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Eastern Pennsylvania

I am pretty sure that this is good to add to my tea, but I wanted to confirm this. Also, should I mix in the humic acid prior to brewing, or just add it to the finished tea with the organisms already present? Thanks - Jim

3/18/2009 12:34:05 PM

Upstate S.C.

Orange, it's great...Add it to the water DURING the brewing process.

3/18/2009 9:51:45 PM

Seattle, WA

One thing I recently discovered was that adding too much will inhibit microbial growth. Make sure to just go really light on the humic acid input.

3/19/2009 2:30:43 PM

Iowa

Tad, I was wondering if this is a pH thing, reason I ask I have been doing some winter testing with some different brews. I have access to some great equipment for now but been brewing in small amounts.. This tea thing is amazing,it is a science, if you brew to long many things go and if it is to short, depending on what you put in, you may never get what you want. A few friends are helping me out with this and have never grown a pumpkin, but they understand how tea could help any plant to thrive and produce above average growth and fruit size.

3/19/2009 9:55:13 PM

Seattle, WA

Hmmm...not too sure, and definitely just preliminary findings on my part. We found that too high of concentrations of humic acids in the tea inhibited microbial growth. I need to go back and do some testing with micro amounts to determine their exact effect.

In regards to pH, I've found the microbes balance the pH in most cases in the tea, even if your water is off at the beginning. I don't even bother checking pH anymore when I brew.

In fact, the three best food substrates I've found are unsulfured blackstrap molasses, fish hydrolysate, and organic alfalfa meal.

We use a diversified food source that contains a bunch of ingredients because we're trying to feed the highest diversity of microbes as possible, the theory being that certain food substrates will be more efficiently consumed by one or two species of microbes over the others.

~Tad

PS: One problem with testing with humic acids are that there's so many different products on the market with varying degrees of humic acids by content, along with different sources and processing of the material. The stuff I use is SP-85 from Tera Vita (www.teravita.com)

3/20/2009 3:28:17 AM