Tea Time-How do I extract nutrients and micro-organisms to make a liquid nutrient?

Nothing beats growing your own. You can go to the classiest dispensary and buy the most hyped up ‘strain’ of the season, but nothing will ever beat the feeling of preparing and smoking your very own harvest of cost-free high-grade.

As medical cannabis patients in Illinois gear up to plant their first baby ganja plants of the year on January 1, 2020 most will surely be seeking a high quality, smooth burning smoke. The superior cannabis that comes from using organic and sustainably sourced materials is surely motivation enough to start thinking about our plant food and stimulant inputs, but knowing that this medicine was grown with good intent and in a way that is both healthy for the planet and our bodies can add even more karma to the acts of growing and smoking.

Brewing a tea out of organic inputs to be applied as either a foliar spray or root drench has been common practice for decades now, and can be as easy as adding earthworm castings (EWC) to water, mixing, and watering by hand, or as complex as building a custom brewer out of specialized equipment to ensure full and complete extraction of unharmed micro-organisms and nutrients upon microscope analysis.

Regardless of how complex and in-depth one wants to brew their tea, a general understanding of the soil food web can help the new and experienced grower learn how to fully develop and adapt to specific situations. As this understanding becomes more developed one can see that brewing tea is more than just plant food, but it is a high potency, organic inoculant prepared to feed the soil in which your plants shall thrive.

There are three main ways that teas are brewed. All of them include ingredients like compost (yea…), and often EWC, molasses, humic acid, kelp meal, alfalfa, composted manure, as well as foraged items found nearby or waste products such as blood meal, bone meal, fish meal, and feather meal, to name a few.

Aerated teas are brewed with ingredients contained in a fabric, like burlap or a nylon sock, and set in either buckets using either aquarium air stones to fully aerate and help displace/mix water on a small scale or in specialized brewers that us a high power air pump displace water up a pvc channel, thus mixing and aerating the tea at the same time. This type of tea is often brewed in order to propagate and extract as many micro-organisms as possible where high quality, close-to-the-source compost is available. A food source for the micro-organisms is made available and consumed while the movement of water and air essentially knocks the microbes from the compost into the water/protein solution, ensuring efficient application of active microbes. A typical brew time of 24-32 hours ensures an active brew is applied to your plants. This is often the most popular, and safest method of brewing teas as it avoids anaerobic bacteria. While not all anaerobes are harmful, presenting the conditions for them to flourish can have dire consequences.

Non-aerated compost teas are brewed by letting the ingredients rest suspended in water that remains passive except only a couple times a day for a minute or two, mixed by hand or with a pump. This type of tea encourages extraction of micro organisms like an aerated tea would, albeit at a much smaller rate. It also encourages the growth and reproduction of micro-organisms along with the production of their exudates such as enzymes, micronutrients, and other catalysts found to benefit plant and soil health. This method uses the same ingredients as an aerated tea, as well as the occasional fresh and/or dried wild-crafted and foraged local ingredients, namely mugwort, nettles, horsetail, and members of the mint family. It is imperative that the brew be checked and note taken on the timeframe of the brew, not allowing the brew to go longer than 24-32 hours with application taking no longer than a few hours after the preparation is finished brewing.

The final form of tea is anaerobic tea. An anaerobic tea is often brewed using fresh or dried, non-composted plant sources either cultivated or found as close as possible to where you are brewing and growing. These teas are often left to sit and ferment by feeding the indigenous micro-organisms on your plant source in order to extract phyto-compounds that may have beneficial effect on your plants. These brews are made by letting the preparation sit for 3-5 days during the summer or 5-7 days during winter until dormancy and die-off of microbes occurs. These are often brewed as a shelf-stable, home-made bio-stimulants and are applied typically at high dilution rates. I will be going over one form of anaerobic teas learned from Korean natural farming methods called fermented plant juice in a post next week.

Now, lets get a little dirty and have some fun brewing up our own tea! This method will specifically be a non-aerated compost tea, but I suggest for the first-time or unsure/novice brewer to follow the first few steps and then scale down the methodology to a 5 gallon aerated tea. A five gallon brew is plenty of tea to either dilute 5:1/compost tea:water and apply as a root drench on a personal indoor or outdoor garden or apply undiluted as a foliar spray to help feed the plant and add beneficial organisms to the leaf surface.

Let us start by acquiring our ingredients:

