Does compost Tea really work?

[bobrown14]

Interesting method. Thanks for the tip.... good use of potato water.

We use leaf mold extensively in our gardens. Just top dress around the plants as a mulch and water in. We have a decent amount of woodland on our property so in the spring (now) we spend a decent amount of time collecting leaf mold.

Another good source is worm castings from the woodland forest floor. Find an old dead log, beside it you will see fresh worm castings. Usually these are native worms not red wigglers. Collect those worm castings and add that to your soil as a top dress and/or mix in.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

Yes i just got my self worms last week and half a ton of mushroom compost for them to eat ,

 

[NuttyProfessor]

Interesting method. Thanks for the tip.... good use of potato water.

We use leaf mold extensively in our gardens. Just top dress around the plants as a mulch and water in. We have a decent amount of woodland on our property so in the spring (now) we spend a decent amount of time collecting leaf mold.

Another good source is worm castings from the woodland forest floor. Find an old dead log, beside it you will see fresh worm castings. Usually these are native worms not red wigglers. Collect those worm castings and add that to your soil as a top dress and/or mix in.

looks like your spoiled for choice i am lucky that way too

 

[bobrown14]

Diversity is a good thing. I've been collecting woodland EWC for quite a few years. We were lucky to live very close to an growth forest that is preserved as part of the park system in Philly. That woodland had everything we could ask for and more.

That was my go to for micro-organisms. We moved to New York the woodlands have been cut a few times. The leaf mold did great last season outdoors.

I'll have to try your potato water method - its a good tool for my toolbox

 

[NuttyProfessor]

Diversity is a good thing. I've been collecting woodland EWC for quite a few years. We were lucky to live very close to an growth forest that is preserved as part of the park system in Philly. That woodland had everything we could ask for and more.

That was my go to for micro-organisms. We moved to New York the woodlands have been cut a few times. The leaf mold did great last season outdoors.

I'll have to try your potato water method - its a good tool for my toolbox

If you look into jadam natural farming you will be surprised on how low cost organic farming can be , not everyone cup of tea , i do a lot of Putrefaction compared to fermentation
You rarely use sugars/molasses , its crazy stuff but seems to be working so far for me , its my first run at it properly

 

[bobrown14]

All I ever grown was organically. Built my first compost bin from a design out of Popular Science mag way back in the 70s.


About the only things I ferment are green manures in a bucket of water. Dont even need to add sugars its already there in the leaves. I do compost old plant roots same way... there's micro-oganisms attached to the old roots.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

@bobrown14 looks like this

 

[NuttyProfessor]

All I ever grown was organically. Built my first compost bin from a design out of Popular Science mag way back in the 70s.


About the only things I ferment are green manures in a bucket of water. Dont even need to add sugars its already there in the leaves. I do compost old plant roots same way... there's micro-oganisms attached to the old roots.

Yes i steer away from animal manures now , too iffy , you just need the wrong thing taking over

 

[Emilya Green]

@Emilya I feel like I missed out on a big part of my grow by not using compost tea. I, too, am confused about its applications/usability - like you initially were. It took me a while to differentiate between different growing mediums and the techniques associated with them. When I picked FFOF it was because it seemed like the easiest/safest bet, and when i picked Gaia Green organic fertilizers it was because I wanted to avoid liquid fertilizers, as I wanted to keep it organic.... this is as far as my understanding went. I never understood why, when, or where to use teas, nor did I understand the main difference between microbial activity when feeding with organic vs. synthetic- as you have just explained on this thread. I knew I could have benefited from teas all along my grow, I just didn't know how to use them so I didn't. I guess my question is;

Had I used compost tea all along my grow, would this have resulted in less top feedings? Would this have avoided all the times I starved my plants?

My understanding is the tea activates the already-available nutrients in the soil, so does this mean that all the times I kept feeding my plants throughout my grow, it wasn't necessarily because the soil was out of nutrients, but because there wasn't the adequate microbial activity to sustain/maintain the available nutrients in the soil?

