Worm Casting Tea

Piff83

Member
Can you make a tea with just worm castings, water and molasses? i also obviously have the bucket, pump, air sone, and hosing. The only other ingredients i have are fox farms big bloom, and organicare pure bloom formula and grow formula. If so what measurements would you recommend? Thanks.
 

The Growery

Active Member
2 cups per 5 gallons of EWC, 2 tablespoons of molasses, 1 tablespoon of kelp/fulvic acid, just a capful of Humic acid as well. you can vary this depending on what you want to do with the tea
 

TheOrganic

Well-Known Member
Agree with above. You can feed with ewc and just molasses but your gonna short yourself. There's microbes in ewc but its best to supplement more with another product to get best results. There's tons out there I use http://ogbiowar.com/.
You could add your bottle stuff but make sure you got a good foam action going on after 24hr bubble cause thats a good sign things are working. I would follow basic dir for bottle nutes just like normal to add to tea and see what happens. check ppm also

I used a lil bit of leftover Humbloldt organic(notreally) to some teas awhile back and microbe life was strong still and I still had healthy plants till harvest.
 

SpicySativa

Well-Known Member
-EWC and molasses alone will result in a high quality AACT, but addition of humics acids, etc can be beneficial as well.

-Don't add your liquid nutrients to the AACT brew; feed those to your plants separately.

-AACT is a source of microbiology, not a direct source of NPK.

-Foam is NOT an indication of tea quality.

The source of my recommendations above (along with everything you could dream of learning about AACT) is the Compost Tea Brewing Manual by Ingham. Link below:

http://ecologiesurleweb.free.fr/docs/Docs_agir/Lombricomposteur/Brew Manual compost tea.pdf
 

Rrog

Well-Known Member
I'll be the ass-of-the-day, but there's no reason to specifically dump microbes into the soil unless you are starting a batch of soil from scratch. The soil + plant will breed microbes like CRAZY. Take a random sample of soil and look under a scope. It's teeming with life. The microbes are also in the proper ratio that the plant wants. The plant controls the microbial population.

4 year study (lab controls). QUOTE: Effective Microorganisms (EM) showed no effects on crop yields in a 4-year field experiment. ▶ EM showed no effects on soil microbial parameters characterizing biomass, structure and activity. ▶ Observed effects of EM preparations could be related to nutrient inputs by EM carrier substrates. ▶ Ecological impact of EM on soil quality was small whereas effects of sampling time exceeded EM effects. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0929139310001332

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~linda chalker-scott/horticultural myths_files/Myths/Compost tea 3rd time.pdf

If I could change this one mindset in folks I would die happy. We should be looking to simplify
 

SpicySativa

Well-Known Member
EM is a VERY different set of micro beasties than what you extract from compost. Well brewed AACT will contain a mind blowing diversity of bacteria/archaea, fungus, protazoa, nematodes, etc... EM on the other hand contains primarily lactobacillus varieties, and you can count the diversity on your 10 fingers.

I agree that the law of diminishing returns applies to AACT use, but I definitely see a benefit when I apply it about once every 2 weeks. Even if the population of microbiology is already sufficient in your soil, adding more is just adding more organic matter to your soil in the form of stable nutrition stored in the bodies of bacterial and fungal cells. When these die or get eaten by protazoa, the nutrients are released in a plant-available form.

In my view, that just CAN'T be a bad thing.
 

SpicySativa

Well-Known Member
In the spirit of friendly debate... That second study is about disease suppression, not plant/soil health. I personally believe that AACT might help prevent issues in the root zone, but I'm not sold on the idea of preventing foliar diseases with it, either.
 

Rrog

Well-Known Member
To be sure, I'm not looking for an argument. These threads are fantastic, but they can easily get rude and nasty. So hoping to keep things civil, here are my thoughts:

Microbes imported from other geographical regions is not logical / necessary. The microbes best suited for you are already in your backyard. They have proven themselves to be the top of the heap in your area. They have beaten out all comers and are at the top of the local microbial food chain. IMHO, people selling microbes are simply turning a profit. You can't beat local BIMs. You are not introducing some miracle microbe(s). I would argue this forever.

Massive quantities of Microbes have no value in being dumped on healthy, active soil. Starting a soil is completely different. Adding billions of microbes 3 weeks into veg is sort of like taking a highly efficient factory with workers on the assembly lines and flooding the factory with 25 busloads of kids on a factory tour. What's the point and are we sure this doesn't disrupt things?

