Re: [compost_tea] Re: Begginer help

From: Robert Norsen <bnbrew_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 09:36:38 -0800 (PST)

Great message to Oliver, Chris. Oliver, encourage other kids to get involved. The world needs your help. Bob

chriscreid <reidchris_at_earthlink.net> wrote:--- In compost_tea_at_yahoogroups.com, "enoc2222" <enoc2222_at_y...> wrote:
> Hello Everyone
> I have been interested in compost tea/worm farming/composting
> for a while and am want to use it on my house plants,in my fathers
> garden and as a project for my schooling(i am curently 16 and self
> taught gardener/horticulter'st)
> i am a bit confused and was wondering if you guys could help me
out
> on some question i have on the compost for the tea and the mix or
> additives for the tea
> my Father bought a 22 Gl. earth tea brewer and is what i will be
> using to make the teas also he(my father) has put me incharge of
> making tea for our entire garden
> Please Let Me Know
> Thanks a bunch
> Oliver
> P.S. i am also interested in alfalfa tea and other teas beside
ones for the brewer

Oliver,

You are interested in some pretty fascinating stuff!

On the question of teas, there are several things to sort out before
you get to the recipe.

Especially since you are doing a project for school, it will help
you to know your starting point before you put down any tea, and
then later measure to see what happened where you did use tea, and
what happened where you didn't. There are a couple different areas
to focus on. First, what are the current conditions in your
garden? Have you done a soil test? That is a good place to start.

When you get your soil test, some people say it is more useful to
make sure you get a test that shows you the actual amount of
different minerals (like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium,
calcium, and so on). Some tests just say "high, low, very high" and
others tell you actual amounts of the mineral in your soil sample.

Besides what minerals are in the soil and available for your plants,
you can also measure compaction, and you can test how well the soil
drains. A book you might find interesting is Secrets to Great Soil
by Elizabeth Stell. It has a number of easy tests to help
understand soil condition.

What do you want to grow or use tea on? Are you going to use the
tea on your lawn, in a vegetable garden (which veggies?), on some
hemlock trees or what? How are your plants doing in the garden --
are they healthy? Any persistent disease or insect problems?

Coming back to your tea recipe. There are many things that people
call compost tea, but for the Earth Tea brewer, you are making
aerobically active compost tea. It's not a fertilizer, even though
it is easy to get confused by the word "tea" and think anything
mixed in a liquid is the same kind of "tea" like manure tea. The
Compost Tea Brewing Manual by Elaine Ingham will help explain more
about what tea is and isn't.

The primary purpose of aerobically active compost tea (also called
AACT) is to grow beneficial organisms to put in your soil, and to
put them on the ground with nutrients and conditions that will
sustain them and help them grow. Lawns like a lot of bacteria with
a little fungi, and hemlock trees will like a lot of fungi with a
little bacteria. Part of the way you get the right organisms for
the crop is by what ingredients you put in the tea, and part of it
is in what food you apply along with the tea (foods like fish
hydrolysate, kelp extract, humic acid).

Soil organism are something like a sports team. Soil health and
function is very much a team or community effort. In the soil as in
sports, if one member isn't there for the game, sometimes you can
send in another member to do the job. But if lots of members aren't
there, or all the fullbacks or halfbacks or ends aren't there (all
the various kinds of organisms that can do a particular job), it's
harder to pass the ball, or score, or run a good defense. In making
tea, the point is to use tea to help get a complete team in the
soil. Many times, diseases or insect attacks or things like soil
compaction can be signs that the whole team is not on the field.

Now we wind back to recipes. For a starting recipe, why not talk to
the people at Earth Tea? They can probably recommend a recipe they
have tested and that they know works for your machine.

By the way, it would also be smart to test your tap or well water
pH. Something around 7 or neutral is recommended. And if you have
chlorine in your tap water, you will also need to get that out by
bubbling the water first.

There is a lot to learn and a lot to talk about -- Hope this at
least begins to help.

Chris Reid


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Received on Wed Oct 29 2003 - 15:17:18 EST

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