Soil Food Web Gardening with Compost Teas

My current thought process is Vermicompost. I take my household scraps and turn it to Bokashi. I have two 30 gallon Smart Pots on a little raised wire platform with Red Wigglers. Started with used soil and I add the Bokashi off to the side so the worms can go get it as they want it.

I'm turning my table scraps into the best compost available. I plan to add the following to the worm smart pots:

Alfalfa
Kelp Meal
Neem Meal
Karanja meal
Manure or compost
Comfrey
Yarrow
Horsetail Ferns
Stinging Nettles
Fish Meal
Fish Bone Meal
Flaxseed Meal
Rock Dusts
- Glacial Rock
- Bentonite
- Oyster Shell
- Basalt
Agsil 16
Crab Meal powder
Clay Powders **

** Montmorillonite and Pyrophyllite

So when fully composted in a couple months, the EWC will be heavily amended and great for top-dressing.

Wow...that EWC is going to be insane my friend...highest quality castings I could imagine for real....

And how did you start up your bokashi? Did you buy bran or just use EM-1 to start a culture? I'm looking to start a bokashi bucket ASAP

Prokashi.com I bought two buckets to rotate through and a gallon bag of his inoculated bran. At some point I'm going to make my own using locally collected BIMs . See the link in my sig that talks about it. Beneficial Indigenous Microorganisms. I'm not into buying microbes except predatory bacteria and fungi. My local microbes are at the top of the local microbial food chain. The store-bought microbes are not at the top of my food chain. They may have been at the top of someone else's food chain, but not mine. My local BIMs, through natural selection, are by definition the best for doing the job in my location. So I'd collect them, amplify them into a serum, and inoculate the bran, etc.

God damn, tried to +rep you but "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Rrog again". It'll come in due time

Thanks for that, I'm bout to get started collecting some BIM, so I will probably use that to inoculate my bran. Trying to go as cheap as possible right now, so I won't be buying bokashi buckets or inoculated bran or anything fancy - just using 5 gal home depot buckets and BIM hopefully.

You can use a pail within a pail. Drill some holes in the top pail. You want to get collecting fluid out of there. Done.

Buy bran at the local feed store for cheap. Collect the BIM and ferment the bran. Takes a month + dry time. Maybe buy a bag of inoculated bran just so you can get started.

I like how the very best stuff you can provide a plant is so simple and cheap.

Rrog I just read that worms have chitin in their skin and that the chitinase enzyme that the bacteria that eat chitin use to break it down can kill worms. So I would think twice before using the crab meal. Or at least if you find them dying you know why.

https://www.rollitup.org/organics/604708-chitin-chitoson-chitinase.html

Hey N2- I hear what you're saying, but crab shell meal is a very common and highly recommended amendment in soils and worm bins, specifically. I think the reason is that crab shell is made from the harder Alpha-chitin, and the worms (wormhairs actually) have the much softer Beta-chitin. Arthropods have the harder Alpha-Chitin, and I think it's likely that the crab shell meal is attracting specific Alpha-chitin related bacteria.

Again, worms thrive in crab shell amended compost, so there's gotta be a reason.

Cool I just thought I would let you know because I didn't want you to ruin your worm bin as soon as you started it.

Ya! I had to go dig that info up to try and make some sense of it. I really appreciate it!

Rrog said:

My current thought process is Vermicompost. I take my household scraps and turn it to Bokashi. I have two 30 gallon Smart Pots on a little raised wire platform with Red Wigglers. Started with used soil and I add the Bokashi off to the side so the worms can go get it as they want it.

I'm turning my table scraps into the best compost available. I plan to add the following to the worm smart pots:

Alfalfa
Kelp Meal
Neem Meal
Karanja meal
Manure or compost
Comfrey
Yarrow
Horsetail Ferns
Stinging Nettles
Fish Meal
Fish Bone Meal
Flaxseed Meal
Rock Dusts
- Glacial Rock
- Bentonite
- Oyster Shell
- Basalt
Agsil 16
Crab Meal powder
Clay Powders **

** Montmorillonite and Pyrophyllite

So when fully composted in a couple months, the EWC will be heavily amended and great for top-dressing.

Click to expand...

Thats pretty much what I do to but with less amendments. I just add the usual suspects, nothing wrong with either way its just I don't see that much of a difference for the amount of extra work I was putting into my garden. It started to became an everyday job maintaining and keeping up with everything, it got pretty outta hand lol. Now I just keep it simple and am very content with the results.

I'll be building soil starting with 1/3 Sphagnum, 1/3 pumice, 1/3 compost. Then many of the same amendments listed above. You buy a supply and it's a teaspoon here and there after that.

