Organic Growing Made Easy & Fox Farms Ocean Forest!

Sincerely420 said:

Compost Tea Recipes

If you are using a municipal source of water, aerate the water for 15-20 min prior to adding ingredients. This will evaporate the chlorine from your water.
*didn't know chlorine evaporated so quickly..


To prevent foaming, add 1 tsp. vegetable oil.
*didn't know this either!
* = optional ingredients

Bacterial Tea

• 4 cups Earthworm Castings or other forms of bacterially dominated compost
• 2 tbsp. molasses or other complex liquid sugars (honey, agave, natural syrups,or fruit juices)
• .5 oz Soluble Kelp
• *1-2 oz. (2-4 tbsp.) liquid plant extract (made from comfrey, nettle, or dandelion)
• *.5 oz Fish Hydrolysate
• 4-5 gal Chlorine-free Water

Brew for 24 - 48 hours and apply to root or leaf zone; tea must be kept aerated until it is applied.

Balanced Tea (Bacteria to Fungi)

• 2 cups Earthworm Castings or other forms of bacterially dominated compost
• 2 cups Humus or other form of fungi dominated compost
• .5 oz Soluble Kelp
• .5 oz Fish Hydrolysate
• 1 oz Humic Acids
• *1-2 oz. (2-4 tbl.) liquid plant extract (made from comfrey, nettle, or dandelion)
• 4-5 gal Chlorine-free Water

Brew for 12 - 48 hours and apply within 72; tea must be kept aerated until it is applied.

Fungi Tea

• 4 cups Humus or mature fungi dominated compost
• 1 oz Humic Acids
• .5 oz Fish Hydrolysate
• .5 oz Soluble Kelp
• *1 tbsp. Rock Phosphate Powder
• *2-3 tbsp. flour (oat or wheat)
• 4-5 gal Chlorine-free Water

Brew for 24-48 hours and apply within 72; tea must be aerated up until it is applied. To increase the fungal biomass, treat compost with .5 oz kelp, .25 oz Fish Hydrolysate 24-48 hours before brewing.

Other Tea Blends
Guano Tea

• 4 - 8 tbl. Bat or Seabird Guano of choice
• *2 tbsp. complex liquid sugars (molasses, honey, agave, natural syrups,or fruit juices)
• *.5 oz Soluble Kelp
• 4-5 gal Chlorine-free Water

Brew for 12 - 48 hours; tea must be kept aerated until it is applied. Apply to root zone.

Alfalfa Tea

• 1 cup ground Alfalfa meal
• * 1 - 4 cups Earthworm Castings or mature compost
• *2 tbsp. molasses or other complex liquid sugars
• *.5 oz Soluble Kelp
• 4-5 gal Chlorine-free Water

Brew for 12 - 24 hours; tea must be kept aerated until it is applied. Apply to root zone. Alfalfa tea is good source of vitamins A and B; Folic acids, Amino acids, crude proteins, high Nitrogen(N), phosphorus(P), potassium(K), calcium(Ca), magnesium(Mg), sulphur(S), Manganese(Mn), iron(Fe), copper(Cu), boron(B), and zinc(Zn).

Liquid Plant Extract

• 5 Gallon Garden Tea Brewer
• Young Comfrey, Nettle, and/or Dandelion leaves
• 4-5galChlorine-free Water

Instructions: Fill a 5 gallon bucket (loosely) with chopped/ crushed young Comfrey, Nettle, or Dandelion leaves. Faster fermentation will occur if the stems and leaves are bruised. Fill the rest of the bucket with chlorine free water, cover, place in a shaded area, and brew for 2 weeks in warm weather (70 - 90% water temp) or 4-5 weeks in cool weather (50 - 70%). This mix can sit without active aeration and ferment with time. Warning! If making plant extracted teas without active aeration, teas will smell like an open sewer throughout fermentation and when finished. The end product will be a dark concentrated liquid fertilizer. After the fermentation period strain liquid and squeeze the remnants to extract as much juice as possible. Feed the solid wastes to your compost pile. Filter and store tea in a cool dark place or in refrigeration. All of the above listed plant extracts are an excellent stand-alone fertilizer for many annuals and perennials.

