compost tea

[rick9748]

I have been trying compost tea for the first time this year.Had some exotic recipe with 7-8 things mixed in.I never felt the mix activated, no bubbles.
Do any of you use compost tea and what do you think of it?
If you have had success with it would you share your recipe.
Thanks
Rick

[Lorri D]

Yep, I use it. Foams like a root beer float! I love it. Could you expand on how you are making it etc... aerated, molasses, addt'l microbs, etc...

[rick9748]

Thanks for response.This recipe is from Healthy vegetable gardening;1/2 gal compost, 2 cups worm castings not fresh ordered on line in net bag with air stone, molasses 5 table, sea minerals 2 oz., fish and kelp 1 cup, humic acid 1/2 cup. Dechlorinated 4-5 gal water, 4 large air stones.Instructions say to brew 3 days and use same day.Have no way of controlling temp. here in South Carolina average about 90 dg. in shed.Like I said a lot of stuff.Never activated, no bubbles.Can you help?
Thanks
Rick

[Lorri D]

It sounds like you did a great job. The humic acid is interesting, I've used it as an amendment in my garden, not in my compost tea.

I do wonder about the sea minerals, maybe the salt content was too high? (I actually doubt this, just thought I'd mention it as a possibility)

You had good aeration, you fed the microbs, you used dechlorinated water...I'd say it must have been your temps. Because, you should have gotten something growing with all of that! What is weird is that you should have bubbling within 12-24 hrs.

The only thing I can offer is to try again when your temperatures are lower.
You had: food, water, air, microbs.....kinda the only thing left is the temps were too high or your pH was off.

This is mine, subject to change with what I have on hand. What never changes is the fish fertilizer, compost, and the molasses. My aerator is big enough to that it circulates the water, I can see the water moving in a circle and I have made it when temps were in the 90's. But, my bucket was located on a cool cement porch with a roof to block the sun.

1/2 c alaskan fish fert.
1/2 c kelp
1 T beneficial bacteria from my local indoor gardening store
1 T mycorrhizae
1 c compost.....rabbit manure or garden compost etc...
1/2 c molasses
5 gal irrigation water

[AlittleSalt]

I have made compost tea in the past. I used ingredients from the property we live on. I tried the organic method.

Organic tea consisted of:

A 5 gallon bucket
4 gallons water
A shovel full of compost
8 or 10 dandelions - leaves/flowers
Several Bull Nettle plants
A couple handfuls of oak and elm leaves (Dried)
A few cut up fish uncleaned
Aerator with stone
A lid

I couldn't see a difference using it on our tomato plants.

[Lorri D]

I use it while getting my plants established. I usually make it 3 times a year. I will water with it on my transplants once every two weeks until I have applied it around 3 times. My thoughts were that once you get the microbs there, then you just need to keep the soil from drying out terribly. Once they are there, they will feed and multiply and do their thing.

A tip I've heard elsewhere is that the tea is most beneficial and "noticeable" if you didn't have good populations in the soil before using it. If you already have healthy soil, then compost tea isn't going to do much good for you.

I did use compost tea as a spray once upon a time. Rumor was that it would cause the "cuticle" of the plant to thicken and make it more resistant to blight/insects etc... Ya, not so good in my case! It was fine the first few times I sprayed. Around the 3rd time I sprayed, I about wiped out my crops. I must have cultured something very bad in my brew.

So, I stick to using it on the soil now at the beginning of the year.

[Lindalana]

I follow Dr Elaine Ingham compost tea brewing manual
compost extract for soil or compost tea for leaves
http://www.soilfoodweb.com/Compost_Tea_Recipe.html

[MendozaMark]

Horticultural myths
Compost tea: Examining the
science behind the claims

http://puyallup.wsu.edu/wp-content/u...post-tea-4.pdf

[MendozaMark]

I was really interested in compost tea, but decided not to mainly because it is a fair bit of effort and can be pricey depending on how you do it. Instead I am putting all my efforts into building a better soil. I do use liquid worm castings in watering my containers which is a passive compost tea. I previously used Fish emulsion and seaweed extract, but I can't get either here in Mendoza. When I have free time I will try to find out if the seaweed extract really had any proven scientific benefit or was just wishful thinking on my part. I just found out that comfrey tea was a waste of time I am examining all my gardening practices these days in order to maximize my results with least amount of effort. Not to over-simplify my results but good compost and lots of it is your best bet. Build a great soil and the rest is easy.

