Interested in what people put in the their compost teas for those who do it either as a preventative or to treat disease. I understand this is a hotly debated topic, and I would love for this thread to just be about people’s experiences who actually use it, and not another place to debate the concept.
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I use old chicken feed, chicken poop, waste veggies and leaf litter from my back yard either together or separately and some molasses or something else sugary. Let it ferment a week or so and pour it on.
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Awesome. Do you use an aerator?
I use teas pretty frequently on my annuals. I usually do rotten fruit mash teas. Like strawberries for iron, bananas for potassium, and pineapple too. I usually use my own rice IMO for inoculation. And a handful of goop from one of my compost tumblers.
My understanding if you bubble the tea for more than 48 hours you loose diversity of microbes and just have a monoculture of mostly trichoderma. Most of the other microbes are crowded off the dance floor.
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Very interesting, thank you! I’ve been wondering about the aerator. Seems like some use it and some just let things sit, some stir ever few hours. My only concern was for brewing “bad” anaerobic bacteria
Just don’t put the anaerobic tea on vegetables you’re planning to eat in a couple weeks
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I do sometimes. I watched an interview with a soil biologist who said anerobic was more beneficial. It seems to work either way.
I normally just add compost to the hole at planting time for fruit trees, cane and bush fruit beds… and in my veggie garden.
I will also on 2 yr fruit trees add another layer of compost then more wood chips.
Some special items … fig, loganberry, novamac apple on b9 in large container… i will rake back the old wood chips add a good layer of compost then put the old and some new wood chips in place.
On using compost in a tea form…
A few years ago I was growing a couple of rich tooie persimmons from seed… early summer the new growth on them started coming out yellow. They looked sickly… lacking something for sure.
I made 2… 5 gal buckets of compost tea… and added to it some bone meal, blood meal, epsom salt, gypsum, greensand…
Within 2 weeks of watering them with that compost tea… they were nice and green again.
Note… I also took off the wood chips their container was mulched with… added a layer of compost…then put those wood chips back on.
Those two seedling persimmons are nice trees of Kasandra and Nakitas Gift today.
TNHunter
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Is everyone just throwing in amounts that “seem” right or using some tried and true ratio? I’m new to this and starting to think I’ll just take the “little bit of this and a little bit of this” approach.
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Just about every “cannabis hydro shop”sells bags and bags of compost tea brews with bacterial and fungal spores, ratios of dried nutrient amendments for whatever macro you desire, and temperature and mixing charts. They also tend to be massively expensive, like some of the most expensive products in the whole hydro shop.
The stuff I make myself (19 years playing around w it) from compost, table scraps (fruit scraps specifically), seems to be superior to anything I can buy. If you are into KNF, the rice IMO is lazy easy to do and very effective. Measured after on annual plants performance of side by side clones of sister plants done in trays. The tea gets frothy way faster with imo than commercial tea brews has been my observations as well.
I also agree the risk of anaerobic bacteria is over stated. I make a lot of anaerobic “goos” too. Stinky weed soup, and stinky kelp soup specifically. If you have ever been on a pnw beach after a winter storm the kelp is piled on the beach more than the drift wood. Piled.
I stuff noxious weeds (or kelp) like blackberries and knotweed and dandelions packed into 5 gallon lidded buckets. Float them w creek water, add a couple shovels fills of char, cap w urine, and forget about it for 8 weeks. The soup the process makes is poured ( no solids left but the char) into all my beds on rainy days.
I never worry about fertilizing the trees w teas, just my annuals. So I have no actual experience there.
I actually spray my annuals (foliar feed and microbe spreading) to combat white powdery mildew from the pnw morning dew, and many fungal things that take out my tomatoes. If I don’t do this I never get a clean tomato once the rain starts. I crowd the dance floor with microbes so no single one, good or bad, can dominate. At least that’s the theory.
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oh you mean the Stink Bucket.
whatever weeds grow in a patch go in it. leftover scraps from dinner veg. leaves, straw, chips and water to fill it up
I put a board across it to keep the stink down, wait a week or so, and mix it. when it’s really disgusting, it goes in the deep beds where my tobacco grows.
it’s a distant relative of the Sinking Pile, my compost heap of doom.
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Does anyone who foliar sprays their compost teas add soap to help it stick?
I wouldn’t. The bacteria will stick regardless and soap would probably disrupt them or at least some of them
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Yucca root extract and aloe are both a safe sticking agent for foliar feeds and compost teas. Herb growers have been using both for decades.
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Something like this.
Yes, dish soap is the common spreader used for teas.
Made my first compost tea last week. Threw in a little bit of everything: azomite, green sand, alfalfa, kelp, wool, county compost, my compost, a little soil, molasses, biochar…I think that was it. I stirred it every 6-12 hours. It smelled really sweet and earthy. Was planning on only putting it here and there, but then true to form went all in a sprayed it on virtually everything 
Question- I only used half of what I made. I added more water and was thinking I might just keep it going all summer? Although, I added hose water and after the fact realized I might have killed off a lot of good things with the chlorine?