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Compost Tea Primer This section will be under construction for some time to come. Aerated Compost Tea (ACT) or Actively Aerated Compost Tea (AACT), Compost Leachate or Non-Aerated Compost Tea (NCT), Liquid Compost (LC) or Compost Extract (CE) and some Hybrids all are different methods to get all the “goodness” out of compost and spread it over a large area. The idea is to get all the good hard working microorganisms living in our compost to come out into a liquid, then spread them out on our lawns, veggies, fruit trees, ornamentals, pastures & crops. EVERYTHING here assumes you are starting with a PROPERLY made, pathogen free compost or Compost Tea Mix - if not, There is no telling what you may brew up! Aerated Compost Tea (ACT) or Actively Aerated Compost Tea (AACT) - This is what used to a lot of. Take a good Compost Tea Brewing Mix, bubble out most of the microorganisms, feed them, give them plenty of air to breath, let them multiply for about 24 hours and Wala - put them in a tank and spray them out. Downside on this method is keeping the brew ABOVE a Dissolved Oxygen Level of 6 (the better you get at growing bugs the harder it is) and when it’s done it needs to go out then - no delays for a day or two! Upside is your can usually make a homemade contraption inexpensively to get started. To do it right or in large volumes (200gal & up) you will either spend money on professionally made brewers or monitoring instruments and a microscope. You can spend over $2,000 real easy. This is a popular method because folks get to play Compost Tea Chef with all their recipes! Consistency between batches is not easy using this method. A real downside is all the microorganisms are active, reproducing, breathing and in a constant state of expansion - so time is of the essence! You can blow a whole batch in 30 minutes or less. “Blow” a batch usually means it went anaerobic and the dissolved oxygen got too low and your good guys started dying and the “not so good” guys started multiplying real fast. Check out Soil Foodweb, Inc. for the real Pros on this method of making ACT. Non-Aerated Compost Tea (NCT) or Compost Leachate - Well this is the old way to make a dark smelly liquid that was usually good to put on plants - but not always. Fill a bucket half full of compost and top off with water. Let it sit Could hurt plants if the compost was still raw or had some “bad bugs” in it. I collect all the water that comes out of my potted plants when I water them - a form of “potted plant soil leachate”. Then I collect it and re-water with it the next day - nice! This method is not very popular and has an above average potential for disaster as a foliar spray. The term Non-Aerated Compost Tea (NCT) is a catch-all for the preceding method that emphasize compost extracts and steeped and stirred compost teas. The NCT term describes the ancient methods found in Roman agricultural textbooks. The NCT term also describes the methods used by Weltzein, Trankner, and others in the European literature on compost watery extracts of the 1980s and 90s. Liquid Compost (LC) or Compost Extract (CE) or Liquid Compost Extract (LCE) - With this you method can make LARGE QUANTITIES in a short amount of time. This is the preferred method of the large commercial operators. Consistency between batches is a function of the quality of your compost and usually not a problem for professional operations using method. They can fill a tanker truck in a few hours! It requires that you have very good compost because this method does not feed the microorganisms and grow them out in a brew. The microorganism count is directly related to the quality of your compost. There is no brewing recipe to feed them up to par. This method extracts them from the compost and leaves them in an un-fed resting state until application time - then they are fed/activated once in the sprayer just before application. A real upside to this method is the ability to hold the Liquid Compost in a tank for several days without losing your organism count. Check out Sustainable Growth and Microbial Earth for the real Pros on this method of making ACT. Hybrids - There are several hybrid type systems out there. One popular one uses a piece of oilfield equipment - it’s in Texas, of course! It can brew or extract - you decide each time you use it by how you set it up. It’s Erath Earth, they make small systems, large systems and manure treatment systems. A very versatile system. Interesting Compost Tea Links: http://www.soilfoodweb.com/03_about_us/approach.html http://www.attra.org/attra-pub/compost-tea-notes.html http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2002082739009975.html Yahoo listserv groups: |