Happy compost chat --?tea?

16 years ago

Rick came out to my house to deliver 5 cubic yards of Royal Soil compost for my seedling bed this coming spring. I had five truckloads back in 2002 for landscaping an in ground pool, and another just this July, so he remembered me. I've never had such a great time in my entire life! He was actually interested in looking at all my daylilies, because I was bragging so much on Bluegrass Music putting up a new fan, and basically I have a new fan or two on most of my single fan August planted cultivars. Nothing planted in that stuff rotted, either, compared to four rot cases in my ground bed.

I was going on and on, and he was just soaking it up. Usually people's eye glaze over! LOL! I'm big on composting, which was my first love even before I had a garden to use it in. Something about making value from waste is appealing to me. He talked about his business, and his products, and his attorneys, and my eyes didn't glaze over, either.

It's not boy meets girl, don't get me wrong, but it is wacko meets wacko and that's even better!

Anyhoo, he went on about pushing this horse stable compost through a window screen and getting granules the size of table salt. He's wanting to put it in tea bags for brewing and is going to call it "Kik" , since horses kick and it will kick start your roses (or daylilies--he's a little behind the times on what's the best perennial for hobbiests!) I don't think it's out yet, but I have the actual compost in my backyard, and he says I could put an aquarium bubbler in the bottom of a new rolling plastic garbage can to brew aerobic tea.

What do you guys think? I swear my rot stank like bacteria in my ground bed, and now I have magnolia leaves (free and available) on for mulch during these couple of cold nights. I'm terrified my whole ground bed will rot but I'm afraid not to mulch these new Florida babies. I also have plenty of old straw but it's wet and heating up inside the bales so I left them split into flakes to dry out and cool off. That seemed like too much compost activity with the fungus apparent for me to lay about my bed.

Don't you think a tea of beneficial bacteria would hold the pathogens down just by competition? I can top dress, but somehow the tea sounds like it would carry the bacteria down deeper, faster. I know I don't so much need the fertilizer aspect here as things gear down for winter, but a little tea wouldn't hurt anything, would it?

You can see I'm still revved up from my happy chat, and I can't see if any of your eyes are glazed over!

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Comments (8)

badback
16 years ago
http://dchall.home.texas.net/organic/teamaker/
Take a look at this. Something on the order of what he is talking about.
sweatin_in_ga
16 years ago
Also very similar to what Paul James has shown on his "Gardening by the Yard" show on HGTV. A couple of weeks ago he also talked about a "new product" that was compost in a tea bag, so I suggest that your friend hurry before he is too late to the market.
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petalpatsy
Original Author
16 years ago
Tremendous! I actually have all that right now, except the molasses. Are there any special ingrediants, for example alfalfa pellets or something, that any of you would recommend to make happy daylilies?
petalpatsy
Original Author
16 years ago
Oh, I'm so sorry I missed that show! I used to watch GBTY religiously, but now that I can actually garden I get my fix in my own actual dirt. My friend isn't really a friend of mine, personally. He is the owner/operator of a compost farm here in Franklin, Tennessee, and I am just an old customer who likes the way he thinks. :) For all I know, Paul was talking about his product.

But I don't need the tea bag product, anyway. I put up my little system last night, after a zippy run to Kroger for the molasses. I also got some chocolate ice cream, but that didn't go in the tea--it went in me. :)
jackarias
16 years ago
Sugars such as molasses grow bacteria. There is always sufficient bacteria in compost if the compost was kept aerobic.

The compost if properly made will have more than sufficient bacteria and if the compost contained a high percentage of woody material such as wood pellets or chips for horse bedding it will also have sufficent fungi, again assuming it was kept aerobic.

If you want to brew tea and you do it aerobic it will smell good and be good. Don't put any bacteria food such as molasses in the compost tea since the bacteria can grow so fast the aeration cannot keep up with the growth and it can still go anaerobic.

The trick is to grow fungi. Daylilies prefer a soil that has three times as much fungi as bacteria so you need a compost that is primarily woody material with about 30-40 % manure. The wood grows fungi. You need fungal foods such as rolled oats, cornmeal, feathers. Then you can get the fungi to attach to the fungal foods and you are on your way to excellent aerobic compost tea.

Good compost is better than compost tea, but more expensive and more difficult to spread so that is why compost tea is used.

It takes about 1 cup of compost to make 4-5 gallons of compost tea.
jackarias
16 years ago
Both bacteria and fungi are necessary to outcompete the pathogens and keep them at bay. Some tests have indicated that it is usually the fungi that is insufficent to provide good pathogen protection so any tea made for that purpose should be weighted towards growing fungi and not bacteria. The bacteria will be there, it is the fungi that is hard to get.
petalpatsy
Original Author
16 years ago
Thanks jackarias! I'd heard about the trich-zxhowuto8 fungus and passed that on to my mom when I saw her straight row method of pouring a line of corn meal over a string. She was tickled as she'd never thought it might be good particularly for the plants. :)

Royal Soil is horse manure and wood shaving bedding, along with bits of timothy hay, and he mentioned the rye from brewery waste but I'm not sure he still uses that. I think he put in some soybean meal this year, too. I can certainly add some cornmeal and rolled oats to my tea.
jackarias
16 years ago
It is better to add the rolled oats to the compost and let the fungi grow, then add the fungi to the tea.