• Comfrey tea is a good source of vitamin A and C; calcium(Ca), phosphorus(P), potassium(K), along with many trace minerals.
• Nettle tea is good source of vitamins A, C, and K; calcium(Ca), magnesium(Mg), phosphorus(P), potassium(K), boron(B), bromine(Br), copper(Cu), iron(Fe), selenium(Se), silicon(Si), and zinc(Zn).
• Dandelion tea is a good source of vitamins A and C, calcium(Ca), and potassium(K).

Application: Filtered liquid extracts should be diluted to a tea color, at a rate of 1 tsp. tea extract to 1 gallon chlorine-free water. Plant extracts can be diluted at ratios up to 15:1 depending on maturity and phase of plant growth (1 part filtered extract to 15 parts water).

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Sincerely420 said:

Soo...I'm on my 3rd soil mix using Fox Farms Ocean Forest as a base soil!

This mix is a little different tho as I'm reusing the soil from 3 plants that I harvest this month!
The soil mix that I used for those 3 plants was:
-1.5 cubic feet Fox Farm Ocean Forest
-30 cups Perlite
-3 tablespoons Hi-Cal lime
-24 cups Earth Worm Castings
-3/4cups Espoma Tomato Tone 3-4-6
-1 1/2cups Algamin Kelp Meal 1-0-2
-3/4cups Espoma Greensand
-7.5 cups Glacial Rock Dust

Off all those amendments added initially, the Kelp meal, the Green sand, and Rock dust will still be very giving to the soil ecosystem, and in prime of their release times by the time I get ready to use the soil again.
The Tomato tone as well potentially.
Given that set of facts, I've only had to LIGHTLY re-amend the soil and will have recycle it to get everything rolling again.

But why recycle your soil? Why not just buy new soil with every grow?
1.$$$ for one.
2.Living soils get BETTER with time. Do a quick Google search on "Soil Fertility" to make yourself familiar!
3.To NEVER have to buy soil again

And what I mean by a living soil, or a super soil, or an amended soil, is a soil that is complete.
A soil that has been enriched minerally as well as nutritionally! I could go so far as to saying a soil that has been inoculated as well, but mixing in mycorrhizae isn't a must. Just highly recommended given the relationship between the roots and the living soil.

In doing what I'm doing tho, or at least attempting to do, you can start with a few bags of Fox Farms Ocean Forest and develop a far more superior product over time by your lonely. The way to do so is cultivating the life in our soil!

Replenishing the sources of compost and the nutrition and mineral amendments, adding less and less over time until you've created a fertile, self sustaining soil.
Once you've built up a nice heard of micro organisms in your soil, they pretty much serve as the both the provider and the protector of our plants!

Below are pics of the 3 root balls that I broke back down to recycle their soil!

View attachment 2586390View attachment 2586389View attachment 2586387View attachment 2586388Dinafem Blue Widow Root Massw/ Perlite Lined Bottom. Roughly 4 gallons of soil. In the 3rd pic, you can also see how much soil I started out to begin with! About an inch or so lined the bottom. After 3 root balls broking down, the tupperware is full again!
View attachment 2586393View attachment 2586394View attachment 2586396View attachment 2586397View attachment 2586398<-Dinafem Blue Widow Root Mass Broken down!

View attachment 2586417View attachment 2586416View attachment 2586418View attachment 2586419Nirvana "autoflowering" Bubblicious Root Mass
View attachment 2586412View attachment 2586413View attachment 2586409View attachment 2586420View attachment 2586404View attachment 2586403
^^Nirvana "autoflowering" Bubblicious(Perlite Lined Bottom)
View attachment 2586402View attachment 2586406View attachment 2586401View attachment 2586405View attachment 2586407Nirvana "autoflowering" Bubblicious(Digging The Perlite Outta The Bottom. Was About 1/2" thick layer)
View attachment 2586411View attachment 2586415View attachment 2586414Nirvana "autoflowering" Bubblicious Root Mass Broken Down!

View attachment 2586429View attachment 2586428View attachment 2586434 Seedsman White Widow Root Mass Exposed!
View attachment 2586431View attachment 2586432View attachment 2586433View attachment 2586430 Seedsman White Widow Root Mass Broken Down!