Hope my questions are clear, because I'm confused as type them.

Yes, with the proper active microbes coming in regularly to supplement those already in the soil, your organic grow probably would not have stalled and top feedings would have been unnecessary. It sounds like you have now grasped what has to happen in an organic grow and are not nearly as confused as you might think you are.


a comment on some of the other comments... making a proper tea is not as easy as some would like to believe. A proper tea is targeted so that the microbes specializing in the nutrients that you know the plant is needing right now are created in your tea, so it is seeded with small amounts of those exact minerals, in the brew. The microbes that eat those minerals thrive, the others don't. A wide mix of unrefined inputs, without specific targeting may not even give you the microbes that you really want. When applying your tea, you are not feeding the plant with these small amounts of minerals in the tea, you are simply creating the correct microbes for the job at hand. Lots of microbes and fungi do not play well together, and the order that you create a combination tea and how long you brew at each stage becomes very important, and unless you are following an exact timed recipe, it is easy to get it wrong and it takes a microscope to be able to tell what is going on in there. Mixing teas with this and that and not targeting them in any way might work to a point, but it is possible to be a lot more scientific with this and really make your teas super effective. It pays to do a little study and understand that a lot of thought has gone into some of these tea recipes so that you deliver what you think you are delivering, to your plants.

 

[parrajara]

Yes, with the proper active microbes coming in regularly to supplement those already in the soil, your organic grow probably would not have stalled and top feedings would have been unnecessary. It sounds like you have now grasped what has to happen in an organic grow and are not nearly as confused as you might think you are.


a comment on some of the other comments... making a proper tea is not as easy as some would like to believe. A proper tea is targeted so that the microbes specializing in the nutrients that you know the plant is needing right now are created in your tea, so it is seeded with small amounts of those exact minerals, in the brew. The microbes that eat those minerals thrive, the others don't. A wide mix of unrefined inputs, without specific targeting may not even give you the microbes that you really want. When applying your tea, you are not feeding the plant with these small amounts of minerals in the tea, you are simply creating the correct microbes for the job at hand. Lots of microbes and fungi do not play well together, and the order that you create a combination tea and how long you brew at each stage becomes very important, and unless you are following an exact timed recipe, it is easy to get it wrong and it takes a microscope to be able to tell what is going on in there. Mixing teas with this and that and not targeting them in any way might work to a point, but it is possible to be a lot more scientific with this and really make your teas super effective. It pays to do a little study and understand that a lot of thought has gone into some of these tea recipes so that you deliver what you think you are delivering, to your plants.

Oooh that's good to know I'm on the right track, thanks Emilya

So, If I am understanding correctly: when you brew a tea, you are creating specific microbes for a specific function - in this case, to eat the minerals available in the soil, digest them, and make them available for the roots to consume them. Of course there are other different microbes (bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) in the medium that may or may not be desirable, and that play different functions, so the wrong mix of ingredients in the tea can be detrimental. Assuming my interpretation is correct, and I hope it is, I am left with a doubt - which is composed of many questions. My apologies in advance, but I believe they add value to the discussion.

How do you know what is enough fertilizer? For example, FFOF is known to run out of nutrients at 30 days (give or take), at which point you have to "feed them".

If, instead of using only water, you also use teas throughout those 30 days; would you be able to prolong the availability of the nutrients? Meaning, instead of running out of nutrients at 30 days, you may have lasted 45 days (arbitrary number). Of course, this is more applicable for a larger plant, perhaps transplanted.

Would you run out of nutrients faster because they were "consumed" more efficiently, but ultimately have a faster and healthier growing plant?

Would it be the same (still 30 days), but it's just a healthier plant overall?

Also, I believe this question ties in with root health. As living roots create sugars and compounds that also feed the bacteria in the soil, so maybe this also plays a factor into my question, with who knows whatever else I didn't think about.

