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Vortex Compost Tea Brewers, LAB Shelf Life, Taro Leaf Solution

Drake opens with a rough week on the cattle side: a breech birth he and his wife pulled with a timber hitch and a winch, and a decision to add seawater and minerals to the herd's routine.

Christophe's LAB question gets a straight answer: once diluted, LAB solutions are good for two to three days, pushing it at five, and bad by seven — trust your nose. White mold in a LAB jar means the filter was too coarse; filter through a t-shirt to catch micro-curds before they grow. Unstabilized LAB in the fridge only lasts a few months, a few weeks without one.

On IPMO, whatever material trains your microbes — insect frass, chicken feed, superworms — they're all training the same target molecule, chitin, so the source doesn't matter much. For compost tea brewers, Drake pushes for one simple pipe and a vortex over multiple pipes and air stones: spinning water pulls oxygen in far better than bubbles, and fewer parts means less to clean and contaminate. He runs his own brewer about an hour on, twelve hours off, then fifteen minutes before use.

Other answers: dilute IMOT one-to-ten for a drench, an oscillating tool cuts brewer lids cleanly, and lemongrass drives off fleas and mites on dogs and in chicken coops. Archive footage closes the show with Master Cho explaining taro leaf care: leaf growth solution when new leaves emerge, fruit solution one week before harvest.

Questions answered

  • 21:52 White mold showed up in a LAB jar — what happened? — Micro-curds likely slipped through a coarse filter and started growing mold; filter LAB through a fine cloth like a t-shirt.
  • 22:31 How long can diluted KNF solutions be stored before they spoil? — About two to three days is safe, five days is pushing it, and by seven days it smells bad — trust your nose.
  • 25:13 Does it matter if IMOs eat yard insects versus chicken feed and superworms? — No — whatever you feed them, you're training the microbes to eat chitin, and chitin is chitin.
  • 27:27 How should I build a compost tea brewer? — Keep it simple: one pipe, one vortex, air pump above the water line, no air stones, nothing complex to clean.
  • 36:43 Any KNF fix for fleas or mites? — Lemongrass — boiled into dog-wash soap for fleas, or cut fresh in the coop for mites; weekly treatment for about two months clears them.
  • 39:27 Is a year-and-a-half-old bottle of unstabilized LAB in the fridge still good? — No — unstabilized LAB only lasts a few months in the fridge and a few weeks without one.
  • 40:05 Doesn't turbulence in a vortex brewer hurt microbe growth while it's running? — Yes, but he doesn't run it the whole time — about an hour to mix and oxygenate, then off for twelve hours, then fifteen minutes before use.
  • 42:10 How much should I dilute IMOT for a soil drench? — Somewhere between one-to-ten and one-to-hundred depending on the goal; one-to-ten followed by a water rinse is easiest.
  • 43:35 How do you cut holes in a plastic bottle for a brewer without cracking it? — An oscillating tool cuts clean through the plastic; a torch could work too.
  • 44:15 How much should I dilute solution to drench a banana and persimmon tree? — Dilute one-to-ten in a 55-gallon barrel, then run a sprinkler after to work it into the soil.
  • 50:26 When do you spray taro leaves — type two or type three solution? — Master Cho: type two, the leaf growth solution, goes on as new leaves emerge; type three goes on about a week before harvest.

Topics: lab, imo, ipmo, compost tea, vortex brewer, chitin, lemongrass, mites, fleas, taro, cattle

KNF Office Hours is a free live Q&A every Sunday at 9 AM HST. Bring your question to pureknf.org/learn/questions or join live.

In this episode

  1. 0:00 I Ching Reading and Opening
  2. 7:24 Community Check-In Around the World
  3. 8:44 Cattle Ranching and a Breech Birth
  4. 17:57 Supplementing Cattle with Minerals
  5. 22:31 LAB Shelf Life and Filtering
  6. 25:13 IPMO and Chitin Training
  7. 27:27 Critiquing Compost Tea Brewer Designs
  8. 30:44 Vortex Brewer Demo
  9. 36:43 Lemongrass for Fleas and Mites
  10. 39:27 Unstabilized LAB Gone Bad
  11. 41:27 IMOT Dilution for Drenching
  12. 43:35 Cutting Tools for Brewer Builds
  13. 49:43 Master Cho Archive: Taro Leaf Solution

Transcript

Auto-transcribed with Whisper. Click any timestamp to play from there.

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