Another analogy would be a worm bin. The worms, like microbes, reproduce like rabbits. Anyone who has a worm bin would never see the need to add 10,000 worms to an already up-and-running worm bin that has an actively reproducing worm population. There are fistfuls of worms, so what are we accomplishing by adding more? Nothing is the answer.

AACT does not create anything new. All nutrients were already present in the compost, or whatever. AACT is a nutrient delivery system, and so is simple top-dressing or a soil drench. The only difference is the time it will take to sequester the nutrients. AACT has a head start, and if you need nutrients that fast something else is wrong.

As I said before, for anyone reading this, please understand that I'm not looking to argue, and I realize this doesn't fit the weed growing paradigm that many have. What I would like is a peer-reviewed study showing the efficacy of AACT, and to date I haven't seen anything at all. No presentations of this technique at global Ag trade shows, no university studies, no articles in credible trade publications like Acres, and only an occasional blurb from someone like Ingham who is not considered credible by the larger soil biology community.

If AACT were the fantastic program that weedies claim, why isn't anyone outside of weedville using it? I have been beaten with comments like "of course it's used outside of weedville, you asshole," but to date not one person has shown me a commercial horticultural segment that is routinely using AACT. Sometimes we feel that we have some ancient arcane secret grow knowledge that has escaped mainstream horticulture. Clearly that's flawed thinking. So again, if it's so good, where's the peer-reviewed research and where are the farms using it?

Thanks for allowing me this rant. Please, no one be offended. If anyone has data, I would very much appreciate links.
 

SpicySativa

Well-Known Member
Not offended at all. As long as we're all civil, we can have civil conversations. Who'da thunk? Haha.

I definitely agree that there is a lack of hard science related to AACTs, along with a massive amount of misinformation. I think there are very few people out there who are ACTUALLY brewing tea correctly (not directed at anyone in particular). Hell, I just started running some dissolved oxygen tests on my AACTs, and even with my EcoPlus Air 1 commercial air pump in just 4 gallons of water, my DO levels plummeted to about 1 ppm over the course of a brew cycle. So, I was one of those people brewing poor quality tea... I have since upgraded to the Air 5 commercial pump, and built an airlift/vortex style brewer. Now my oxygen level is around 9 ppm at the end of a brew cycle.

Not hard science, but a little anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of AACTs can be found in the strange hobby of growing giant veggies (and pumpkin monstrosities). Those guys seem to swear by compost teas.
 

prosperian

Well-Known Member
Man, I learn so much from you guys. I love the organics section.

Rrog, my first grow had 4 plants and 8 oz. Didn't kill them! Looking at super soil for my next grow. Thanks for your advice along the way.

 

BeaverHuntr

Well-Known Member
Man, I learn so much from you guys. I love the organics section.

Rrog, my first grow had 4 plants and 8 oz. Didn't kill them! Looking at super soil for my next grow. Thanks for your advice along the way.


Nice I got about the same from OG Raskals White Fire .. 4 plants under a 1000W co2 , sealed room. Organics is awesome.
 

Rrog

Well-Known Member
SpicySativa- Thanks for being a gentleman. Hopefully my posts won't offend anyone.

Prosperian- Thanks for the pics and encouragement. Can I get you to try recycling your soil next time? I have a recipe and links to sources of the ingredients that is solid and set for no-till recycling. This will cut your grow costs dramatically, obviously, and the soil gets better with each generation. I'd love for you to try this if interested.
 

prosperian

Well-Known Member
Prosperian- Thanks for the pics and encouragement. Can I get you to try recycling your soil next time? I have a recipe and links to sources of the ingredients that is solid and set for no-till recycling. This will cut your grow costs dramatically, obviously, and the soil gets better with each generation. I'd love for you to try this if interested.
Yeah, absolutely I'd be interested. Seems like a waste to throw that stuff away after all the work we do to get it just right.

Hey BeaverH, haven't seen you since my fuzzy white fungus in my soil thread. Thanks for your help too!
 

Rrog

Well-Known Member
Sweet!!! Lemme find my spreadsheet with the ingredients and the sources. Then I'll post. Might be a pain to collect the ingredients but then you'll have them and you can re-use many times. You simply amend the soil as you go with more EWC, kelp, etc. Leave the soil alone when you harvest. Just chop and plant a new one right next to it.

You will love it!
 
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