Still wasting money on bottled/packaged teas? Here's a simple DIY compost tea bucket

ugmjfarmer said:

I spent a few more bones on mine. I use two 12" eco-plus flexible air diffusers coiled in the bottom of the 5gal bucket, two 4" eco plus air stones, one for the bottom, one for the bag, and I use a 390GPH Air pump. the more air you have, the more microbes you can make.

Click to expand...

this is not tru. at all. Some people will even go as far to say. all that moving and turbulence can kill microbes. DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE.

That's how I feel as well. It sensible to me that aerating the tea would increase the bio. We (human beings) live, breathe, and multiply using air as well. But if you throw us in a fucking tornado we aren't going to do so well lol.

I have no idea though what the "ideal" GPH would be, but 390 seems high. I'm not sure what mine puts out, but I turn it down so that the water is just barely bubbling over the stones.

390 is way too high. In growing bigger is NOT always better. And yes Sometimes less is more. Why use 390gph if you only bubble 5-10. over the course of 48 hours.

Indeed, we are always talking about "pushing" our plants instead of "coaxing" them. Whatever happen to singing to your plants to make them grow big lol. Now we have to make teas out of fucking bird poop to make our plants produce big buds? I'm not buying it lol. I don't give my kid growth "boosters" to make him big and strong, I give him the nutrition his body needs and I trust his body to grow the way it's supposed to. Our plants can be treated the same.

I bought another worm-composter 360 and started a high PK compost. Mostly lemon and orange peels, sweet potato peels, cucumber peels, banana peels...anything that's high in P or K that we eat get's composted separately. I've already got a bunch of high N compost. I'm planting 6 Blue Dream clones and 2 Strawberry Coughs into soil by this weekend and starting a grow journal. I plant to veg for 5 weeks using compost as my primary N source, and then flower using compost as my PK.

+ WitchDoctor + said:

So you don't feel like too much air from the air pump could destroy the microbes you are trying to create? I've been under the assumptions that there's a certain amount of pumped air that is probably more beneficial, but I would have no idea what amount of air that would be. I actually have a dual pump on one bucket so I turn it down halfway...so do you think I should let it go full blast?

Click to expand...

You need a minimum 0.05 CFM per gallon but 0.08 CFM/gal and higher is optimum. Some of the best information I have ever read on the subject is at http://www.microbeorganics.com/ The air pump the person specified in the initial post is good for about a gallon of compost tea because it only moves 1660 CC's or 0.58 CFM.

I misquoted my specs on my pump. Indeed it could possibly be overkill for all about except 16-25 gallons. I am using a sunleaves 18w 600gph durapump, which moves exactly 1.33 CFM. Not out of spec. 4 of the OP's pump size would do 4 gallons though. I spent about the same on this one pump. Just wanted to make sure you knew that the spec'd pump was not enough for the full brew size.

Thanks for your concern, I'll have to look into that some more. I think the large surface area of all the wands is helping in my case. Also, the brass fitting and the 4-port diffuser are further reducing my air flow over 20%. Pushing all that air into the compost bag would be bad news apparently. You do know that all standard rules apply for air flow, and bends further reduce flow as well as small diameter piping ect. Anything you applied to designing your growroom exhausts apply to air pump tubing. I'm confident my pump is not TOO overkill.

Ahh ok. Yea I only make a gallon of tea at a time, so I thought the pump I was using was about perfect. And I have actually never thought about the airflow losing cfm in the tubing, good point. Your compost tea set-up sounds nice, do you sell compost tea? I've been trying to give some to people for free just be all nice and earth friendly lol, and most people don't even want it...

