Compost teas & stuff

[Funk P]

So I recorded some findings from the tests I ran with differen't additions to compost teas & the additions by themselves here are the rough results, I thought you guys would find it interesting. PLEASE remember that these are my findings & certain ingredients of the testing could be better.

 

Things I used in the tests:

 

1. Horse Manure Slurry - This was a water butt filled with dechloronated water with the addition of random shit but mostly the odd manure plopped in, there was no real thinking behind this It kind of turned into a shit bucket with garden waste. I thought I might as well of looked at it.

2. Nettle Tea - In the name really, didn't use brown sugar like KNF just nettles (with roots) in a bucket with some rain water.

3. Castings - Home made 

4. Bed soil - Veg beds

5. Native soil - Absolutely fucking dead

 

I put each 'ingredient' in a vial of water & left for 24hrs...Elaine Ingham says you can add the water & lightly shake for 30 seconds but I find that leaving it for 24hrs is much better...

 

I won't go into much detail, I'll cover it all plainly... I checked all the seprate ingredients in the vial of water after 24hrs. Horse slurry was basically bacterially dominated (A lot), Nettle had descent variety throughout, same with castings & the same with samples taken from my veg beds (which makes sense cause they've had a lot of castings chucked on, the nettles & castings were better though).

 

After the 24hrs I added molasses & throughout all the samples I didn't see any considerable boost in activity. Bacteria were really the only micro organisms that were active, surprisingly once I added molasses all the other microbes went completly dormant... Bed soil was actually less active since adding the molasses.

 

When all the ingredients we're added to the bubbler again with molasses & organic compost there was not to much growth in microbial activity, some but no where near as much as people rant & rave about... What was absolutely crazy was the diversity & growth of the microbes in the tea when fish juice was added, absolutely insane. 

 

At the end of the day Nettle tea surprised me with the diversity of microbes which is really good considering its an amazing supply of N too, castings were good I would presonally say maybe a little worse than nettle tea but they did have nematodes & quite a lot of them... & when it comes to food from now on I'll definetly be adding the fish juice to feed the microbes.

 

 

 

 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Funk P

[green_machine]

@Funk P

 

Thanks for the info, I was just wondering what do you mean by fish juice? Is this like Biobizz fish mix or alaskan fish emulsion? could it be substituted with a fish meal?

 

greenie

[Funk P]

1 minute ago, green_machine said:

@Funk P

 

Thanks for the info, I was just wondering what do you mean by fish juice? Is this like Biobizz fish mix or alaskan fish emulsion? could it be substituted with a fish meal?

 

greenie

 

It's home made fish hydrolysate, not sure what bio bizz is but I do know that hydrolysate is better than emulsion if that helps... I believe fish meal goes through a heating process which from what I know is a major reason why hydrolysate is preferred over emulsion, fish meal is also pure fish scraps which isn't bad & most likely all of the emulsions etc are made from scraps too, at home though you can use more than just scraps & get the good stuff in there... I don't have evidence to back up if the good stuff is better for feed rather than the scraps by the way... 

[OneMorePuff]

I'm curious how you're measuring the microbial activity in each sample?

 

I remember listening to a growing podcast and they had a guest on how was a very smart botanist (or micro biologist? Can't remember exactly...)  

 

Anyway she said some interesting things about compost teas, namely, they are pointless.  She did go into the science, but the gist of it was this - the place where you're going to find by far the MOST microbial activity in your garden is IN THE SOIL.  Adding some organic ingredients to some water and then bubbling, aerating etc makes very little difference to the end result, because it all ends up in your medium regardless.  The only way your soil is not already teeming with microbial activity is if you literally JUST sterilised it, and even then, adding compost tea to sterilised soil to 'restart' the microbial activity would be no more effective that simply re-amending the soil the normal way.

 

I think when it comes to things like castings and fish mix, she'd say just use them in the normal way by amending your soil with them directly, but I guess nettle tea is a bit different because I don't know of an easy way to amend soil with nettles otherwise?  Maybe just let them mulch a bit then mix into the soil pre-cook?  It's an interesting topic.

 

[Flamedodger]

56 minutes ago, OneMorePuff said:

I think when it comes to things like castings and fish mix, she'd say just use them in the normal way by amending your soil with them directly, but I guess nettle tea is a bit different because I don't know of an easy way to amend soil with nettles otherwise?  Maybe just let them mulch a bit then mix into the soil pre-cook?  It's an interesting topic.

 

I saw a video on uchoob a while back and this guy prepped some soil by chucking nettles straight on top of some soil and he put black plastic over the top, 3 weeks later it was white with fungi and mychor.

Do you think fish guts would be suitable for making a fish mix? I have plenty from fishing trips and anything has top be better than fish guts and bones rotting in the recycle bin  catch the odd squid as well 

Edited May 11, 2021 by Flamedodger
squids

[Funk P]

So first of I measure microbial activity & increase of populations by looking at them under a microscope. I recognise the microbes individually for example: protozoa, flagellates, cilliates, nematodes, amoebas, coccus’s, baccilus etc... Now I don't count them individually because the numbers haven't been so close, it has been very easy to tell which has more. For example the nettle brew had loads of flagellates where as the castings had loads of ciliates etc

 

When it comes to teas not working I dont think this is true to an extent, I have seen through simply aerating compost, castings etc that the numbers have increased but not by much all... You've got to feed them which seems obvious... But I always just chucked compost etc in the bucket & thought they would grow exponentially just by aeration which doesn't seem to be the case.

 

Do I think aeration for 24 hrs is worth it? No & that is what I will agree on, the microbial populations in the nettles in rain water & the castings are enough, plus watering with fish hydrolysate for food will be more than enough. Is it optimal? Maybe not but the difference between doing that and aeration is not exponential (unless future samples indicate otherwise)... I'll have to test this though... This is a first time really checking this stuff out.

 

I personally would still use nettles in some rain water as water tends to wake up dormant microbes...

Edited May 11, 2021 by Funk P

[Funk P]

I need to see what non aerated water with castings & nettle tea plus fish hydrolysate looks like...

Edited May 11, 2021 by Funk P