My Organic Tea Recipe Thread. Share Yours

1oldgoat

Well-Known Member
FWIW...Here's mine.

5 gals of dechlorinated and ph adjusted water (7)
4-5 handfuls of 5 year old compost (duck/horse manure and wood shavings)
1 handful bone meal
2 glugs of liquid fish ferts
20 ml of kelp concentrate
1 tbs molasses

All solid materials are placed in a paint strainer bag. Two small air stones are placed in the bag and aerates for 8 hrs. After 8-10 hrs remove bag and place small air stones in 5 gal pail along with 2 large air stones and let cook for 24-36 hrs at 75-80*. I divide this amongst 4, 5 gal pots,4, 7 gal pots and 2, 3 gal pots. I do not dilute it. This has been fed to the girls for the last 7 weeks of their existence with this exception. The first 5 weeks I was only feeding "compost only" tea. All plants were in Pro-Mix HP and were not thriving and were getting pale. I re-potted with 70/30% compost/Pro-Mix and added the other ingredients to the tea. Within a week they have all come back to a nice rich green and are thriving. Prior to transplanting I was watering every time with tea. Now I'm watering every other time, but will watch the color and water accordingly. I also folier feed often with kelp/F Fert solution. Cheers
 

Gr8tful

Member
Paint Strainer bags work great for holding your solid matters together. The bag can be tied so it hangs off the bottom of the bucket. If you place an airstone in the bag in addition to one on the bottom of the bucket you get great agitation for the microbes.
 

Matt Rize

Hashmaster
Paint Strainer bags work great for holding your solid matters together. The bag can be tied so it hangs off the bottom of the bucket. If you place an airstone in the bag in addition to one on the bottom of the bucket you get great agitation for the microbes.
agreed, the point is to agitate the microbes off of the soil particles. the bio-film must be broken to harvest the microbes.
 

CSI Stickyicky

Well-Known Member
Personally, I couldn't give just one recipe. The composition of our teas depends on what the plant currently needs. On top of that, the plants love variety. As long as you keep changing the ferts a little, the plants will be much less likely to get too much or too little of anything, especially trace elements.
Exactly how i feel! I always make different teas, and some teas i give to some plants, and some i give to others.
I use every batch:
Earthworm castings
Molasses

Then i switch up what else goes in, based on what they need. Sometimes Jamaican guano, sometimes Mexican guano, and i'm going to start adding kelp. I am going to keep trying different things until i come up with my perfect recipes for the various stages of cannabis growth.

Thanks to the dude who started this thread, it is a good place to see many recipes all in a row, so i can decide what i might want to try next.
 

TheRuiner

Well-Known Member
Question gentlemen; when I brew my organic teas - when the temps are right, I get a frothy bubbly layer that builds up rather quickly on the top of the liquid in my 5 gallon bucket. I'm just wondering what this mess means, and if it is in fact a good thing? Is it normal? The plants don't seem to mind, I'm just curious if that is in fact a sign of anything that I could be aware of. Thanks for your time!
 

Jerry Garcia

Well-Known Member
Question gentlemen; when I brew my organic teas - when the temps are right, I get a frothy bubbly layer that builds up rather quickly on the top of the liquid in my 5 gallon bucket. I'm just wondering what this mess means, and if it is in fact a good thing? Is it normal? The plants don't seem to mind, I'm just curious if that is in fact a sign of anything that I could be aware of. Thanks for your time!
It's a sign the aerobic bacteria are doing their thing, and is totally normal.

Absence of such foam and a rancid smell mean it's gone anaerobic and should be thrown out.
 

TheRuiner

Well-Known Member
You are diluting the tea at least 1:20, the pH will be acidic, but not super low. pH after diluting if you do that normally.
I generally brew a light tea and don't dilute what so ever... I find that my teas are at a PH of about 8 after brewing. Something keeps the PH high and when I say keeps it high I know this because I've PH'ed the water I'm going to be brewing tea with and after 12 hours or bubbling with all the ingredients in the bucket my PH has climbed back up to about 8 from around 6.5... I've even PH'ed down to 6.5 half way through brewing only to check PH again before watering to find it's back up to around 8.
 

TheRuiner

Well-Known Member
I just use rain water. Never had a PH issue with rain water
I would imagine not. Hard to beat Gods way of doing things.

In the past I've used well water to cut my teas (and brew them) and lower the PH. Well water comes out of my backyard @ a PH of about 4.7 and my teas brew @ about 8.
About one part well water to 3 parts tea seems to give me the perfect PH range. I need to get back out there and prime that pump so I can use my well water to PH my tea again.

