Brewing Us Some Compost Tea

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A friend lent me the Toolbox for Sustainable City Living, which has a recipe for compost tea.  He also dropped off all the necessary equipment for making it.

  • 1 nylon stocking’s leg full of my best homemade compost (= the inoculant)
  • 5 gallons of (non-chlorinated) rain water
  • 1/4 cup of molasses (food)
  • oxygen thanks to an aquarium pump and an airstone or bubbler

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You suspend the stocking with the compost (or worm castings) in the water, squeeze it, let it bubble for an hour, then give it the molasses (or fish hydrolase, or humic acid). Then you let it bubble away for 24-36 hours. After that dilute with 5 to 10 parts of water, and apply it to the soil within 4 hours, preferably either after a good soaking by a rain storm or at dusk, so the beneficial microbes (that I hope are in my compost) can survive in their new home – my garden.

We had friends over till 9:30, for our birthday party/parties: Amie’s and mine (Amie was born on my birthday), and then I put Amie to bed. So I only just now had the opportunity to apply my 30-hour-old tea. It was a rich brown, frothy, and had no odor, and I was the one in pijamas, with the flashlight and the swarm of mosquitoes.

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