I have watched a few of this person’s videos and I like his approach and testing. There is so much information out there that is just passed on from person to person without supporting data. Some of the information is good and some not so good. With that said I have never tried most of the producers advice. I gave a lot of my approach when I started on this forum to a person who in my words always wanted you to show the supporting data. Thanks @alan
It will serve semantics better if he’d call it “compost tea” like most everyone else.
Dandelions arent ‘weeds’ to me.
What if instead he fed them to a worm pile? And made worm casting tea?
only time i use compost tea is to try to fix a minor plant deficiency. other than that i put in the compost or top dress around my plants. it gets there either way.
There are alot more uses… foliar feeding, etc etc etc.
“there is currently no evidence that compost tea is any better than using just compost. Be a smart gardener and just spread the compost on the soil as a mulch. Nature will do the rest.”
I spread compost and or mulch. The rain makes the tea for me.
I haven’t tried any of the tea/brews. My experience is limited to a little compost which I like.
The anaerobic mixes of water and dead plants stink to high heaven. It’s way worse than working with urine in my opinion. Urine washes off easily, this anaerobic stuff does not.
The anaerobic mixes can probably be used as folilar spray for deer deterrent.
I make a lot of compost… would guess 500-600 pounds on the average year.
Most of it gets used … mixed into new planting beds or holes … top dressing established plantings… a layer of compost then fresh woodchips.
I hardly ever make a tea with it… but last year when i was growing those two persimmons from seed… early summer the leaves started turning yellow on both…
I made a 5 gal bucket of compost tea… and added to it a bit of bone meal, gypsum, greensand, epsom salt. I let that all brew for about a week and stirred it occasionally.
I wattered them with that concoction and they changed from sickly yellow to a nice dark green in a couple weeks.
I also took off the pine bark mulch and added a couple inches of fresh compost… then added the mulch back on top.
Between adding a fresh layer of compost and watering with that brew… they made a quick turn around.
Not sure if just compost tea would have done that… but when leaves are turning yellow i figure it is not getting something it needs and i sort of gave them compost, compost tea and a variety of trace minerals. It worked.
Your persimmon yellow leaves may be different cause than mine since you saw a swift improvement in color after applying the fertilization.
On other hand, I attribute some yellow leaf color in persimmon to genetics differences as well. My Jiro persimmon always start with yellowish leaves and then they green up later in the season (quite many weeks later). My other cultivars Hachiya and NG start with very dark green leaves. All my trees get same treatment and Jiro less than 20 ft from Hachiya so I believe soil is also as similar can be.
One good use for compost tea is for controlling a variety of leaf diseases. Something in the good fungal biota of the tea does a number on things that infect the leaves. If I recall it is even effective against scab on apples.
Funny enough I would prefer my apples scabby, it improves the juice quality.
N. works, I know that. Usually fairy dust in horticulture ends up being just that, but I buy into the power of compost anyway. A little faith in fairy dust is fine with me.
However, I’d like to know how much readily available N was in the tea I was making and whether a little urea wouldn’t accomplish the same thing. Had you tried some urea first?
Nitrogen is the fairy dust I believe in most. In most soils with good drainage and a reasonable pH there is enough of everything else a plant needs to avoid stunting of growth, although I admit to being stumped by soils I can’t make work well every once in a while. (I’m talking short term- organic matter is essential for sustaining and sometimes creating good soil). Maybe next time I will try some compost tea even if research suggests its benefits are dubious. It might just depend on the specific ingredients. Horticultural science is often based on inadequate research. Research on medical science is extensive and yet understanding of basic issues is often in flux.
If there isn’t a potential patent involved, research has difficulty attracting funding. Profit motive is science’s gasoline.
How well does pee actually work…
A comparison of Pee vs MG.
One criticism is he didn’t properly dilute the urine in the video so he probably ended up burning the plants, especially ones in pots are more sensitive. Personal hydration also matters since it affects the potency of the urine, which is not exact unlike miracle grow.
I believe anaerobic mixes and urine (and even “night soil” – not directly) have been used for thousands of years, so the history is there.
Put me in the “it’s a waste of time” camp.
While not harmful, I am fairly convinced that fertilizer teas of various sorts are less than useful in the vast majority of cases.
These teas are made with some sort of organic material, be it compost or weeds or castings, etc, steeped in water for such and such a time, and then watered onto the plants or applied as a foiler spray. During this process, there are two things going on: soluble nutrient chelates and salts dissolve into the water forming a solution, and microbial activity shifts and in some cases increases in the new aqueous and at least partially anaerobic conditions. The long soaking period means that both of these processes happen to a degree that wouldn’t happen normally if the organic material was just on the ground and it got rained on.
