I didn't finish up last night...err...I guess I mean this morning, until after about 3:30 AM. But now I've had a chance to go through my photos, and collect my thoughts!
Before I post some pics of the girls, I wanted to talk about the Nature's Own Microbe Tea Soil Life and Activator, and the Yucca Schidigera Extract. To sum it up I was very impressed. These are both excellent products, and unless my plants fall over dead in the next couple of days, I won't be going without them in the future!
For brewing tea I use a 5 gallon DIY AACT brewer that consists of a bucket, some 1/2 PVC pipe and fittings, some air hose and an air pump. My brewer is a copy of the one posted here:
Tea brewing, by madodah, but I don't use a heater.
It's really a scaled down version of the 25 gallon brewer that Oregon State University provided plans for here: Oregon State University 25 Gallon Compost Brewer.
This is what mine looks like.
Monday night I started brewing 2 gallons of tea. The first thing I do is add the hottest tap water I can get out of the faucet, and run the air pump with the plain hot water until it cools down to 70-80º F, or until I remember I'm supposed to be brewing tea, an hour or so later.
The Microbe Tea Soil Life and Activator is a powder that you add 1/4 cup of to each gallon of water.
After I added 1/2 cup to the 2 gallons of now luke warm water, I stirred it up really well, and ended up with this.
I brew in my basement, and although it's heated, I stick a square of fiberglass insulation under the bucket just so it's not sitting directly on the cold concrete/tile floor.
The instructions say to brew for 24 hours...when I got home last night it had been about 22 1/2 hours and this is what I had on my hands.
It was a bit of a mess, but that is what we are after! It really does make regular EWC tea look rather sad in comparison! I didn't wait until the 24 hours was up...instead, I used it at this point.
I use paint strainers to filter the concentrated tea. They are about the best for this purpose IMHO. I've seen people use pantyhose, etc as a teabag/filter, but beneficial fungi can also be filtered out with some of these materials. The fine mesh of a paint strainer is perfect for this.
After it's filtered (on the left) it needs to be diluted 1:9 with water...that's 1/2 gallon added to 4 1/2 gallons of water (on the right). At this point the ppm of chlorine in tap water isn't really high enough to harm that many of the beneficials in our concentrate, but I let the water sit 24 hours just the same.
Now we need to add the Yucca extract. According to the bottle, there's two ways you can go...1/4 cup per 5 gallons of diluted tea, or 1/8 cup per quart of concentrated tea. I wasn't sure if I was going to use all the tea, so I went with 1/4 cup per 5 gallons of diluted tea so I wouldn't waste any Yucca.
Yucca is a foaming agent, so once you add it and stir it in things will start to get a bit foamy. The pic above was taken before I mixed it up well. I decided to put the camera down at this point since it's not water proof! The diluted tea is then used as a soil drench and a foliar spray.
A couple things I noticed with the Yucca...first the soil seemed to absorb the tea more readily and second, the natural surfactant properties worked really well to coat the leaves for the foliar spray. Like I said...I won't go back to not using these products after seeing how they work!
Some pics of the girls to follow!
