watering with green tea?

[jonah]

Hey, my dad has been watering his plants with green tea now and then, and he uses the grounds as a soil additive.

He apparently is getting some decent results with some of his plants, but i was a little skeptical as to whether it was the tea or what.  Apparently the one he has been giving tea to is doing really good as compared to one of the same species given the same amount of light, and it does have a better color.  i think maybe it's because the soil was already lacking nutrients.  i could be wrong.  I wanted to ask how this effects the soil, and the plants.  What it's benefits might be.  detriments.

won't the tea make the soil acidic?  are there risks to this?

i want to know what you think of this.  I've been considering setting up two prickly pears from the same bunch (clones if possible) and seeing how it effected growth.  and if it does good, maybe trying it on trichs eventually.

will watering with green tea ever cause problems?  has anyone heard of this?

[EA-1306]

It sounds like a potential experiment.
The tannins in tea are water soluble, if precipitation exceeds evaporation then they shouldn't cause overly acidic conditions to develop.

The nutrient content of the leaves has undoubtable value as an organic fertilizer.
The effect upon the soil can be complicated. Soil is such a generic term, what will happen has quite a bit to do with what the soil is made of. I think that under organic conditions the green tea would aslo have a stimulant effect upon the microbiota of the soil, thus having a direct effect upon the conversion of organic compounds into the inorganic ions that plants utilize. In this green tea could stimulate a slight increase in inorganic elemental uptake through stimulating the natural detrital ecology that is so vital to organic gardening.

As far as an experiment there are many factors in plant growth and it might be difficult to ensure that the only variable is the addition of the tea. There should be a measurably testable explaination for the relationship between the administation of the tea and plant growth to achieve any working understanding of its effects.

Very interesting

[anti-light]

i have some baobob seeds that are supposed to have a bad germ rate... im gonna give em some tea when im doing a presprout ziplock method..... and then transplant and water with tea even......

it supposedly has hormones and all kinds of good shit we dont understand.... its used to combat virus with tobacco (i wonder what it would do to help sally)