First off, all the credit goes to Tim Wilson (aka Microbe Man) and all his hard work he's done for all of us.
http://microbeorganics.com/
Secondly, I like to thank RIU member st0wandgrow for turning me onto this amazing site.
Read the great link before continuing...take your time. Now read again you stoner
I was personally brewing compost teas wrong for too long, and basically watering dead microbes
Until I read the above link...like 10 times. Now the most common problems are not enough air (in my case), bad math,
and the urge to tweak. Trust me when I say this...
follow MM's recipe to a "Tea"!!!
First you need some materials and ingredients:
1) Container, air stones,
proper air pump, or buy/make a brewer
2) Microbe infused type of compost, humus, EWC, outdoor soil. Variety will provide a diversity of fungi and bacteria in your
'boomin brew'.
3) Kelp, alfalfa, fish hydrolysate(YUM), unsulfured molasses, clean water (no chlorine or chloramine). You can throw in a little molasses and bubble water for a day ahead of time.
The hard part for most is well...not doing it like Microbe Man says!!! He's the guy looking into an expensive microscope and putting in countless hours of research...not us!!!
Disclaimer: This method is for a living populated microbe tea only! This isn't to be combined with 'nutes' or enzyme teas! Goal is to give life to soil.
Here's some mathematical conversions for proper aeration per MM:
You need at least .05 CFM/gal or ideally .08 CFM/gal or greater. Most air pumps are specified in LPM (liters per minute).
So for one gallon you need at least 1.42 LPM or the optimum 2.3 (rounded) LPM
ie If you were to brew 5 gal you would need at least 7.1 LPM...preferably 11.5 or more.
Here's a link to some quality affordable air pumps
http://www.hydroponics.net/c/413
and here's a flow conversion link
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/flow-units-converter-d_405.html
Recipe ingredients
We'll call (# of gal) G
1) EWC, compost, humus, soil, etc. @ 2.38% (G x .0023)
2) unsulfered pure black strap molasses (find bulk at feed stores) @ 0.5% (G x .005)
3) kelp @ 0.25% or less (reason in MM's link) G x .0025
4) fish hydrolysate @ 0.063% (G x .00063)
ie 5 gal brew would be:
1) 2 cups compost
2) 1/2 cup BSM
3) 3 T kelp
4) 12mL fish hydrolysate
link for volume conversions
http://www.onlineconversion.com/volume.htm
Any questions you have may most likely be answered here
http://microbeorganics.com/ Yes that's the same link I told you to read twice
Have fun and please just do what MM says to do...it's all laid out for us already.