So we went from this:
View attachment 2586390View attachment 2586398
View attachment 2586416View attachment 2586414
View attachment 2586428View attachment 2586430
View attachment 2586431View attachment 2586433View attachment 2586432

To this:

View attachment 2586448View attachment 2586444View attachment 2586447View attachment 2586445View attachment 2586446My products(amendment wise) are the very same once I bought back in October! Yep..I haven't had to buy anything else(amendment wise) since!
And I wont have to for another couple grows.
Compost and Worm Castings are the exception to that tho...I had to pick up some new bagged compost and bagged EWCs to work with.
Unless you produce your own, you'll be getting new bags of each every grow!



View attachment 2586452 <-Nice New Soil After Adding All of The Above! Much darker in color, and nice and loamy!
View attachment 2586454Made a nice "jumpstart" AACT that I bubbled for a solid 24hs to get the microbe action started on the right foot!
This tea consisted of :
1 gallon dechlorinated H20
1/4 cup Ancient Forest Compost
1 teaspoon Kelp Meal
1/2 teaspoon Neptune's Harvest
2 teaspoons Unsulphured Molasses

View attachment 2586462View attachment 2586457View attachment 2586464View attachment 2586463<-The finished product! Minus 1 motnh time for it to "cook" or "cycle"!


And there we have it! I've successfully recycled the soil from my first grow, watered it with an AACT, and will let it sit for at least a month, turning it once weekly before I use it!

As always, I will post pics with results of this recycled mix in time!

Cheers to Success And Stashing Cash!

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tobinates559 said:

for my next grow i want to try pretty much 1 bag each of all the FF soils they all add their own touch, maybe add a little bone meal and a few other things as needed! any thoughts?

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Herb Man said:

Let me step in here S man if I may, from the perspective of a man who resisted the notion of using teas on the basis that I didn’t really want the hassle of mixing up stuff like a chemist in a lab.

I came across this mix in a link I think you posted.

A good example of a guano tea recipe at the Bird’s Nest is really as simple as the following:
1 Gallon of water
1 TBSP of guano (for a flowering mix we’d use Jamaican or Indonesian Bat Guano - for a more general use fertilizer we
would choose Peruvian Seabird Guano.)
1 tsp blackstrap or sugar beet molasses

We mix the ingredients directly into the water and allow the tea mix to brew for 24 hours. It’s best to use an aquarium pump to aerate the tea, but an occasional shaking can suffice if necessary and still produce a quality tea. We will give you one hint from hard personal experience, make sure if you use the shake method that you hold the lid on securely, nobody appreciate having a crap milkshake spread over the room.
We also use molasses to sweeten and enrich Alfalfa meal teas. Our standard recipe for this use is:
4 gallons of water
1 cup of fine ground alfalfa meal
1 TBSP blackstrap or sugar beet molasses

After a 24 hour brew, this 100% plant-based fertilizer is ready for application. Alfalfa is a great organic plant food, with many benefits above and beyond just the N–P-K it can contribute to a soil mix or tea.


It was/is so simple that it ensures that I will be starting on my journey of being a tea maker once I pick up a water pump

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Sincerely420 said:

Nice! You're good then!
Per 1.5cubic foot bag of Fox Farm Ocean Forest
-32cups Earthworm Casting
-32cups Ancient Forest
-16cups Perlite
-11tsp Rooters Mycorrhizae
*This is your soil base or base soil. The Added EWC and compost just boosts you humus content. The perlite is for aeration. FFOF has some already within, but you'll need to add some to compensate for the added humus(EWC and compost). You can make sort of a judgement call as to how much you wanna you. But a gallon extra should be cool.
__________________________
-1.5cups Indonesian Hi-P Bat Guano (.5-13-.2)
-1.5cups Algamin Kelp Meal (1-0-2)
-1.5cups Espoma Tomato Tone (3-4-6)
*Nutritional Amendments. You can bump up to 2cups of Kelp meal, but everything else I'd keep constant as it's worked!
__________________________
-4 cups rock dust
-1 cup Azomite
-0.5cup Espoma Green sand
-1 cup Hi-Cal Lime
*Mineral Amendments.
__________________________

You got all of the above?

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c4ulater said:

lucky.. i'll wait till tmrw to see if they processed it.

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Sincerely420 said:

Just got that new guano I remember haha so I know this recipe is RIGHT up your alley lol! I haven't used that particular tea yet but I', used that recipe with a little soil/compost added to it! But the 3 little birds are for sure legit, so you should have success with the mix bro! Post you opinion of how it worked for your girls once you use it boss! You should be able to notice seom growth within the first 4 hours boss! Nice bump homie

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