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alfalfa meal tea looks like egg drop soup? :(

Posted by lemmie z10 Bay Area, CA (My Page) on
Fri, Apr 20, 12 at 0:02

I've been researching how to make healthy teas for my garden.
So, for the first time, I tried making a large batch of alfalfa meal tea:
1 cup of alfalfa meal
1/4 cup kelp meal
1 tbsp molasses
in about 4 gallons of chlorine-free water. It has a bubbler and I added a tiny bit of compost. Then, because I read about the benefits of fungal-dominated teas, I dropped in a teensy string of fungal hyphae that I found on some mulch and some roots from some weeds I had pulled up.
For the first 5 days, it was thin, watery, and foaming profusely. Today, it looks kind of thick, less bubbles, with white stringy globs floating around. It looks just like the egg whites in a large scale version of Chinese egg drop soup. Is it fungus? Is the tea safe to use on plants? It doesn't smell bad... yet. Please help this newbie.


Follow-Up Postings:

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RE: alfalfa meal tea looks like egg drop soup? :(

I may never eat egg drop soup again. LOL


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RE: alfalfa meal tea looks like egg drop soup? :(

  • Posted by lemmie z10 Bay Area, CA (My Page) on
    Fri, Apr 20, 12 at 8:35

LOL I'm so sorry!


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RE: alfalfa meal tea looks like egg drop soup? :(

It sounds like some kind of bacteria that makes ropy colonies, or it could also be a fungus. I don't know a darn thing about compost tea really, but I brew beer, and one of the problems you can have is a bacteria called 'the ropes'. It is not good to drink. :-p

Anyway your egg analogy is quite accurate, since that is also strings of protein.

Unless someone chimes in here and says it is harmful for some reason, I would think if it smells OK you can certainly use it. Those microbes are already in the soil anyway.


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