Need a little help with my compost tea recipe

I have 5 seedlings all 2 weeks from seed and each in a 1 gallon pot made up of 50% Fox Farm's Happy Frog, 30% earthworm castings and 20% peralite and vermiculite. 3 White Widow and 2 Blueberry seedlings. I am trying to make a compost tea for them and here's the ingredients I have to make it with: earthworm castings, bat guano, liquefied kelp extract, fish emulsion, blood and bone meal mix and molasses. I do not have an air pump yet but I can go and pick one up as soon as I'm ready to make the tea.

Since I only have 5 plants and they are small I don't need a very big batch, I'm thinking about 1/2 a gallon. Can someone help me with the measurements for each of the ingredients for a batch this small. I would very much appreciate it. Thanks!

that soil has plenty of nutrients in it for the first few weeks if I remember right. even the EWC tea isn't needed yet since happy frog also contains myco. The first few waterings I'd def just go with an ewc tea since the npk value is very small.

Cool. Thanks for the info. How long should I wait before I should start making a more potent mix?

the happy frog should be good for 3 weeks or so . not real familiar with it .

a ppm meter may be a good idea , first tea I brewed up of my own turned out just a little hot at like 2800 ppm, was able to dilute it and get 15 gallons from it.

if you have all those ingredients right now i would save them you could just mach a little of the ingredients in a bowel with a little kelp extract and top dress, youll need some fungal or bacterial inoculate if you want teas overnight(its better and more powerful this i would buy some) i use mayan microzyme and great white shark.
you dont really need to make a full blast tea right now and if you top dress that will be perfect for seedlings.

this i what i would use for your topdressing, wormcastings, kelp extract, bone meal and a drop or 2 of molasses. everything else could over power your seedlings.


now back to the tea without the inoculate and the air pump and a mesh bag.

use more worm casting than anything else, small amount of bone meal (breaks down slow), moderate amounts of everything else can be used and like DB said you can always dilute. oh and add a carbohydrate such as hay alphaalpha or oats for the fungi.

here my normal tea recipe for 5 gal

high N guano 1.5 tbs
high P guano 3.0 tbs
6tbs of wormcastings
1 tsp of bone meal
1oz of seaweed extract
1/2oz of oats
5cc of great white shark(a little does a lot dont let them make you waste your spores)
1ml of mayan microazyme
3oz of cornsyrup(sugar is sugar i mix with a whole bunch of stuff whatevers cheap)
1oz pureblend pro soil (high in rock phosphate)
and probably a little of whatever else i got organic around in moderate dosages, put all the solids in a mesh bag let it sit over night bubble foamy tea the next day or 2

Thanks for the advice. I guess I have some shopping to do.

One more question. If I make a batch of tea and dilute some to use, how long is the undiluted tea good for? I assume that you do not put it in the fridge and use it over time.

dbkick said:

a ppm meter may be a good idea , first tea I brewed up of my own turned out just a little hot at like 2800 ppm, was able to dilute it and get 15 gallons from it.

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Good idea! I will get one of those for sure

You've got everything you need to make your tea except for the pump, no worries. I can tell you what amounts to use with what you have, no worries.

First off, I'm assuming the guano is high in Nitrogen right? If it's higher in P then you don't want to use that guano during veg. Just wanted to clarify that before giving advice.

5 gal bucket.....
1 gallon of water (rain water is best if you can collect some from your gutter when it rains)
1 cup of worm castings
1 cup of outdoor soil (soil from the floor of an old forest is best if you have one local, but any decent soil from outside, even your back yard is good)
1 cup of compost (if you can get some, not a big deal if you can't..like I said, we're working with what you've got)
guano (I imagine like a half teaspoon or less, but I don't know what guano you're using yet)
fish emulsion (whatever it says per gallon on the bottle)
1 tablespoon of unsulphered molasses.

Now just go buy an air pump and at least one airstone (the bigger ones). You can run a few lines with a few airstones if you want, but it's not necessary. I'd get one at a hydro or gardening store. If you get it at a fish store, just make sure it's not the weakest one. 12-15 dollar range.

Then bubble it for 24-48 hours and use it within 2-3 hours of taking out the airstones.

Don't use the blood or bone meal in the tea though. Bone meal isn't soluble, it'll stink that bucket up like nobody's business.

Good luck man.

Oh, and as poly said above that Mayan Microzyme is great stuff if you can pick some up eventually.

"Sugar is sugar"...well, not exactly. There are mono-saccharides such as glucose, fructose, galactose, etc. which are the simplest of carbohydrates... and then there are di-saccharides such as sucrose (table sugar), maltose and lactose. A disaccharide is composed of two monosaccharides; sucrose is made up of a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose. Other more complex carbohydrates are polymers (repeating units) of the simpler carbohydrates. Different microbes actually prefer different kinds of carbohydrates, and a specific species of bacteria may prefer a specific kind of sugar. It's all about the enzymes that any given microbe has available for metabolism. With that in mind it seems like it would be better to have a variety of carbohydrates (not just mono or disaccharides) in order to cater to the as many of the innumerable species of microbes (bacteria, archaea and fungi) living in compost, earthworm castings, humus or whatever you're using as an inoculant, as possible.

Corn syrup should actually contain a variety of carbohydrates including the more complex carbs ( as long as it isn't high fructose corn syrup). Blackstrap molasses has a good variety of carbohydrates and also contains vitamins, minerals and other substances microbes will require to proliferate.