Of these effects, the first clearly has a use case. Those soluble nutrient salts and chelates will be more available to plants faster when fully dissolved and applied as a solution instead of still mixed with organic matter. All the insoluble nutrients, however, as well as virtually all the organic matter, will be left behind and you do not gain the soil building and longer term nutrient availability from them. From a nutrient standpoint, fertilizer teas are a quick boost of pure nutrients.
On the microbial side, it’s less good. Plants mostly associate with aerobic microbes and fungi in particular. Submerging organic matter in water for days on end will kill pretty much all of your aerobic microbes and fungi. Anaerobic bacteria and other microbes will dominate, in particular, methanogens. These microbes will degrade nitrogen solutes into methane–hence the bad smell. Methane is completely useless to plants. The longer the tea sits, the more of your precious nitrogen will simply blow away in the wind. Degradation of plant matter is extremely slow in still water, so there is little to no new nutrients being released and no new organic matter being produced. There is virtually no microbial benefit to taking a healthy aerobic organic matter and submerging it in water for long periods of time, and plenty of harm.
So, you take good organic matter with lots of good fungi and some available nutrients, then genocide the good microbes, throw away the organic matter, turn a bunch of nitrogen into activity harmful fart gas, and spend a considerable amount of time and effort doing so, just to get a slightly stronger solution of dissolved salts and chelates than you’d get from just watering after applying organic matter to the soil?
I can see a few use cases. If your plants need nutrients right now or if you need to give them a boost with pure nutrients so they can fight off a disease or get through some kind of stress, sure.
But you know what? What’s another source of highly soluble pure salt and chelate nutrients? One that doesn’t release methane or waste a bunch of time, effort, and good compost?
A bag of water soluble chemical fertilizer.
It’s literally the same thing as compost tea, minus the bad smell from the wasted nitrogen in the tea: a mixture of pure nutrient salts and chelates. Just go to your local farm supply (not the big box store, go to the places the farmers buy their fertilizer) buy a 40 lb bag of ‘greenhouse fertilizer’ and call it a day. You’ll have enough for probably a thousand gallons of tea equivalent, for about $50 (consider: hours it would take to make a thousand gallons of tea x minimum wage >>> $50). Arguably, that stuff is better than your tea anyway, since it has balanced NPK and soluble forms of iron, magnesium, and all the micro nutrients that your tea almost certainly doesn’t have enough of (metals in particular don’t tend to be in water soluble form on organic matter, your tea won’t extract them) unless you intentionally add Epson salts and stuff like that (ie, unless you added to your tea a more expensive version of the exact same chemicals that the fertilizer manufacturer added, except you didn’t take the time you work through the system of equations to make sure you didn’t overload one nutrient–remember, most micro nutrients are highly antagonistic to each other–you just eyeballed it).
Fertilizer tea is only useful if you have a religious objection to getting pure nutrient salts and chelates in a bag or bottle instead of in a bucket.
If you want to build soil and add long term nutrients, use organic matter. If you want a boost of nutrients or the plants need rescuing right now, use manufactured fertilizer.
Remember: organic is a scam dressed up as a secular religion.
I have spoken.
most reputable gardening sites recommend putting a bubbler and air stone in your bucket when making compost tea to avoid the anerobic conditions. they also further recommend adding some sugar to turbocharge the good microbes in there. i use black strap molasses. just a dab. with the air stone in there there’s is no stink. furthermore if you dump the leftover organic matter into your compost pile, it turbo charges the composting in there. that’s what i do with my compost tea instead of putting it directly on the plants. i use comfrey and rhubarb leaves mostly.
Some people do enjoy creating their own fertilizer for many reasons including practicing self sufficiency. I would not say it’s a scam or waste of their time to do so if they wish. With respect to getting equivalent results with non-organics, I believe you are right.
Right, which means it’s just a lifestyle choice/belief system. Ie a religious choice.
Self-sufficiency here means “with my own hands” not “the most efficient way possible” since there’s no way on God’s green earth that somebody is going to make a thousand gallons of nutritionally balanced tea for less than $50 of effort. For those who don’t mind sacrificing time and money for the sake of doing something themselves, have at it (and I sympathize, I had similar beliefs when it comes to food, but not for fertilizer).
i like to make a bunch and dump onto my mulched trees and plants roots
in early summer just as the fruit forms. i notice a big growth spurt and ones that werent growing much take off. whether its from the added nutrients or addition of active microbes is anyone guess. still better than synthetics as the salts will kill soil biology over time. i still used them occasionally but try to limit their use. a balance of the 2 works well.
Right, hard to beat economies of scale. My point is it’s all what’s worth it to you.
If you value your time, it’s probably cheaper just to buy at grocery store or just to buy prepared food. Someone might call you religious for planting a garden.
Honestly I loved your very informative post. I’m just pushing back a little here with all due respect.
