I think you are probably in for some work no matter what you do but I will throw out some ideas.

You could buy an inline carbon filter for your chlorinated city water and then use a siphon sprayer from the source bucket. I have heard of orchid growers using these things for watering to handle the chlorine content.

You could get some rubbermaids and fill them with water in various places on the property and wait for a few days for the chlorine to dissipate. Then portion off the tea into these containers and sling with coffee can, or spray with a trombone sprayer. Google will get you a product site with a simple search for that term.

Here is a link that might be useful: www.gardeninginconverse.com (my garden blog)

Hi Hipgardener. Interesting ideas. But they bring up another point I don't understand. It seems that, like regular fertilizer, the coverage of the compost or tea would need to be fairly uniform, or else you'd see a difference in the color and growth of the grass. I can see how the organisms would migrate throughout the lawn, but aren't the nutrients and minerals in the compost/tea also important? Especially if one of them were already lacking in the old lawn?

I guess I can see spreading it by splashing it around the yard, but I worry that would ultimately make it look "patchy." Or am I imagining too much?

Thanks.

Dave11,

The siphon pump with an inline charcol filter is a great idea. Also if you're really serious about spraying you could invest in a backpack sprayer. Solo and several other companies make handheld booms with up to 4 flat fan nozzles covering close to 4 feet a swipe depending on which company we're talking about.

Im not so sure about the siphon pump. There are those that say its fine and others that swear the siphon will shred some of your biology, fungi in particular.

You need not worry about uniformity of coverage with tea. At all. Generally speaking you'll want to "spray to drip" to make sure the tea is soaking in but beyond the biology content of your tea there is no nutritive value to speak of. It isn't fertilizer so it has no capacity to streak or patch. Even if you're adding fish emulsion to your application you wont see uneven greening and frankly with any hand held applicator there is no way to get uniform liquid coverage.

Uhhhhhhhhh.......

To be clear.

Filtered siphon pump=good.

Should have said that I was not so sure about the *trombone* sprayer. My fault.

Sounds good. That helps a lot. I'll give these ideas a try.

You could always break that 15k into smaller bites. It does not have to be done all at once.

The trombone sprayer will probably break up some of the fungi, but not anymore than other nozzle type sprayers, e.g. pump sprayer or hose end spray nozzle with a siphon pump. I would imagine that even using your thumb as a hose end spray nozzle would disrupt the fungi enough to cause some die-back. I just don't think it would be much of a big deal given the population size within the bucket. Fungi are also resilient, and what may appear as a die-back might only be shock. I can only relate this experience to mail order shiitake plug spawn, not specifically to tea fungi. All of the bumping about in the UPS truck caused the mycelia to collapse and a day or so of still rest was all it took for them to plump back up. I am presuming water borne fungi would act in much the same manner.

Here is a link that might be useful: www.gardeninginconverse.com (my garden blog)

hipgardner you may well be correct. I've never looked at the before/after biology under a microscope with a trombone sprayer but I do know that those who apply their own teas for a living fret no end over the type of pump used and subsequent psi. Good fungal dominate teas are hard to make precisely because the hyphae are so relatively fragile and difficult to extract. I don't think I make particularly good fungal tea either.

I just bought one of these, http://www.growersupply.com/drhosi.html . Attach to house spicket, then attach garden hose to it. Then drop the syphon hose in the bucket you brewed your tea in and it sucks right up with the water. Attach your garden hose to a sprinkler or whatever and it mixes the tea right in. I used it yesterday and it's a little slow but. I used all quick connections http://www.hardwareandtools.com/invt/2459402 too, so I could easily attach and take off when needed.