Stoney Bologna

I was wondering if any had any information on making and brewing compost tea. any information on this would be greatly appreciated.

I did a search for "Compost Tea" and found nothing..

Lizzie Borden

I use compost, but have never made compost tea or seen it discussed here. A Google search found this.

"As the name implies, compost tea is made by steeping compost in water. It's used as either a foliar spray or a soil drench, depending on where your plant has problems."

There's a lot more info about it on that site, including detailed instructions for making it. It's quite interesting. Thanks for bringing it up.

organic

I know a lot about compost tea, in theory anyway. It was the "next big thing" a year or two ago in commercial organic agriculture and a lot of wild claims were made about it being a magic bullet. You will find a lot of people swearing it can do everything from feeding your plants to curing cancer *smirk*, but there is very little scientific backup for these claims. Most of the biggest proponents have a stake in selling the stuff, or the brewers.

If there is continued interest, I can post some links to info on it - my favorite is one that found that soaking a mesh bag of compost in a trash can full of water is just as effective as the $2000 brewers.

There is a mention of it in the "organic's organics" sticky thread in this forum; you might also try a search on member name bgetting who used to work for a manufacturer of the brewers.

O

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Lizzie Borden

I am definitely interested in learning more about it. Link away.

organic

Overview and references

More overview with more references

The pages above contain quite a few links to other research, so I won't bother to separate and post them, except for this one since I mentioned it earlier:

Comparison between aerated/nonaerated compost tea

You may want to do a Google search on "Elaine Ingham" who is probably the biggest proponent of the stuff in the ag research community, but be warned that she has very vocal views, but to date very little reproducible data to back them up. She also has a financial stake in the proceedings.

My take on the subject is, if you're already using compost, then compost tea isn't going to do much extra for you. Others may have differing opinions.

O

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