Brewing Compost Tea

[ceara]

Been a while since I've been on the forum!

Every year I watch Gardeners World from the UK. A few episodes ago they talked about brewing compost tea. This isn't your standard compost tea that everyone talks about, i.e. dumping stuff in a bucket, add water and let sit. This is an active brewing culture.

On the episode with the compost tea they were showing a RHS greenhouse and the "secret ingredients" of the tea. I laughed because it's not secret. To top it off the place where they purchased the materials put a price tag of £600 for one kit! And all the containers were marked with vague names like "Ingredient #1."

I remember a while back Alan posted something about "Bug Juice." This compost tea is essentially the same idea, only you add an aquarium air pump to create bubbles throughout the mixture and aerate it. And it's made fresh every week. Not made in advance and let sit around, or it loses potency.

After watching many videos and reading many articles, I've come up with a list of possible additives to the mixture. It would be interesting if some of you could help me try out different mixtures and see how it turns out. Maybe they are all good, or maybe some will be better for specific crops than others. Or perhaps there are more options for additives.

So basically to make a small batch you get a 5 gal plastic bucket and an aquarium air pump, with enough plastic hose length to reach all the way to the bottom of the bucket and not float to the top.

Fill with water and begin adding other ingredients. Here's a list of ingredients you can choose from.

Compost - essential in every mix/base material
Molasses - also essential in every mix- try to get organic/food for micro-organisms to get started multiplying
Worm castings
Well-composted manure
Forest soil - to grab existing micro-organisms and mycellium
Garden soil
Mychorizzal additives - powder over pellets I would assume
Hydrolysate fish emulsion
Seaweed/kelp - powder or extract
Peat moss
Humic acid

The most material you would need is the actual compost, like a freezer bag full. Everything else gets added in small amounts, from 1/4 cup (molasses, forest soil or worm castings) to just a couple tablespoons of any of the other ingredients. Depending on where you look and see what others are using, the amounts of the ingredients will vary greatly. I don't see the harm in experimenting.

You dump all this stuff into the bucket and turn on the air pump and let it work away for 24-48 hours and then apply weekly to your plants at a rate of 1 part "tea" to 5 parts water. Make a fresh batch every week.

If you need a large amount of prepared "tea" then you upgrade to a huge plastic garbage can and a pond pump, or something similar. Anything that will add air.

The whole idea to this brewed tea, is it will create a "film" of sorts on the plant and help prevent bug or bad fungus problems. The concept of a healthy plant that can withstand attacks, whereas a compromised immune system makes living things susceptible to disease. On top of that, plants will receive the micronutrients and beneficial micro-organisms they need.

And depending on what you have on hand, or willing to spend for some of the other ingredients, it's still not going to cost you £600! I'm sure even if you only use your homemade garden compost, molasses and a bit of kelp, it's still going to be good. ;D

I look forward to seeing everyone's mixtures and how the plants perform in comparison with identical plants that do not get the weekly tea treatment. On the internet I've seen some dramatic growth and production in plants.

I don't take any credit for this information. I'm only passing along what I've found freely online. So do with it as you wish and feel free to share with others.

Go to YouTube and type in "brewed compost tea" into the search and you will find scores of videos to check out. You will see all the different recipes and equipment people used.

[steev]

It occurs to me that it may be a good idea to bolster this mix with mashed insects of whatever sort seem poised to be a problem, so as to maybe culture organisms that will attack the bugs.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

I'm glad you started this thread, as i am going to attempt this and have already started to some degree. I'm still researching it, and still thinking about the best way's it might work. Yep, shouldn't cost anywhere near $600 or higher. You shouldn't need a fancy pump either unless you have a larger bucket.

Yeah, basically here is my ideas:

5gal bucket
air pump
hose
Aerator / bubble stone
big chunk of compost
small chunk worm castings (if available)
Sugar / Molasis (if you want a bacteria based culture)
Blended up weeds / spinach / seaweed / "green stuff" (if you want a more fungal culture)
Mychorizzal additives (if available) or a Chunk of the the best soil you can find in nature that hopefully already has some established microorganisms in it. For me there is a small forest nearby that has some of the best soil i have ever seen, so i think adding it to a compost tea mix would help a lot.
Water!
80F fish tank heater (optional)

Okay, so i've done a few "test brews" already. The first one i tried adding a bunch of chemical fertilizer in it, and it started to smell bad, so i dumped that in the compost bin instead of the garden. Basically if you have one that smells bad it's probably safer to dump on compost instead of where plants will be growing.

Anyway, it will be fun seeing how things turn out.

not sure if it fits in here, but I've also kind of been thinking about the "perfect mix" that plants need to grow. It's just an idea at this point, but it goes like this: DNA is made of Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Phosphorus, Nitrogen, & Potassium(?). DNA has 30.3% Adenine, 30.3% Thymine, 19.5% Guanine and 19.9% Cytosine. Basically the "perfect" fertilizer is ground up plants because they already have everything needed and in the right proportions. They just need to be broken down by fungi and bacteria and other organisms to be used by another plant. Anyway, that's the theory so far.

[raymondo]

I made a number of batches two years back. The plants certainly liked it but in the end I just got too lazy to do it. I used a 20L (~5gal) bucket, aquarium pump, aquarium heater (maintained temp around the 20°C mark). I put the water in and ran the pump (with heater) overnight, without adding anything, to blow off the chlorine in the town water and bring the water up to temperature. I then added compost, molasses, fish emulsion and seaweed extract. Ran it for 24 hours then used it all at once. I made it fortnightly over three fortnights. The total cost of the bits and pieces was around $60 from memory, and that was for everything new. The heater was the most expensive item.
You can buy all sorts of products to enhance the brew these days. Elaine Ingham of Soil Food Web fame is one of the compost tea gurus. She's not the only one of course.