1. Compost-Ensure it is dark, high quality compost. If manure is involved, ensure it is composted manure as fresh manure (especially from horse) has a high chance of burning your plants with immediately available nitrogen and is full anaerobes and is likely to cause pathogen proliferation. *Be sure to avoid buying bagged mushroom compost, as this is just the spent remains of mushroom cultivation and has very little nutritive or microbial value*
2. Earthworm castings (EWC)-Earthworms are one of the best ways to get on the way to a regenerative growing methodology. Think of these guys as mini-livestock, constantly cranking out beautiful poop that is full of nutrients that wont burn. One of the best parts about EWC along with the high amounts of vital calcium are the enzymes and microbes found within that will be injected into your grow medium and onto your plants leaves.
3. Molasses-Be sure that it is unsulfured, as sulfur will adjust pH to undesireable levels and prevent the growth of beneficial mycorrhizae. Molasses is a more complex and nutrient dense source of carbohydrates than white cane sugar. This ensures you wont get blooms of one type of microbe, and also supplies micronutrients to feed plants and microbes. ***Now this is where one could stop acquiring ingredients and finish with a VERY high quality brew that is sure to kick start life in your soil and plants. I will show you some more ingredients that I find to be helpful, feel free to pick and choose and experiment, but always be sure to apply a new and untested batch to a tester plant if one is unsure of the quality.***
4. Alfalfa-I prefer using alfalfa pellets over meal, often sold as horse feed, this is often more cost effective and most definitely low dust. Alfalfa has good levels of available nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium (NPK) as well as micro-nutrients vital to plant vibrancy, and most importantly, triacontanol which is often the secret ingredient in some over-the-top (in terms of marketing) off-the-shelf bottles of stimulants. I can promise that use of alfalfa, either brewed in tea or mixed in with soil will have a great effect on yield and flower quality.
5. Kelp meal-Kelp not only supplies micro-nutrients but also supplies a host of natural plant growth regulators (PGR) that help boost the plants health in a safe way.
6. Indigenous Micro-Organisms (IMO)-I obtain this by simply taking a scoop of a leaf/mulch pile that is undergoing the process of decomposition. This can also be found in any healthy forest Spring-Autumn. Look for decomposition and active fungal hyphae with the tell-tale bright white branching of the fungus among established groves of oak, maple, hickory, and elm.
7. Innoculant-This will be acquired at a store as either a specific or mixed powder of spores and propagules. This is meant to further diversify the microbe populations in your brew to ensure the ‘good bugs’ out compete the ‘bad’.
8. Any other mix of organic dry fertilizer. I prefer Roots Organics and Down To Earth dry mixes as they often contain many of the ingredients listed above, as well as some other ingredients that may or may not be as useful as a standalone in situations outside of brewing tea as these dry mixes can be a great addition to your garden as a top dressing every few weeks.
9. Burlap or any other mesh to hold the ingredient mixture. I prefer burlap because it has a very large mesh size which will allow for microbes to be transported into the solution much more effectively. If using finer powders in an indoor environment or are applying with a sprayer prone to cloging, a tighter mesh item like a sock, old t-shirt, or panty hose (another crowd favorite for its sleek permeability)
10. A compost tea brewer. I will show you how I set up my brewer which brews 20 gallons as I am also using this for my vegetable and produce garden, but I would suggest scaling down this recipe to a 5 gallon bucket and using a large aquarium pump, tubing and air stone if you are working inside or on a smaller scale.

Now, lets mix our ingredients and begin the brew…With this recipe I am using 4 cups of most ingredients ensuring easy scalability down to 5 gallon (just substitue 1 cup for 4, etc.)

1. Add 4 cups of alfalfa pellets.
2. Add 4 cups of earthworm castings.
3. Add 1 shovel scoop of active indigenous micro-organisms.
4. Add 4 cups, or about two big handfuls of compost.
5. Add some organic dry nutrients and innoculants. In this recipe I used one cup of Bio-Live from Down To Earth, and a quarter cup of Terp Tea-Bloom and Elemental from Roots Organics. These products offer a wide array of organic food sources as well as a host of species of mycorrhizae, beneficial bacteria, and trichoderma.
6. Set up your brewer. I use two pumps set up to a timer to run every 6 hours for one minute. There is the notion from experts that submersible and mag-drive pumps like these can have a very damaging effect on micro-organisms extracted from compost so I like to keep them on for as little amount of time as possible. The first pump is a submersible pump that aims upwards and has an attachment to fit an air hose. When the pump is switched on it will also suck air to enrich your tea solution with oxygen. The second pump is a mag-drive pump that keeps reservoir water flowing in a circular motion, ensuring there are no stagnant spots in the brewer for anaerobes to dwell.
7. Tie your ‘tea bag’ to the tank so it doesn’t sink to the bottom and get in the way of the pumps.
8. Add water and molasses. Let mix for a good 5 minutes before turning the pumps off.
9. Rig up your timer to go off for one minute every six hours.
10. Cover the top with a lid and let brew for 24-32 hours.

After you have waited for 24-36 hours you can use your tea. There will be a faintly sweet, slightly farm/barn type of smell. It will not be too strong, and if you do sense a foul or putrid smell at all from your brew, toss it.

You can now remove the tea bag and add it to your compost pile. This is a jump started mass of microbes ready to boost your compost pile into overdrive. I have found these remnants of bags nearly decomposed and full of worms after only a short time while turning a compost pile.

Remove your pumps and any other accessories and immediately wash them off and let dry in the sun. Your tea is ready to use.

I like to apply my teas most frequently in the early evening. This means that if I begin my tea at 10am-12pm I will have tea ready by 8 pm the next day. By applying when the sun is not so strong, you can help your tea and the microbes within find their way into the nooks and crannies of the soil and on the leaf surface before evaporation is spurred on by the warm sun.

Thank you for reading, and of course, have fun with it! I hope that this has been helpful and motivating. This is not a set in stone recipe but rather a guide to a rich and vibrant all natural plant food and stimulant. Be sure to comment or email with any questions!

For some more great reading on the topic, check out

Jeff Lowenfels “Teaming” series of books

&

Dr. Elaine Ingham’s “Compost Tea Brewing Manual” for some serious in depth knowledge dropping

Have fun, be safe, and keep it with Peace!