i love it.

I found an awesome site, i think rose mountain organics, they sell bulk dried or powdered of just about everything you can imagine. I'm going to order nettle, comfrey and a couple others to experiment with.

I know exactly what you mean by a very happy plants leaves reaching to the light. I love to see my crops do this. I have noticed it from foliar spraying certain brands of kelp too (Extreme Serene does it, I think they may preserve certain compounds or concentrations of them that the other processes do not?) Thanks for the motivation to keep things clean in the AACT process. I have read that it is key but am guilty of slacking on this one. I have used the same piece of pantyhose for who knows how long now! Good stuff experimenting with other inputs! Keep on innovating BlueJ, and of course keep us posted (I know you will!).

I been using only ewc, molasses and/or earthjuice's catalyst, and about 5-10mil per gal of liquid karma or any other kelp.

My fungi (slime) builds up real fast with the catalyst but not as fast or as much with just molasses. My guess would be that the catalyst has more "fungi food" in it. an molasses is just an all around carb.

As long as you KNOW its aerobic then you wont go wrong. i have used teas for well over a week , so i am convicted of abusing the teas , but like i said as long as you know its aerobic then you can go 2 or 3 days. (2 is best in my opinion)


soil

recently i brewed an fpe/ compost tea with just bermuda grass and water. let it sit for 3 days. after the first day it smelled sooooooooooo bad i couldn't believe it. i'd rather smell a rotting carcass, that bad! so i wasn't brave enough to pour it on my vegetable garden and just dumped it on the lawn in a designated spot. it has not grown or died yet so idk.

when i thinned my med garden i figured i would save the clippings and try the same thing, just leaves covered with r/o water. but its been 8 days now and the shit smells like i could drink it. how come the weed tea doesn't stink? should i just toss it in the compost pile?

...look what happens when you feed the microbes ...a 15' tomato plant that out grew the 12' trellis.

....here's a little more organic goodness

sweet potatoes


melon patch

GREAT stuff Fiend! Really great! Thanks for sharing the pics.

I think your work inspires others, and what a great thing that is.

thankx bro!

Nice Melons! AACT for the win. I dream of someday having that much space for veggies, thanks for sharing the pics. Grow big or grow home lol. Are those marketmore cukes? I have 2 and they are like no other cukes I've ever grown in appearance, huge flowers tho. Keep up the good work TF.

...hey thankx Kalyx!
...those are cantaloupe, I have a couple different kinds of cantaloupe and several kinds of watermelon....one type of pumpkin.

TF I was asking about the squash that is bigger than the gatorade bottle. What type of squash is it? It looks great, only the early done squash look that good around here because the squash bugs set in and decimate right around this time of year... So i got some 'marketmore cukes' im wondering were mislabeled squash seedlings, they look just like the leaves/stem/vine in the gatorade bottle pic.

Hello TF,
I jumped over here from Al B's page. Nice pics that you posted there. Do you have another journal that shows your setup ? What is the spacing on those plants in that second pic ? Thanks.