 

[Emilya Green]

Oooh that's good to know I'm on the right track, thanks Emilya

So, If I am understanding correctly: when you brew a tea, you are creating specific microbes for a specific function - in this case, to eat the minerals available in the soil, digest them, and make them available for the roots to consume them. Of course there are other different microbes (bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) in the medium that may or may not be desirable, and that play different functions, so the wrong mix of ingredients in the tea can be detrimental. Assuming my interpretation is correct, and I hope it is, I am left with a doubt - which is composed of many questions. My apologies in advance, but I believe they add value to the discussion.

How do you know what is enough fertilizer? For example, FFOF is known to run out of nutrients at 30 days (give or take), at which point you have to "feed them".

If, instead of using only water, you also use teas throughout those 30 days; would you be able to prolong the availability of the nutrients? Meaning, instead of running out of nutrients at 30 days, you may have lasted 45 days (arbitrary number). Of course, this is more applicable for a larger plant, perhaps transplanted.

Would you run out of nutrients faster because they were "consumed" more efficiently, but ultimately have a faster and healthier growing plant?

Would it be the same (still 30 days), but it's just a healthier plant overall?

Also, I believe this question ties in with root health. As living roots create sugars and compounds that also feed the bacteria in the soil, so maybe this also plays a factor into my question, with who knows whatever else I didn't think about.

Part of the answer to these questions involves further explanation as to how the microbes and the roots work together. The microbes include amoeba, protozoa, and many other species of single cell animals, but they are different in their functions when compared to fungi and how they operate. The microbes don't just process the raw nutrients and then leave them for the roots to find, the microbes actually carry the processed nutrient to the roots and feed it to them. Fungi gather in nutrients and also feed them to the roots, effectively increasing the virtual size of the web of roots with their own web. When the microbes exchange their load with the roots, they are rewarded with an excretion from the roots called an exudate, which not only is an important component in the feeding cycle of the microbe, but it also contains messages to the microbes as to what nutrients the plant is needing, or not needing. There is a symbiotic relationship between the roots(plant) and the microbes and fungi.

So for this to work correctly you need to have the nutrients in the soil. There are several methods to do this, but out of the bag flat out, Fox Farm Ocean Forest is not a mineralized soil. It is an organic soil, but it does not have in it what the plants are going to need in order to produce fruit. You need to either fortify the soil with mineral supplements such as Dr. Earth or use it to cook up a mineralized supersoil, and THEN the microbes will be able to do their jobs. In FFOF you can get the microbes to go to town on what happens to be in there, and you can make available using the organic feeding cycle loads of Nitrogen and the base minerals that are in the mix, but shortly after you flip, the needs of your plant drastically widen and deepen, and no amount of microbes can do magic with something that isn't there. This is why @GeoFlora Nutrients works so well in a soil like this, because with each two week feeding you are supplying the raw nutrients in both a fast and slow release form, and the microbes that are best to deal with them. So yes, if you were able to supply the nutrients needed in a form that could be quickly made available to the plant, you could get by with using teas all through the grow. I would guess that logically, a plant in veg in FFOF being given microbes to feed the plant with what is available in the soil, that this soil would run out of nutrients faster than a plant not being fed in this way, such as being given only water, simply because the microbes would be much more efficient at getting the stuff to the plants.

Also, I believe this question ties in with root health. As living roots create sugars and compounds that also feed the bacteria in the soil, so maybe this also plays a factor into my question, with who knows whatever else I didn't think about.

Bacteria are another special kind of critter... not even a critter as a microbe is. They work more on the chemical level and their job is to invade cells and change them in some way. They do not feed the plants nor do the plants feed them. They are more a part of the decomposition process. There are good and bad bacteria, but that is a completely different realm. Essentially, our friends, the microbes, are living organisms whereas bacteria and viruses are not... at least to our present level of understanding.