[jillian]

Originally Posted by MendozaMark

I was really interested in compost tea, but decided not to mainly because it is a fair bit of effort and can be pricey depending on how you do it. Instead I am putting all my efforts into building a better soil. I do use liquid worm castings in watering my containers which is a passive compost tea. I previously used Fish emulsion and seaweed extract, but I can't get either here in Mendoza. When I have free time I will try to find out if the seaweed extract really had any proven scientific benefit or was just wishful thinking on my part. I just found out that comfrey tea was a waste of time I am examining all my gardening practices these days in order to maximize my results with least amount of effort. Not to over-simplify my results but good compost and lots of it is your best bet. Build a great soil and the rest is easy.

Totally agree about the compost. But if compost is limited (as mine is), I like to use the super simple (no bubblers, etc.) as described here by CaliKim. Love her gardening videos! Great for the small home gardeners like myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyWit_6SNpo

[MendozaMark]

Originally Posted by jillian

Totally agree about the compost. But if compost is limited (as mine is), I like to use the super simple (no bubblers, etc.) as described here by CaliKim. Love her gardening videos! Great for the small home gardeners like myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyWit_6SNpo

Thanks for the link Jillian, I checked it out and for the small gardener it would be practical. I am growing 200 tomatoes and 200 peppers, so i would have to brew a lot of tea. I don't have access to many organic products here and most are outrageously priced. But...worm castings are the cheapest i have ever seen anywhere. I get a 35 Kg (77 LB) bag for about $8 US. It is bone dry too. I also have liquid worm castings for a quick hit. I mix the castings in when i create my planting mix, then use it as a top dressing, sprinkling a light covering every couple of weeks. My plants just get water unless they show signs of a deficiency. There is no toxicity issues with them as well which is not true of many organic products. I do use a higher nitrogen organic fertilizer for my over wintered peppers when they start to break dormancy.

FYI, one thing Kim said at the very end of her video is she uses Epsom salt regularly. It is magnesium sulphate and you should not use it unless you have a magnesium deficiency in your soil. If you add magnesium when you don't need it, you can create an imbalance in your soil which will cause problems. It is also a salt and long term or excessive use will build up salts in your soil.

Cheers Mark

[Cole_Robbie]

The best tea I have made came from some fresh black dirt from my family's cow field. All I added was molasses. It made seedlings sprout and grow twice as fast.

I haven't been able to duplicate those results yet with store-bought products. The best I have done is with worm castings and "compost starter," Jobe's Organics I think is the brand. It doesn't take much of the starter, 1/8th of a cup or so in the 2 cups of castings, or else it is too hot and will burn leaves.

I use a 5-gallon bucket with two dual-output air pumps.

[Salsacharley]

I'm curious about the amount of air being pumped in these teas. I've got a little Eco Air EC 1 Plus pump I got at a hydroponics store and with a 4" air stone it causes vigorous bubbling and huge frothy foam in the tea. If I increased the aeration I'm afraid the foam would overflow the 5 gal bucket.

How do you use so much air power, and why is it necessary?

Thanks,
Charley

[Lorri D]

Originally Posted by Salsacharley

I'm curious about the amount of air being pumped in these teas. I've got a little Eco Air EC 1 Plus pump I got at a hydroponics store and with a 4" air stone it causes vigorous bubbling and huge frothy foam in the tea. If I increased the aeration I'm afraid the foam would overflow the 5 gal bucket.

How do you use so much air power, and why is it necessary?

Thanks,
Charley

The air is needed because the stuff you are culturing needs oxygen to live. The cultures would die as soon as all the O2 was used up. If there was no bubbler, you'd be growing anaerobic bacteria and you don't want to do that.

You need enough bubbles to evenly distribute the O2 throughout your container. I think you are good as long as you see movement &/or the bubbling takes up more than half of the surface area of your container.

[Cole_Robbie]

Even with two air pumps, I still have problems with most types of compost, because they coat the bottom in black mud, which goes anaerobic from lack of oxygen, even though the rest of the bucket is getting plenty. Worm castings don't seem to do that, neither did my black dirt from the cow field, which was also fairly coarse with rotted hay and not muddy or mucky when wet. I have not yet experimented with different micron-sized filter bags. From what I have read, the filter bag isn't supposed to be too fine, or it doesn't allow the bacteria to flow through.

Mushroom compost didn't work well for me. It's one of the experiments that caked on the bottom in mud and smelled poopy. I have read of some people trying to grow fungal material a few days beforehand on organic grain flour, and then adding that to their tea. Most tea is predominantly bacterial, and not fungal.

I took a sample of the same cow field dirt and made tea in the winter. It was not nearly as good. But I still think it had some value. I wonder if tea is also an extraction of any water-based compounds in the compost, like humic and fulvic acids. They are both beneficial, even if the tea doesn't contain many bacteria.