It is true that plants can absorb some amino acids and bypass direct nitrate usage to some extent, but growth from amino acids without nitrates is always substantially lower – as far as I have experienced.
I also haven’t been able to find a single paper or study where plants fed with pure amino acids in a microbe poor environment do as well as plants fed nitrate. They always grow but are much less healthy compared to the pure nitrate fed plants.
Do you have any experience feeding aminoacids in a microbe poor media without nitrates that tells you otherwsie?
So I looked into 3 nitrogen sources when I started this project.
Fermented fish emulsion and soybean meal (They contain protein → aminos → nitrogen as they are broken down biologically)
Chilean nitrate (although it is more soluble, it can only supplement your N sources from the sodium content)
OMRI enzymatic amino powder- (This gave an immediate N boost, but was a better source when fully digested over time)
The amino powder is a strong candidate for a soluble N source, but I don’t believe it is completely available immediately. This may have contributed to some sedimentation and biofilm.
EDIT: Perhaps enzymes could be used as a cleaner alternative to biological digestion?
I have also considered these choices. Chilean nitrate is definitely very problematic due to its sodium content and the amino powders have been very hard to nitrify for me. When using this type of products I have never been able to obtain substantial nitrates with time (perhaps I’m using the wrong microbes or conditions).
I have tried enzyme products in fermentations (things like winterkleen and pondzyme) but while they help with the breakdown of proteins, they do not remove any of the carbohydrates from the solution, which is a key aspect of the fermentation processes.
In my experience provided you use plant-based materials only and inoculate with a good dose of aerobic microbes, the fermentation runs quite smoothly and the smell is not offensive (similar to when fermenting beer). I have been able to obtain concentrates with around 1-2% N as nitrate within a couple months and almost no sugar.
Amylase can break down sugars, lipase breaks down fats and oils, cellulase can break down cell walls, lignin and cellulose, protease breaks down protein into aminos, but not necessarily nitrogen.
This brings up 2 limiting factors in organic fertilizer inputs- calcium and nitrogen.
Calcium sources don’t tend to be soluble or available without some kind of digestion or ionic change from an input like phosphoric acid or vinegar. With organic hydroponics and microbes, the pH tends to drop, which makes Ca and P more available. That’s why calcium and potassium carbonates are used for pH up in aquaponics.
Nitrogen needs to be converted over time to be available to the plant. Once converted, I’m not sure what form it takes to be available to a plant either (aminos → nitrite, → nitrate, ammonium?).
Yes, there are enzymes to do all those jobs, but each group of enzymes often requires different conditions and they can get denatured quite easily or work against each other. For example proteases will cleave other enzymes - because they are proteins - so a soup of enzymes containing amylases and proteases will soon only contain active proteases. If you used only enzymes then multiple steps would be needed.
About the limiting points you mentioned:
There are a few OMRI approved sources of soluble Ca and P. For example, seabird guano is a naturally occurring monocalcium phosphate, which is quite soluble. You can provide a lot of Ca and P using this. However, as you mentioned, acid digestion of other sources can lead to fertilizers with different Ca/P ratios.
Note AgriHusta also produces a Ca nitrate analogue, produced through fermentation and then ion exchange:
Nitrogen from proteins follows this path: proteins → aminos → ammonium
or proteins → aminos → nitrite → nitrate. Ammonium can also be oxidized by microbes to nitrite and then nitrate. Aminos can be reduced to ammonium or they can be oxidized to nitrite and then nitrate.
As I mentioned, some commercial fermentation products that have already yielded almost pure potassium nitrate and calcium nitrate have become recently available, which opens up a lot of possibilities since you basically need to do no fermentation.
It’s a tea, a combination of greens that are fermented. It can be foliar feed or root drenched. It keeps the moms at work super happy in there soil less media.
Idk if this is bullshit science or not (aka Jadam practices/KNf) but fermenting the plant u want to grow for the food source of the new plants seems to work well in our garden.
All left over leaves and branches are left in water barrels for 3 or 4 months with a sealed top. Its then filtered and bubbled for 24hrs before giving it to the plants, about 5ml per gallon.
The stuff in the barrel smells awful, but after 24 hours of air bubbling, it doesnt smell bad at all. We usually add in some fresh green leaf or freshly sprouting top of any vigourous plants in the area, to the “compost tea”
This is what we do for our soil, and i know its not hydroponics but maybe if u incorporated some of our healthy outdoor plant material as a food source into your hydroponics it might do really well.
I think the way to look at it, is not just using water or just using soil, use both but in seperate systems, make one feed the other and vice versa, maybe the excess water used in ur hydroponic system can be utilized to grow the outdoor food source that then gets fermented to be used in the hydroponics.
We have an organic farmer using the following recipe as a tea for soil usage with good results. The nitrogen is slow-release as it is converted. He is also using Terragrow for beneficial microbes/enzymes.
@AgTonik Thanks a lot for sharing! Definitely a good mixture for use in soil if you have the microbes to convert the N and get rid of all the lactate from the corn steep powder.
Sorry to resurrect this old thread. OK, sorry not sorry.
We’ve got a greehouse grower using 40% coco, 30% aged compost, ~20% rice hulls, ~10% castings in beds. It’s a little heavy on humus, but holds moisture well. It’s silky smooth as far as friability and you just want to touch it!
Nute stack per half a cubic yard is 750 mg insect frass, 250 g Diamond K gypson, 75 g epsom and AGT-50 fulvic minerals with Extreme Gardening root bene products. I couldn’t get a pic, but I have never seen trichomes like this.