I'm just doing small batches right now for a medical grow. I really need a good source of local compost.. this is always the limiting factor. I'd give away my excess for free, that would be great. Problem is.. the grow shops do the same thing. Not sure I trust theirs, I like to source my own feeds instead of having a shop pour bottles of their shelf stock into a vortex brewer. I love making the cupful of compost and goodies and typically I just dump it all in the bucket no filter and use the two flexible wands. I stir it up once in a while. I'm just getting started in organics right now.. this is tons of fun!

i just moved to michigan..i can walk to the woods with old growth trees...so would i just garbage bag the leaves and dirt from the forest floor? and bring home and what else would need to be added to make tea? i have an aquarium pump and airstones and buckets around the house...still not clear on what else goes into the tea

ugmjfarmer said:

I'm just doing small batches right now for a medical grow. I really need a good source of local compost.. this is always the limiting factor. I'd give away my excess for free, that would be great. Problem is.. the grow shops do the same thing. Not sure I trust theirs, I like to source my own feeds instead of having a shop pour bottles of their shelf stock into a vortex brewer. I love making the cupful of compost and goodies and typically I just dump it all in the bucket no filter and use the two flexible wands. I stir it up once in a while. I'm just getting started in organics right now.. this is tons of fun!

Click to expand...

Make your own worm-compost man, it's super easy. You just throw your food and veg scraps in the bin and the worms do all the work. If you're getting into organics you'll probably find it a lot of fun. I through a post up in the organics section listing all the NPK values for food scraps and organic materials that can be composted. Check it out. The idea is that the resulting compost (castings) that the worms leave you still retains most of the NPK values and goes to your plants. You can't buy anything like it in the stores man...it's crazy. And it's saving me SOOO much fucking money on nutrients.

And yea, the teas the make in the vortex brewers at the hydro stores with bottled stuff are good for the roots and stuff, but it doesn't feed the plant at all. I get the free ones from HTG just because they're free though lol. I'm gonna go up there next week and have them show me how the vortex brewer works so that I can figure out how to make my own.

Corso312 said:

i just moved to michigan..i can walk to the woods with old growth trees...so would i just garbage bag the leaves and dirt from the forest floor? and bring home and what else would need to be added to make tea? i have an aquarium pump and airstones and buckets around the house...still not clear on what else goes into the tea

Click to expand...

Hi Corso welcome to MI Yea that's about it. I would stay away from the dry leaves though and go for the composted ones underneath and the soil under those. And I would use a 5 gallon bucket with a sealable lid, or some kind of sealable container.

And yep, that's all you need for the bucket. As for what else goes into the tea, here's my recipe. There is a sticky in the organics section as well with lots of tea recipes.

• Right now I'm doing:
  1 gal rain water
  1 cup worm compost
  1/2 cup Alaskan Forest Humus
  1/2 cup worm castings
  1/4 cup Alfalfa
  1/4 cup Humic acid
  1 TBSP of Organic Unsulphered Molasses or Agave Syrup
  
  Bubble with airstones for 24-48 hours.
  
  Then I pour through a 400 micron bag into my res.​

  
  
  ​

o.k. thanks man.... me and the 2 dogs love it here already...no traffic or red light cameras, no cameras period ....the ground is soft and sandy by me with a decent amount of worms..but almost looks too sandy if ya know what i mean? i read the whole thread and ...after 24-48 hours you pour through the bag and dilute to 15 -20 gallons of water?

thanks doctor...loving it here already and so are my 2 dogs.... no traffic..no cameras on every corner and every intersection....never seen a turkey before i moved here.. they are fucking huge....dogs almost got a couple so far..hard to believe those fat fucks can fly.....but i been fishing two times already and got skunked both times


where do you buy worm compost if you do not have a worm farm? i assume you get alaskan humus at grow store? and alfalfa also?...the soil here is real soft and nice with worms in it but seems almost too sandy if ya know what i mean?

Corso312 said:

thanks doctor...loving it here already and so are my 2 dogs.... no traffic..no cameras on every corner and every intersection....never seen a turkey before i moved here.. they are fucking huge....dogs almost got a couple so far..hard to believe those fat fucks can fly.....but i been fishing two times already and got skunked both times


where do you buy worm compost if you do not have a worm farm? i assume you get alaskan humus at grow store? and alfalfa also?...the soil here is real soft and nice with worms in it but seems almost too sandy if ya know what i mean?

Click to expand...

Ha, yea turkey are fucking hilarious lol. You can get OMRI worm castings and General Organics Ancient Forest Humus at most hydro or gardening stores. I order the alfalfa on ebay I think lol.