I'd be apprehensive about using outdoor soil in a tea. Even if you know that no dangerous chemicals of any kind have been applied to that soil, you probably don't know the biology of it and it could very well contain some nasty microbes or root-eating nematodes. If you've got castings, compost or humus why use soil from the ground? Compost and castings should have many times the beneficial microbes and nutrients or regular soil.

To the OP directly, you can still quite possibly fry your seedlings with tea if you make it with strong amendments such as guano and blood meal. If you want to make an AACT at this point, I'd recommend keeping it as simply as possible. For a half gallon of water: a quarter to half cup of the earthworm castings, a teaspoon or so of blackstrap molasses and maybe the fish emulsion will do.

+ WitchDoctor + said:

First off, I'm assuming the guano is high in Nitrogen right? If it's higher in P then you don't want to use that guano during veg. Just wanted to clarify that before giving advice.

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I'm using high in nitrogen guano for veg

I forget sometimes that a lot of peoples yards are very close together, you're right. A lot of people use RoundUP on there yards as well. So scratch that idea unless you live in a more rural area, and honestly, you'd be better off not using it, or getting a bag of Alaskan Forest Humus instead.

Chuckonit said:

I'm using high in nitrogen guano for veg

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Then yea, probably less than half a teaspoon, since they are such young plants, and you could probably just leave it out of the tea till next week and just use the worm castings this week.

polyarcturus said:

if you have all those ingredients right now i would save them you could just mach a little of the ingredients in a bowel with a little kelp extract and top dress, youll need some fungal or bacterial inoculate if you want teas overnight(its better and more powerful this i would buy some) i use mayan microzyme and great white shark.
you dont really need to make a full blast tea right now and if you top dress that will be perfect for seedlings.

this i what i would use for your topdressing, wormcastings, kelp extract, bone meal and a drop or 2 of molasses. everything else could over power your seedlings.


now back to the tea without the inoculate and the air pump and a mesh bag.

use more worm casting than anything else, small amount of bone meal (breaks down slow), moderate amounts of everything else can be used and like DB said you can always dilute. oh and add a carbohydrate such as hay alphaalpha or oats for the fungi.

here my normal tea recipe for 5 gal

high N guano 1.5 tbs
high P guano 3.0 tbs
6tbs of wormcastings
1 tsp of bone meal
1oz of seaweed extract
1/2oz of oats
5cc of great white shark(a little does a lot dont let them make you waste your spores)
1ml of mayan microazyme
3oz of cornsyrup(sugar is sugar i mix with a whole bunch of stuff whatevers cheap)
1oz pureblend pro soil (high in rock phosphate)
and probably a little of whatever else i got organic around in moderate dosages, put all the solids in a mesh bag let it sit over night bubble foamy tea the next day or 2

Click to expand...

thanks i am going to start to use this and i just have one question ..... Do you still need to flush when useing compost tea or just slowly dilute with water till it's just water ??

you never need to flush(even in hydro) you just need to water till you see some clear water coming out the bottom abd use regular water last 2 weeks..


there really is no way to save a tea for a long time evrybody here gave you some good advice too i see. GL sounds like you got most of the info you need to start making killer teas. if your curuios on how proper organics affects the roots check out my journal i just posted an awesome pics of a plants roots, some of the best roots in my records.

polyarcturus said:

there really is no way to save a tea for a long time evrybody here gave you some good advice too i see. GL sounds like you got most of the info you need to start making killer teas. if your curuios on how proper organics affects the roots check out my journal i just posted an awesome pics of a plants roots, some of the best roots in my records.

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Thanks! I'll take a look at your journal

Perhaps I missed it but what size pots will you be stepping up to and when, if at all. The more you step up with a good potting soil as you mentioned, the less fert you need to add. Do you really need all that fert?

I didn't see him mention using fertilizer. He's using the ingredients he has to make compost tea. And his soil is FFHF, worm castings, and perlite and vermiculite...that doesn't get you through veg without teas or nutrients of some sort.

+ WitchDoctor + said:

I didn't see him mention using fertilizer. He's using the ingredients he has to make compost tea. And his soil is FFHF, worm castings, and perlite and vermiculite...that doesn't get you through veg without teas or nutrients of some sort.

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Thanks, let me rephrase. In my grow I'm not adding extra fert due to stepping up with a good potting mix similar to the op's. I want to know if he's changing his pot's and therefore does he need the extra spice (fert) additives in the tea recipe. Someone also mentioned measuring ppms, which I concur. It just seems there isn't enough info provided and it always seems people want to over fert than not. Just curious.

side note; I did add extra fert to my grow after doing two excessive prunes but wouldn't have if I hadn't done the prunes.

Hasbroh said:

Thanks, let me rephrase. In my grow I'm not adding extra fert due to stepping up with a good potting mix similar to the op's. I want to know if he's changing his pot's and therefore does he need the extra spice (fert) additives in the tea recipe. Someone also mentioned measuring ppms, which I concur. It just seems there isn't enough info provided and it always seems people want to over fert than not. Just curious.

side note; I did add extra fert to my grow after doing two excessive prunes but wouldn't have if I hadn't done the prunes.

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Ah, ok I understand you. But the FFHF doesn't have much nutes to start off with, are you thinking of the FF Ocean Forest? That one used to get me through veg as long as I didn't over water and repotted. But I've always had to amend the Happy Frog. I used to use 75/25 OF/HF before I started mixing my own and it got me right to flipping without adding anything else.