Monday, June 12, 2006

[Nutrients] Bat Guano

What is bat guano?

Bat guano is manure or dung of a small mammal known as a bat.
There are many types of species of bats ranging from Tadarida brasiliensis bats to Desmondus rotundus bats. Bats usually eat small beetles, leafhoppers, mosquitos, moths and other flying insects. Bats love dark places such as caves, huge piles of guano is left on the cave floors and can be as deep as 5ft deep maybe more. Then the next process begins by millions of decomposing microbes and beetles. When they get finished, we are left with a nice pile of natural fertilizer ready for use.
This 100% organic manure contains 10% nitrogen (N), 3%phosphorous (P) and 1% potassium (K). Bat guano can be used both indoors and outdoors, it can also be made of a tea or liquid form for hydroponic use. The high nitrogen provides the healthy "green" colour and also maximizes the size of the main colas. Phosphorous encourages the growth of the root system and potassium builds strong stem growth.

Bat Guano Benefits

The great thing about Bat guano is it remains in the soil longer, benefiting the soil by slowly feeding the plant, unlike chemical or hydroponic nutrients which are of a short term benefit only since they leach out of the soil sooner.
Another great thing about Bat guano is that it contains bioremediation microbes, which act to clean up acsess toxins in the soil left over from the chemicals that have been used. Other benefits to the soil includes the controlling of soil-borne diseases and nematodes.

Types of Commercial Bat Guano

Desert Bat Guano (8-4-1)
Dry-Bar Cave Bat Guano (3-10-1)
Jamaican Bat Guano(1-10-0)
Mexican Bat Guano (10-2-0)
Indonesian Bat Guano (0-13-0).
Budswel Bat guano (0-7-0)*mix*
Super Tea Bat guano (5-5-1)*mix*


Adding Bat Guano

There are several ways of adding bat guano to your soil, you can either hand mix it in your remaining soil (ill explain later) or you can make tea out of it. An easy way to make tea out of bat guano is to use a coffee filter, simply place your guano in the middle and tie it up like a teabag.. Get a large container filled with water and simply leave the bag in for a few minutes. When thats has finished you can use the guano-tea to your desire! Depending on how many gallons your medium contains would be approx 100mls each gallon. You can also add other nutrients to your tea if you wish; maxicrop, superthrive and EarthJuice are some options.
Hand mixing your batguano to your desired soil mix is quite simple, depending on how many gallons you wish to mix is about 2/3 cups for every 10 gallons and so fourth.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home