Designing my new gardens

calliandra said:

yeah she's still 1.60m tall, which is kind of a pain, me being 1.63 haha
Also, to my chagrin I just realized I need to regard this plant more like a landscape - I had been looking more at the parts near the door, but just now I saw something very disagreeable-looking spreading out from the left corner - small white spots spread out quite evenly across the leaf surfaces, making me think of sucky critters... I'm too tired today, so will look into that tomorrow. It's so frustrating, to know exactly what to do to remediate, but not have the means at hand to get it done!!
May brew up a compost tea anyway. On my last one, I managed to actually grow the fungi more than the bacteria for the very first time, leaving me with an end F:B mass ratio of 6:1, which is amazing, from a compost that was at 0.5 But I still have a ways to go, I wasn't happy with the overall populations and diversity - and that probably comes from the compost still being weak too. ACTs can only be as good as the compost they're made of, they can get populations to multiply and become very active, they can wake up some that were dormant, but it can magick sets of microbes in that weren't there to begin with..
Better than nothing? Going to try and find out who the culprit is first
Cheers!

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calliandra said:

Well in the course she only gives us recommendations to start experimenting with, there are so many factors that play into it she's making a point of NOT calling them recipes hehe
It was my first try with just kelp and humic acid - of questionable nature, it's actually called potassium humate in the ingredients part of the packaging (which I only saw post delivery), and has a pH of 9-11?! WTF? I asked Elaine about it, but that webinar had to be postponed (= the pine needle one haha), so still mystified

In any case, I added 1 teaspoon of that humic whatever powder and one of kelp meal to 5L of water bubbled by a 400L airpump, and a bit later a cup of compost. I ended up adding another tsp of kelp later on as things were slow, that got things going, very lowlevel, but very fungal. oh and it was a very long brew too44 hrs or so haha
what have you been using?

I'm looking to change my brewer build, which is taking its time as I need to hunt out the parts.
But I already know I want to change a few things right away: add those 2 tsp klp from the get-go, maybe bubble the foods a bit longer first, and have the compost in a bag, to reduce the amounts that settle in the bucket corners, where I know anaerobic pockets must be, it's the spotty way ciliate-friendly colonies start appearing in samples, or finding them in surroundings that aren't anaerobic-looking at all. the actual solution will be having something without corners, in which the upstreaming air bubbles will create a torus-shaped current in the container. I'm thinking of those bell-shaped chicken feeders/waterers, drill a hole in top of dome, attach a valve, through which air can be blown in, as well as the tea let out of
because, did you know that anaerobic bacteria can decimate fungal strands within 20 minutes? I'm pretty sure my past woes with my ACTs were due to microfilms accumulating, and allowing ever new waves of anaerobic assaults when given the chance haha

I also really feel like trying fish hydrolysate as a food - but want to look into how fermentation modifies the fresh stuff first, i have some doubts there and making fresh every time seems to be a tad overkill, especially in the amounts needed? 1 small sardine, please? lol

Haven't you dealt with fish hydrolysate too? any thoughts?
Cheers!

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