Sources found for Compost Tea recipe and soil biology

Hope this is allowed.

I did some searching for better prices on the various materials recommended  as soil treatments and for compost tea.  

I am in North Alabama and finding SEA-90 was a struggle, their local distributor list is out of date.

I did get some SEA-90 but it is an online order (seaagri.com) and 10 lbs cost $33.65 delivered.

A source for gallon of Blackstrap Molasses --  ($22 delivered) is from honeycrispy.

Finding Fish Hydrolysate is a still struggle.  I did find a "Kelp4less.com" that sells a gallon for $33 with Free Shipping but I do now know if this is equivalent to the high quality hydrolysate.  Is it complete with oils or is it "good enough"?

I will drive up to Columbia Tennessee to get a couple of 10 lb bags of Tennessee Brown Rock Dust at $10 a bag.  This may be a couple lifetimes supply but I am always eager to help the neighbors.

Right now I am using the recipe found at Microbe Organics since I can easily figure out and get those materials.  I intend to use Travis Schulert's "Compost Tea Made Easy" as soon as I can build a retort and source some bones for bone char and of course also biochar.

I love this forum for learning and getting myself out of the house and turning my yard into a food forest.  If any can add to this list I would appreciate it.

Dont worry if you cant source every ingredient for the tea. I make mine with just goos old compost most of the time. It works wonders but the kelp salt and molosses will help.
Molosses can normaly be bought at a feed store instead of online fairly afordably, i use honey since my nieghbour keeps bees.
The salt and kelp are harder for those of us who dont live near the ocean to find.

I did see a feed store that had dried Molasses.  Is that something that can be used in compost tea?  Or is it just a left over from Molasses processing?  

I was also able to get kelp in a 50 lb bag but it was around $50.  

SEA-90 can be bought directly from the company.  

I may end up having  lifetime supply of everything.  First world problems.......
 

Its just animal grade instead of human grade. Although we used to taste it as kids when my sister made horse treats and it never harmed us. Dont think so anywho.

What you want it for is the complex sugers to feed the fungi or was is the bacteria? I forget.

Dried molasses is just fine and easier to measure, it will rehydrate easily so no worries there.
1 dollar a pound for kelp is not bad for a land locked person and it will provide quite a few of the minerals.

If you talked to others in your area and they wanted sea-90 perhaps you would then look into becoming a distributor (that will drop your personal price).

Instead of fish Hydrolysate I use fish emulsion (nearly the same stuff just cheaper to buy in reasonable quantities since you will dilute it before making the addition).

You are going for growing bacteria and fungi, so super high quality is not as important as you might have been led to believe.
What you want is no contaminates overall.
Don't forget to set up aeration, that is key to brewing a microbe rich compost tea.

Bacteria feed on complex sugars and fungi feed on lignin (wood fibers) this is what you need to keep in mind as you build the brew bag, you want to grow the organisms you need and in the right ratios.
For a good overall tea shoot for a 50/50 bacteria to fungi this will be the base tea for most all your garden spaces and even pastures.

Redhawk

Thanks Redhawk.  Yeah I was spending a lot of effort to find high quality. I will now focus on getting everything onto my plants as early as possible now that the weather is warming. I have a vortex brewer now and it works well.

I also grow gourmet and medicinal mushrooms in a humidity chamber so I also add spent compost to the compost pile.  I have found mushrooms growing out the side of the compost pile when I go to turn it over.

mushroom compost is super stuff for brewing a tea, you can also use it as a dressing around fruit trees and berry bushes.
The resulting hyphae network will really help just about every plant type nutrition wise.

I found this surprise this February after a several week warm spell.  I buried some Straw Logs with Golden Oyster Mushroom Mycelium last fall.  I thought that it was spent.  The Baba Berry Raspberry looks happy too!

Last year i had found molasses for $15 gallon delivered from bass pro shops or cabelas. Cant remember which one. With deer season over it could be on clearance since its sold as a deer attractant.

Others here had mentioned buying deer food plot seeds on clearance for pasture improvements also.

Dennis Bangham wrote:I found this surprise this February after a several week warm spell.  I buried some Straw Logs with Golden Oyster Mushroom Mycelium last fall.  I thought that it was spent.  The Baba Berry Raspberry looks happy too!

Yum!  Mycelium doesn't die but it can use up all of the food supply and go dormant. What you experienced is just that, the log was spent nutritionally for the mycelium and when you buried it, it got new nutrients to feed on.
The hyphae will now encase the roots of that raspberry and help provide the canes nutrients they would not receive otherwise, double good job there.