it costs me 2 min. of my time/ 0$ to throw some leafy material into a 5gal. bucket. dash of molasses add water and airstone. let steep for 3-4 days. dump directly on roots. many times thats all thats needed to grow. if not i get some urea dissolved in water and pour that on.
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I would argue there is no way microbes that thrive in waterlogged conditions will “turbo charge” compost that’s undergoing aerobic and fungal decomposition, for much the same reason that adding a bunch of botulinum infected jelly to a loaf of bread dough won’t make it rise better (bad, mostly anaerobic and aqueous bacteria aren’t going to benefit good aerobic fungi). Any benefit to the compost is either placebo or the fact that you’re probably turning the compost (oxygen is by far the most common limiting reagent in breaking down organic matter into compost, not water, microbes, or other nutrients).
Adding more expensive inputs (electricity for the bubbler, sugar, buying the stone and bubbler, etc) to something that’s already more expensive than the alternative does not strike me as the correct approach, at least as far as practical use goes.
But, I don’t want to cramp your style: If you have lifestyle choices that you enjoy which compel you to do that, have at it. Just because something isn’t practical or effective doesn’t mean it should never be done.
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It’s the fertilizer that’s giving you that boost. Adding microbes doesn’t do anything in this case because the soil is an ecosystem and the microbes will already be at carrying capacity.
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Oh same. My whole post was mostly just a way to give a little push back to the prevailing belief system here.
there are hundreds of professional growers that state the opposite of what your saying. many of the same stating long term use of synthetics kills soil over time. look at commercial farms. take a soil sample form commercial farm land then some soil from my propety. theres tons more life in my soil. proof is in the pudding. im not anti spray/ anti synthetic. i just think there are times to use each. if it works for you go for it!
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you would agree compost is a good thing right? compost has very little nutrients. its benefit is its microbes to process the nutrients for the plants. even synthetic ferts. need the microbes to break down the components before the plants can use it. more microbes = better fed plants.
This alone costs more than just buying the greenhouse fertilizer’bag.
Say you’re adding a mere tablespoon (chances are you’re adding more than that, since a tablespoon in 5 gallons of water would only make a 0.05% solution of sugar, ie not enough to have an effect), to make a thousand gallons of tea at that rate you’d need roughly two gallons of molasses. At about $30 a gallon, that’s $60 of molasses.
You’re spending more money just on one input than you’d spend on the manufactured fertilizer.
Exactly. Hence why I said:
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no. a dash is less than a teaspoon. sometimes i dont even add it. had airstone/ pump leftover from a fish tank i had years ago. thing draws negligible power its so tiny. could even get away with stirring once a day instead. have you seen the costs of fertilizer lately? ill use all the free resources i can instead of buying anything. if i didnt see the benefit in the tea i have mounds of chic/ goat and rabbit manure i could use as well but they dont need it if the soil is doing its job.
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but if your soil is healthy is usually doesnt need the fertilizer. mine get woodchips and tea midsummer and are all heathy and happy. barely any bug or fungal problems which many professional gardners tote as the benefit of using compost/ teas instead of strait synthetics. try a mix of the 2 . you will be surprised and it will reduce your fertilizer inputs by as much as half. im not a tree / bunny hugger but i believe what i see, not what im told.
And yet after you add tea:
Like I said, I do use both.
Compost is for building the soil and long term fertility. Fertilizer is for short term. It’s just tea that I take exception to, since it’s just a worse way of using compost to try and get short term nutrition.
For those who have objections to using fertilizer that comes in a bag or bottle, sure, tea is probably the only way they can use their chosen methods to save plants that are dying from nutrient deficiencies. But that doesn’t mean tea is a good solution, it’s just the only one that they will allow themselves to use.
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no big box stores here and your not going to change my mind. ive been doing this long before it became a fad. we raised a 1 acre garden and small orchard growing up, on nothing but organics. we couldnt afford fertilizers. Dad used teas of steeped weeds to feed his seedlings. we cut grass and laid fish guts in the rows between the plants. i started using synthetics when i started growing for myself. it was ok for awhile then started to need more and more to get less than ideal results. then i went back to the old ways, only using minimal synthetics and my grows exploded with less fertilizer. been growing like that for near 30 yrs. now.
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hey if it works, dont fix it! just my twist on things. i wish you a great and productive growing season.
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Same.
Grew up in a family of 11, half acre garden, cows, pigs, chickens, goats, geese, guinea hens, ducks, horses, you name it. All organic, free range, grass fed, etc, never brought in anything except animal feed and hey, wouldn’t even cut down a tree unless it died first and would only water the garden with rain water not well water.
I learned a lot.
Most of what I learned was what not to do. Of the rest, most of that was not how to do what, but what to value. Personal life lessons for me were things like: farming is good for the soul and hard work build health and character; if you have a pest problem, it’s probably not worthwhile to fight it organically; if you have a pest problem, long term it’s probably not worthwhile to fight it at all, replace the problem plant/animal with something better suited, eg it’s just not worth trying to grow apples in humid zone 8 southeast; garden ripe heirloom tomatoes taste better than store bought; garden ripe hybrid tomatoes also taste better than store bought; carrots taste the same, and just the seeds cost more than buying carrots at the store, not worth it; compost and mulch are extremely helpful and useful tools that increase productivity and can reduce disease issues; chemical fertilizers are extremely helpful and useful tools that increase productivity and can reduce disease issues; cultivating the soil, tiling, or otherwise digging can be surprisingly harmful, sometimes it’s more beneficial just to spray the weeds; to the point at hand, compost tea is not worth the effort.
Etc
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The same to you
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Bravo! I do think we need some kind of thread for ‘permaculture’ or another word if that is more pleasing. There is an interesting world of fungis, bacterias, moulds, and things such as natural predators that is far more exciting than chemicals… even though sometimes it sacrifices the perfect unblemished fruit that are good for selfies…but otherwise should be just as nutritious and tasty without the risk of health issues from chemicals and toxins that are used to produce fruit in our own soil.
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got to read anything Dr. Bryant Redhawk has posted on there about soil biology. he knows his soil!
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Not to be too argumentative, but since the subject has already been brought up:
While this sounds poetic, isn’t a false distinction? Organic methods are chemical methods, just with more complexity and less control than manufactured chemicals.
Both can be used well or badly. Spraying with a tobacco tincture will kill bees just as bad as spraying with a synthetic nicotine. Runoff from a pile of cow manure is just as bad for water quality as runoff from a field applied with 10-10-10, actually it’s worse since there will be tons of salmonella, clostridium, e. coli, and other microbes from the cow manure. It’s not about if something is made by a plant or a machine, it’s about whether something is used well or abused.
I’m of the opinion that organic or conventional is a pointless exercise of semantics. Are you doing things that are more wholesome and enriching or things that are harmful or impoverishing? That’s what counts in my book, and while organic is in general a bit lower on the harm side, it’s also a lot higher on the impoverishing side.
Anyway, just my $0.02.
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