plant based nutrients from trimmings?

I posted this in the organic section but it's not gettin much love. We have some smart organic growers here locally, are any of you trying to make your own nutes?


I wanted to start a discussion with the organic crowd (veganic growers/ tea brewers/ nute makers in particular) about using your trimmings to make your own nutes.

Many beneficial plants are listed in these threads but I don't see much about marijuana being used for NPK. I don't think weed gets a huge taproot like comfrey or some others but it still has a very aggressive root system and big appetite for macro and micro nutrients, so (to me) it seems like MJ could be considered a dynamic accumulator and should be very useful once fermented. I feed MJ more nutes than anything else I grow, so it should be fairly rich or at least have a useable amount of NPK left in the plant matter, right? Actually I'm kind of surprised it's not the most common plant used for fermenting among us growers. Especially caregivers with a high plant count/perpetual harvest or outdoor growers with high biomass.

I made some a while ago in a 1 gallon juice jug, fermented for a month, and fed it to some big flower bushes in the yard but i dont know how beneficial it was. they're still alive though! haha maybe i could send a leaf sample to a lab, or a liquid sample of the brew. Is there a home kit to test NPK values in a solution? That's what i need.

I did consider the chemical nutes angle, but then i thought anyone who uses fermented plant extracts is probably against using chemicals and also this is posted in the organic section, so that should be obvious. All these plants would be organic or vegan organically grown, then leaves/stems fermented for plant based nutrition after being trimmed or harvested.

I'm no scientist, this is just my stoner brain thinking WTF, we should feed the weed with weed, or at least incorporate it! maybe there's a reason nobody does this
please chime in and further my organic education





Another question - would an EM-1/AEM solution hurt a living root system or its rhizophere? could it be beneficial, adding more microbial life? I ask because I had the idea to use an activated EM solution to ferment the plant matter in versus clean water. it def sped up decomposition last time, and i only added a splash to the already fermenting jug. so what if it was just straight EM

Redbird1223 said:

I'm no scientist, this is just my stoner brain thinking WTF, we should feed the weed with weed, or at least incorporate it! maybe there's a reason nobody does this
please chime in and further my organic education

Click to expand...

Did the epiphany look like this???

[video=youtube_share;9CS7j5I6aOc]http://youtu.be/9CS7j5I6aOc[/video]

LOL holy shit that was funny.....the third PWAAAA! is the winner


and probably yes

Hey redbird, good to see you take it to the next level

Making my own FPE has fascinated me too but is something I haven't done a ton of. I plan on messing around with them more in the back yard this year when the temperature goes down. A couple of notes about your post:

a ) MJ is most definitely a dynamic accumulator
b ) you can buy NPK test kits that will give you a ballpark idea of the levels of N P K
c ) the levels of n p k will vary from batch to batch, because the accumulated nutrients will be different in almost every strain / batch , as it is with most dynamic accumulators (the numers you have seen on charts are just ballparks when using any of those substances and can vary from plant to plant in the extraction)

EM-1 should be used not only to ferment your plant extracts (it's really fast) but should be used as a soil conditioner every once in a while too. Take your em-1, and transform it in to aem, then water that into your garden. AEM can be made from EM-1 with a little extra fermentation

would the em microbes still be alive once fpe is completed? I want to make sure any residual microbes in the homemade nutes don't start composting my roots. when using as a soil conditioner, are you using near live plants? that would answer my question i guess if they're unaffected.

so far I have only made a bermuda grass fpe (supposed to be high in N, smelled worse than animals carcasses, terrible idea, don't do it) and a MJ fpe, which took forever to stink and was never as bad as the bermuda. I make them in 1 gal hawaiian punch juice jugs and set them in the sun. Its a clear container so I'll try to document the next one, it's pretty cool to watch

I haven't seen Bird on for a minute, he has talked about making fpe's from sugarcane. i wonder if its actual stick sugarcane or what, i wanna know cause my bioboost is fermented sugarcane and its about $90 a liter. one day I want to have a self sufficient grow. I converted my little vineyard into a big ass chicken coop and will be getting some chicks soon and rabbits over the winter, they make great fertilizers. rabbit poo is a cold fert and doesn't even have to be composted. someday.


where could I find some of those test kits? thanks man

keep it comin

When fermenting you should definitely do it in a dark temperate place that isn't too cold or too hot.

Look into bokashi fermentation and you will see they mix the em-1 with table / veggie scraps , then use the liquid that comes out of the bottom of the bokashi bin as their fertilizer after it has fermented. It's that liquid that is the FPE and is basically elemental nutrients ready for your plants. (By the way this stuff is very strong and needs to be diluted severely)

You do not need to worry about em-1 eating your live roots, I've never heard of this phenomena.. it should only speed up the composition of the dead material.

NPK test kits can be found at nursery's or online.

You should look into what micronutrients your fpe might need and try to find some materials to add in to fill that void.

all of the npk test kits ive ever seen are for soil, have you ever seen one for testing liquids? this may take some hunting.

I don't think there's a test for micro levels, so i guess the best thing to do would be use it and see if/ what deficiencies show up, your thoughts?

Bokashi sound like it'd be hard to start, ..I'll probly make a bin one day though, i have to try everything

going back to my stoner weed theory, if we're using MJ as the main/only plant matter in the fpe, hypothetically, shouldn't it be choc full of micronutes too? I mean if comfrey and nettles and dandelions can be dynamic accumulators and pull iron and zinc and cal/mag etc. out of the soil on their own, then shouldn't MJ have even more since it was force-fed things like molasses, liquid karma, fulvics and all the other helpfuls we add to MJ but not to comfrey and nettles and dandelions?


I think i'm gonna save all my garbage trim and hopefully make enough fpe to fully sustain 1 test plant through its life, fed only organic MJ fpe. then we will have a better idea how feasible this really is. but for now this is turning into a great discussion!

hey hacker, would it be good to add a splash of EM-1 to my aact's also? would 2 different bacterial colonies coexist?

I've been making a few banana teas lately to add in lightly with this biocanna line, any experience using bananas?

Add the em-1 at the end of the brew cycle or on it's own separate day... the main bacillus used in em-1 is actually an anaerobic

You could also bury some em-1 fermentation in your compost pile (if you have one) and make your teas using that compost in about a month. An em-1 composted pile can fully compost in as little as a month as compared to other methods and will provide that rich biodiversity you would want in your teas.

I have heard about banana FPE teas where you mix the Em-1 or aem-1 with bananas and use the FPE that is created from it (usually banana, pineapple, bamboo or other native materials to a tropical landscape)

My one gripe with bananas are the amount of pesticides used on the peels. Many that vermicompost skip them unless they are fully organic without pesticide.

My tea of choice is EWC / compost based with some kelp, or guano based if I need flowering (i know your veganic ; \) I have heard fish emulsion / hydrolysate is kick ass if used as well.

http://microbeorganics.com/ is my source for anything tea related, especially his tea brewer descriptions and air pump size selection. If you don't have a scope he gives you guidelines for a tea that will be diverse.