[compost_tea] Searching for basic instructions on compost tea brewing

From: Stephen <blademan25_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:13:54 -0000

Hello,

I am a newcomer to this direction of making compost tea.  I have been
making hot compost for a period of about 4 years now. 

My compost is primarily a manure compost using goat manure, and
browned alfalfa stems, coffee grounds, and kitchen fruit and
vegetable scraps.  The manure/dried alfalfa blend is 80 - 90% of the
mix, the coffee grounds are 5 - 15% and the remaining scraps fill the
remainder.  My typical compost cycles are that the pile hits a 140 -
150 degree F for a period of 4 days then cools to 120 - 130 then I
remix and let it heat up again for a period of 1 week, then mix every
week for about 4 weeks until the pile does not reheat above 80
degrees anymore (Usually 5 - 6 weeks).  At that time I sift the
compost through hardware cloth or expanded metal. 

This weekend for the first time I attempted to make the compost tea. 
I had some rainwater that had settled in barrels and I placed a
burlap bag filled with compost into the water for a period of about
1 - 2 hours until the water was a deep brown. 

Am I going about this in a reasonable strategy?  How many times can I
reuse this bag of compost until I should empty the contents and
refill it with fresh compost?  If I use municipal water - can I
assume that the chlorine is evaporating sufficiently while the
compost tea is brewing or should I let the chlorine evaporate (and
for how long) before adding the bag?

What are the advantages / disadvantages to using compost tea over
straight compost on the plants? 

I average about 4 - 5 cubic yards of compost every 6 weeks so I am
just trying to calculate the best allocation for my recources.





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Received on Mon Nov 15 2004 - 20:46:40 EST

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