Soil Food Web Gardening with Compost Teas

Originally Posted by Kalyx

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.

...I'm going to see if I have the little tag with the named labeled on it around the garden area, I'll get back with ya...I can't remember what they are atm.

Great thread. Any thoughts on using rain water for teas?

Well your not supposed to use rain water off of certain types of roofs because of leaching chemicals but you can make a bio-filter with sand pretty easily that will purify your water so I dont see a problem with it.

Do you know which type of roof to watch out for? My house has an asphalt shingle roof about 12 years old

It probably is leaching some chemicals into the water the key is how much. You can get your water tested relatively cheaply just google it and ask them if your levels are ok to water your edible plants with. If you have chemicals leaching into your water you can make a biosand filter for your water that will leach out almost all contaminants to the point where where it should be drinkable. But I would get that water checked too just to make sure you did everything correctly and you can find tons of video's and pages on how to make those. You could also buy a water filter to put on your rain barrel and just gravity feed water through it.

Bountea is the best tea i've used... the ancient microbes get it done! But be careful with the m3. I use half the recommended rate every other brew (2 weeks) only until the 4th week in flower. It can increase yellowing if your not careful.

How about root web? or equivalent mycorrhizae blend?

Originally Posted by trichome fiend

...no salts into your tea, nor your soil.
...as long as you have a healthy soil food web, your plants will need for nothing...and if you've started with a quality soil (such as Fox Farm's Ocean Forest, Roots Organics, Humboldt Happy Frog, exc...) then your off to a good start. When it comes time to replenish your soil, it all starts with the compost, the compost should be mostly bacterial for annuals such as MJ but fungi plays an important role, although you can alter which populates in your tea when brewing. What is your compost source? ...do you know what's in it?

But if something does go wrong and you have a Mg deficiency, adding Epson Salts or like Cal Mag + to leaves and soil is the fix. So if no salts in soil, how do you fix this problem?