That teaspoon is going to go a long way! My worm bin is literally black, with the occasional green scraps in it. The EWC my worms were making after digesting my home made bokashi was very light brown, with white specles it was crumbly and dusty. I just put a dime size pinch on my plants during flowering then around a month in I would add another pinch. Best fertilizer ever, I ended up giving a lot of it away to my friends because I was so proud of my creations, they all said it was the best stuff they used also. Good luck Rrog, it's hard work but hard work pays off.

Really looking forward to it, Spliff. Thanks for posting your great experience with this.

No problem, look into throwing kmag in your worm bins also, had great results. . .

Spliff

SpliffAndMyLady said:

No problem, look into throwing kmag in your worm bins also, had great results. . .

Spliff

Click to expand...

How much kmag? got a half a box and would love to use some up by adding it to the worm feeding regimen


Rrog - got a bag of inoculated bran in the mail, figured itd be faster this way even though its a bit more spendy...now a few questions about the biochar. I have a mix of spent carbon filter bits and hardwood lump charcoal that I smashed into pieces the size of a marble or smaller, it is currently soaking in some pantyhose in a 5gal bucket full of a few cups EWC and a few cups alfalfa meal. Should I just strain this tomorrow afternoon and add the charcoal to the soil mix? I have heard of others soaking for a few weeks in order to "activate" the biochar. Just want to make sure the charcoal isnt robbing nutes from the soil once it's added.

Also, do you know of any soil mixes that don't necessarily need to "cook" before using? I know that every soil will benefit from sitting around for 30 or more days, but right now I am about 25 days away from usable soil and I need to transplant...don't necessarily want to keep planting in Roots 707 given how HUNGRY my ladies have been even if I feed them a ton of bottled nutes (which I am in the process of trying to use up for good...). I was thinking maybe just toss in a bit of alfalfa, crab, neem, and some glacial rock dust. Maybe charcoal as well, or kmag, or something lol. Is any of this stuff going to burn my ladies if they are already pretty mature (at least 12 inches tall)??? Would love to have your advice cause you definitely know what you are talking about when it comes to this stuff

Dont know exactly, I rarely measure. I'm guessing you have a worm bin and not a big warm farm so I would just throw in around 1/2-2/3 of a cup, apply more as needed. If you don't got amended soil on hand I reccommend always having a bag of Happy Frog Tomato and Vegetable for veg mix and Happy Frog Fruit and Flower for bloom mix, follow directions on bag and add 1 cup lime to a cubic foot of soil. No cooking needed, and you can recycle this soil mix. Also you could follow directions at 1/2 and feed with tea's if you'd like to be more "hands on".

Cann, EWC should always be "cool" for the plants. Alfalfa is really hot. If it were me, I'd mix EWC .

The carbon is good to go after a couple days. This is a small process

Perfect, thank you

About to go add the final few ingredients to my recreation of your soil mix...pumped to see how it turns out. Do you use this as a hot mix similar to subs supersoil (only in the bottom of the pot) or do you plant straight into it? Also, do you know of any mixes that dont need to cook? I know that every mix will benefit from cooking, but looking to mix up a quick immediately usuable amended soil that won't burn - any suggestions? Maybe just toss a tiny bit of crab, neem, EWC, rock dust, kelp, and lime? Would love to hear what you have to say

Cann said:

Perfect, thank you

About to go add the final few ingredients to my recreation of your soil mix...pumped to see how it turns out. Do you use this as a hot mix similar to subs supersoil (only in the bottom of the pot) or do you plant straight into it? Also, do you know of any mixes that dont need to cook? I know that every mix will benefit from cooking, but looking to mix up a quick immediately usuable amended soil that won't burn - any suggestions? Maybe just toss a tiny bit of crab, neem, EWC, rock dust, kelp, and lime? Would love to hear what you have to say

Click to expand...

I have used the Moonshine Mix recipe as my base soil and run it once before adding amendments < You do not have to wait for this to cook and it has a wide variety of stuff in it already. You could still add rock dust too it if you like.
http://www.icmag.com/ic/showthread.php?t=23970

This is a great soil blend in my opinion to start with, It has great texture and really doesn't need much if any food. I would use roots instead on oceans forest nowadays because I always get gnats when I buy a bag of Ocean Forest.
I even noticed that Rare Dankness has this recipe on their site in the FAQ section on how to grow in soil.

Hey TF,
I attended the SFW seminars in Oregon in the early 2000's, it was 5 days of intense class room work and some field work.
I was in the golf course business for 35 yrs and used organics about the last 20 yrs, ranging from org. nutes to compost tea, to anaerobic microbe applications. Used compost tea a lot and raised composting worms for most of those 20 yrs and used the worm casting for tea and to blended it with other compost for plantings.
I am here to say that it works. When I get my grow going I will be using organics when possible.

I highly recommend the SFW seminars, they are a bit costly but to me was well worth the cost.



GR8