Fellow herbalists,
My buddy just reminded me...
- There can fit 500,000 bacteria in the size of the period at the end of this sentence, alone.
- And just one single, healthy, mature aerobic bacteria can reproduce itself into 300 million bacteria over the course of a single day in optimum conditions. (thats: 300,000,000)
2014-2015
So my
favourite tea, in the past, has been the very simple (kis principle) and very powerful.. fresh vermicompost with a touch of blackstrap unsulphured organic molasses.. thats it. Kinda boring I know eh but.. its based on Microbe Mans research, do read it. We still used blood and bone meal back then but our tea recipe was clean:
Recipe was, per litre of aerated water > tea:
- 1 tsp, or 5ml, (0.05%)
- 1.5 Tbsp or 22.5ml of VC (2.38%)
Starting with high quality fresh and thriving castings, the numbers would be through the
roof after 24 hours of good brewing. i.e. good temps in mid 70's with strong o2 levels. Absolutely
astonishing numbers.
2016
I then found molasses to be an ingredient I didn't enjoy working with at all, among others, and went on to create my own little sugar blend, succinat (sp?), raw organic coconut sugar, plus my secret and most fav sugar etc. More minerals the better when shopping.
2017
And now, .. we don't really dig teas.. in an ideal situation.. we prefer doing SIP or no til, using bio-support like activated biochar, much bigger pots, living humus, little more pinpointed recipes, with cleaner ingredients .. the kicker being having pre-amended pre-mellowed/fermented/cooked top dresses
ready to go whenever we see a need..
Side note
.. regarding pot
sizes, we see 15gal being the organics-minimum, 20 to 25+ being much more ideal, indoors, and 100 - 800+ gal being the ideal, outdoors.
So this, combined with the above, creates an environment where they can continue to proliferate
naturally for much more than just the veg cycle with ease.
We then just suggest having
amended soil be your first goal (about a 1 month goal) but having amended living compost being the ideal end-game goal (about a 1 to 2 year goal, up to 3 if leaf composting thermophilically)
Teas do still have a place, tho, imo... that is, if you need them, say in
creating biofilms for pest management, or as a part of a several-spray IPM regime, or in
reinoculating when using overly small pots cause they keep drying out (usually one gal, to 10 gal). The smaller you go, the more you may want to tea em up.
Speaking of which:
....when using
store bought castings I would recommend a weekly tea with a weaker foliar, to help supplement the lack of fresh and present fulvics and humics .. something you won't ever need if growing your own vermicompost from scratch, which is awesome.
And
foliars still have their place too imo. I know DP didn't care for them but for me I love to use them for timely expressions and signal triggering, but have basically got it down to just spraying daily or so for the first 1.5 weeks of flip, nothing more.
Unless trying to put in extra work say for a cup, reacting to a mistake, outbreak, or underestimation.
So in
summary, now my
goal is actually just one tea max per life cycle, and about 7-10 foliars pre planned .. for those first 10 days of flower or so. Other than that, just water only and just one topdressing.
Of course, the other major weapons in my arsenal:
- ultra fine endo myco with multiple types of purley-endo spores, and
- black soldier fly frass, one of my favs, which is LAODED with fungals and chitin.
- labs,
- coco
- & aloe,
basically cause the results you see pics of ^^
For now, I try not to mess with any other ferments or teas, nor SST's really.
Except maybe grokashi/red wheat bran a little bit, that I'm gonna do big in 2018 and see if its worth all the hype
& as we move forward, we're going to continue to try find the most effective doses, with the most impressive results. Along with the most effective base recipes. Testing 7 separate and slightly different combos at the moment, so..
Should be fun, more to come!
