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saugapepper's First Tea... working like a charm!

saugapepper

saugapepper

Alright first, my glog sucks. I don't have time to update it and my pepper patch is so small and uninteresting that I pretty much abandoned it months ago. Saying that, I have done a bit of research on here about brewing my own tea and finally after getting the necessary equipment, started my first tea today.

I started by filling up a 5 gallon bucket and running the air pump with four large airstones for a little more than hour to dechlorinate the water. Instead of putting washers on top of my airstones keep them down, I found 4 fairly large and heavy nuts at my local hardware store and put them on. The airstones would probably have stayed at the bottom anyway, but this was precautionary. After the water was rid of the chlorine, I mixed up my first tea using the following ingredients in a paint strainer bag. For those Canadians out there, Home Depot was the only place I could find these bags, RONA and Home Hardware had nothing but paper ones.

My recipe

2 cups earthworm castings
4 TBSP unsulfured blackstrap molasses (Canadians only, Bulk Barn has it for the best price around)
2 TBSP mycorrhizae
1 TBSP Muskie emulsion
1 TBSP dried Kelp meal
1/4 cup Indonesian Bat Guano
1/4 cup Mexican Bat Guano
handful of grass clippings

In it went about 30 minutes ago. Here are some photos. Notice the large stick with an ice hockey lace to keep the strainer bag afloat.

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Comments welcome. In the ingredients photo, you can see a bit of our kitchen that is from 1985. It looks like it was used in some godforsaken Brat Pack movie. Every time I'm cooking I think Molly Ringwald is going to bounce in and say something stupid. :rofl: Seriously though, we are saving to get it redone.

Will take photos in about 6 hours from now.
 
Looks great Conor!
I have never used a tea, but your ingredients look nice!!
I have used myko and kelp before with nice results!!

Keep us informed on your progress man!

:cool:
Kevin
 
Great job mate , i hope when i rock up with a plate full of scones with stawberry jam you break out the bone china cups and we will have tea..?
 
Thanks for the comments, I'm quite surprised how big the head on the tea is... it will be overflowing by tonight. I am going to use the tea after 30 hours because I am busy all day tomorrow and Sunday. I would have liked to have seen what 40 or even 48 hours looked like but that will have to wait for the next batch.
 
That's some fantastic looking tea, kudos. I need to stop brewing mine in a black bucket. That golden brown color of your tea is to die for.
 
Thanks Rancor, it is a lovely brown hue. I blew off some of the bubbles to have a look. I went out to get some beer for the weekend and by the time I came back the bubbles had come back up. It is slightly overflowing now. Stinks to the high heavens.

24 Hours

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That compost tea looks awesome!! Great work!! First year grower here and I am planning to use compost tea to feed my entire garden next year after reading the AACT thread! I can't wait to make my own batch too. Hope it grows wonder in your garden!!
 
Thanks ncbeerbrewer, I was a bit nervous at first since I put down a bit of money on all this stuff and I didn't want it to fail the first time around. I had to knock back the foam a few times. I'm going out in about half an hour to pour the tea on my plants and then clean-up. I had asked CayenneMist about how many stones and he said the more the better aeration. With the 4 large stones, I figured a 4 nozzle airpump was the way to go in a 5 gallon container. If I were to use a bigger container to make the tea, I would have bought an 8 nozzle pump. Saying that, two is more than enough in a 5 gallon but the cost was minimal between the 2 and 4 nozzle so I went with the 4.

One question remains, how long before I see my plants enjoying their feed? Couple days? A week? I plan on brewing another batch before Labor Day... going to put a little less molasses and let it go for 48 hours.
 
Nice looking tea! thanks for the bulk barn tip, I haven't been able to find un sulphured molasses anywhere, i'll give them a shot.

I use that same rooters myco, I find it works amazing.
 
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