The whole reason i asked was because I've seen people say that they don't even bother PH'ing the brews they make, and then coincidentally, I completely forgot to PH the last two times I watered, so I wanted to see what you fine RIUers thought about tea PH. Girls don't seem to mind the high PH of my tea currently, knock on wood.
 

tingpoon

Well-Known Member
I just use rain water. Never had a PH issue with rain water
definitely a great idea but probably works best by location. im digging this tea thread, giving me lots of pointers.
i have the full FF lineup (bat guano and worm casings included), and supplement with floranova and molasses. i also flush insanely, like 2-3x more than the rec, in the end this extra flushing def makes the smoke smoother/unleashes more taste
 

PakaloloHui

Active Member
Music to my ears Mr. Garcia, thanks for confirming exactly what I hoped to hear... :clap:
You can also add 1 tablespoon of cooking oil to reduce foam if needed for every 4 - 5 gallons of brew. This is in the instructions for the Organic Bountea brew system www.bountea.com. I have tried this product and it works great, passed a kit to a friend and he is a tea junkie now. Great thread, time to experiment with some new recipes.
 

Gopedxr

Well-Known Member
This thread is were its at guys. My questions is can I just get my five gallon bucket simply pour into my RO water the guanos and other ingredients you all have mentioned and simply stir around for a bit and then air stone it for three days? I got confused on the strainer. I just want to measure and dump inti bucket make it easy as possible.
 

rosecitypapa

Active Member
As for me, I like choosing local when I can, conserving water by design, building my outside soil one 5 gal bucket at a time.

I'm currently experimenting with an AACT to work with vegan organic hydro folks. It's refreshing to be able to work in a manure-less environment - broad new territory of learning and experimentation.


Most recent batch of compost tea consists of:

Per 3 gal of water - OR
aerated 24, 48hrs @ 78deg F

1/2 cup alfalfa meal - OR
1/2 cup linseed meal - OR

In cotton sock steep for 1 hr, pour off 1 gal for foliar feeding and add 1 gal fresh water. Then stir (in clockwise direction) with enough energy to create a vortex to dissolve the next ingredient:

3 tbs organic blackstrap molasses
Vortex mix for ten minutes. I'm not entirely sure what is does, but it certainly does SOMETHING.

The next sock has:
1 cup alaskan humus - AL - Ancient Forest

Then directly in the water itself:
1 tbs bacterial and fungi inoculate - OR - Wonderdust (30 different strains)

After 24hrs a gal goes into the reservoir and 1 gal of water and molasses goes into the tea brewer for the next 24. Then this culture is kept active for the week with the withdrawal of biologically active culture balanced by additional water and molasses. New culture brewed per week.


Suspended at my waterfall line (active flow rate @ 1000 gph) a paint strainer bag filled with
1 cup of sand composed in equal measure
Azomite - UT
Glacial Rock Dust - CN
Greensand - NJ
Soft Rock Phosphate - FL
Lime - OR


DSCN0001-1.jpg

Makes for a pleasant soothing sound with lot's of bubbles!

I have to say, since going with the beneficial bacteria and fungi compost tea's, my root growth has been explosive and most recently, the fan leave surfaces have taken on a lustery deep translucency to them. My ppm's are down in the mid 400's (down from 800) and the girls just seem happier, more vibrant. The leaves are vivid green all the way to the very tip. My growth rate - 7th week (4wk of veg) is about 1"/day. Plants are about 16" tall.
 

Gopedxr

Well-Known Member
Do I have to strain? Or can I take table spoons of the stuff and just dump in the water and mix it stirring with some wood or big wooden spoon type?
 

CSI Stickyicky

Well-Known Member
You don't have to strain. By the time the tea is ready, most of the guano and stuff is settled to the bottom. I used to do it that way, and then just pour off the clearer tea from the top into a watering can, and then fill the can up the rest of the way with water, and feed it to my plants. Just remember, the bottom few inches of tea is wasted. I like to pour the leftover tea/sludge mix on my bushes and hedges so it's not completely wasted, or around the base of a tree.

The best way to go is to put all the dry ingredients into a piece of pantyhose or a nylon grain bag from a homebrew store. Like a tea-bag. Then you can hang it from the ceiling on a string, so its submerged in the water, but still above the airstone. You can move it around or "steep" it if you like.
 

CSI Stickyicky

Well-Known Member
I added Liquid Karma to my tea last time, and i'm going to start adding kelp too on this run. The plants seemed to love the Liquid Karma, but i think i'll only use it sparingly. Every other batch, probably.
 
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