 

[parrajara]

Part of the answer to these questions involves further explanation as to how the microbes and the roots work together. The microbes include amoeba, protozoa, and many other species of single cell animals, but they are different in their functions when compared to fungi and how they operate. The microbes don't just process the raw nutrients and then leave them for the roots to find, the microbes actually carry the processed nutrient to the roots and feed it to them. Fungi gather in nutrients and also feed them to the roots, effectively increasing the virtual size of the web of roots with their own web. When the microbes exchange their load with the roots, they are rewarded with an excretion from the roots called an exudate, which not only is an important component in the feeding cycle of the microbe, but it also contains messages to the microbes as to what nutrients the plant is needing, or not needing. There is a symbiotic relationship between the roots(plant) and the microbes and fungi.

So for this to work correctly you need to have the nutrients in the soil. There are several methods to do this, but out of the bag flat out, Fox Farm Ocean Forest is not a mineralized soil. It is an organic soil, but it does not have in it what the plants are going to need in order to produce fruit. You need to either fortify the soil with mineral supplements such as Dr. Earth or use it to cook up a mineralized supersoil, and THEN the microbes will be able to do their jobs. In FFOF you can get the microbes to go to town on what happens to be in there, and you can make available using the organic feeding cycle loads of Nitrogen and the base minerals that are in the mix, but shortly after you flip, the needs of your plant drastically widen and deepen, and no amount of microbes can do magic with something that isn't there. This is why @GeoFlora Nutrients works so well in a soil like this, because with each two week feeding you are supplying the raw nutrients in both a fast and slow release form, and the microbes that are best to deal with them. So yes, if you were able to supply the nutrients needed in a form that could be quickly made available to the plant, you could get by with using teas all through the grow. I would guess that logically, a plant in veg in FFOF being given microbes to feed the plant with what is available in the soil, that this soil would run out of nutrients faster than a plant not being fed in this way, such as being given only water, simply because the microbes would be much more efficient at getting the stuff to the plants.



Bacteria are another special kind of critter... not even a critter as a microbe is. They work more on the chemical level and their job is to invade cells and change them in some way. They do not feed the plants nor do the plants feed them. They are more a part of the decomposition process. There are good and bad bacteria, but that is a completely different realm. Essentially, our friends, the microbes, are living organisms whereas bacteria and viruses are not... at least to our present level of understanding.

Thank you so much for this explanation! I feel like I am understanding this whole thing significantly more now! I have to do some serious research on compost teas and such. I see how being able to read the plant properly is imperative for this process, because you need to understand what she needs in order to give it to her. This will take some time...

 

[Emilya Green]

See if you can find a copy of the book, TLO - True Living Organics, by The Rev. This book and the recipes therein, brought the whole organic thing together for me and totally changed the way I look at soil.

 

[bobrown14]

So, If I am understanding correctly: when you brew a tea, you are creating specific microbes for a specific function - in this case, to eat the minerals available in the soil, digest them, and make them available for the roots to consume them. Of course there are other different microbes (bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) in the medium that may or may not be desirable, and that play different functions, so the wrong mix of ingredients in the tea can be detrimental. Assuming my interpretation is correct, and I hope it is, I am left with a doubt - which is composed of many questions. My apologies in advance, but I believe they add value to the discussion.

How do we know what are the symbiotic microbes that work best with cannabis?

I'm making a tea with my roots from my harvested plants.

It wood make sense that the good microbes are there on and in the roots.

That my taste on it.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

Never let too much information take control , i call it keyboard diarrhea ,
even scientist only know 1% of the microbes in soil
, , Bacteria plays the biggest part ,

Technically a microorganism or microbe is an organism that is microscopic. The study of microorganisms is called microbiology. Microorganisms can be bacteria, fungi, archaea or protists. The term microorganisms does not include viruses and prions, which are generally classified as non-living.

 

[NuttyProfessor]

How do we know what are the symbiotic microbes that work best with cannabis?

I'm making a tea with my roots from my harvested plants.

It wood make sense that the good microbes are there on and in the roots.

That my taste on it.

They would be mate , you can use young plants and dip their roots in a microbe solution before replanting or inoculate the soils before planting ,