I've never heard of soil soup--what is it and how do you make it?

Are you talking about aerated compost tea made with the Soil Soup tea brewer?

I make and use compost tea, is that similar to soil soup? I mix compost, molasses, corn meal, alfalfa, and sometimes other things in a large trash can and brew it for 3 days and then use it on my roses.

Ok, Marie, what is it? Everyone wants to know.

Soil Soup is aerated compost tea. I guess the difference between it and the compost/alfalfa tea that gets discussed on the forum so much is that it's brewed w/ an air pump forcing air bubbles through the mixture... like the air pumps used in fish aquariums.

I haven't tried actual Soil Soup so can't comment, but I have been trying to aerate my compost tea by blowing into some irrigation hose once a day or so. My plants do seem to respond favorably to it but I haven't seen any less fungal disease yet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Soup

They want $499.00 for the soil soup contraption on that website. I love my garden, but not for that much....

I'm with you Kathy. When I saw that price tag I just kinda laughed. Aerated compost tea? Call me cheap, but if I need aerated I'll just have to use a straw, bplpblpbpbpblb!
:o Cheryl

We haven't heard back from the original writer on what soil soup means to her. If it means aerated compost tea from the soil soup machine, you can make one with parts from Wal-Mart for under $20. I got an 18-gallon Rubbermaid bin, an aquarium pump, and an aquarium airstone. It does the same thing as the soil soup contraption and makes 3 times as much.

Ok so I owe everyone an apology. I am new to forums and chat sites and didn't have the follow ups sent to my email as I thought I had. I also didn't realize I would get a lot of responses and questions. I read all the stuff about forums and I don't specifically remember anything about length of responses.

Anyway, yes, SoilSoup is made with the SoilSoup tea brewer. I bought only the bio-blender and use half of a 30 gallon food barrel to brew my soup in-paid $299.00 for the blender. And, yes, $299.00 is expensive but I have been so lazy about fertilizing and taking care of potted plants or recently purchased bareroot or plant starts that I was losing more money in plants than I care to admit.
I shared/sold SoilSoup to many friends and neighbors, who garden organically, to pay off the cost. I also benefitted from exchanging rather than selling. I used other people's vermicompost to make a batch or trade for cuttings and unusual plants that could ethically be a fair trade. I also sprayed for people who didn't have the time to do it themselves. There were also possible tax deductions I could have taken if I had filed for a DBA (doing business as). Most people told me the articles I gave them and my enthusiasm/results were enough to interest them and have continued to request more due to their successes, especially with problem roses.

I talked with a lot of organic nurseries and individual organic farmers about building our own apparatus. My husband loves to make gadgets and really wanted to find another less expensive way to make the system. He has owned several aquariums over the years and found that the aquarium pumps could get blocked to easily. I don't usually do anything with the bio-blender except wash it after I finish a batch. We (actually, my husband--I am not good with physics, etc) looked at the intake and outflow of air for the blender vs a good aquarium aerator and at the time the aquarium system would have been more than the bio-blender.

The big difference from compost tea is that the aerator (bio-blender) begins to produce healthy biota exponentially after a few hours of blending. I use the nutrient solution sold by SoilSoup that my local nursery sells. It is made of bat guano, seabird guano, molasses and other stuff. No alfalfa, cornmeal,etc. Our local rose society does the alfalfa, alaskan fish fertilizer, etc in the the garbage for 3 days as a fertilizer for the various rose gardens we maintain. SoilSoup works on simpler level than a fertilizer. One nice thing about the soup is that it can be used year round unless under snowpack and doesn't require the ground soil to be at a certain tempurature recommended for most fertilizers. I don't know much about irragation hoses but since the blender runs 24 hours a day I suspect that an irrigation hose being used once a day would not produce the same level of biota. I do know if I turn off the blender that the soup goes anaerobic after approximately 10 hours so therefore if the stuff sits waiting for the irrigation hose a large percentage of the biota would have died off. The healthy or non-pathogenic biota requires constant aeration until it is introduced to the soil or absorbed into the plant leaf, flower, trunk, stem, etc. After the soup has been brewing a few hours and the healthy biota are reproducing at a faster and faster rate all of the anaerobic or pathogenic bacteria (biota) are eaten. Information from the brochures, articles, classes, etc that I have taken or read says that pathogenic biota do not have defences against healthy biota and therefore are just "eaten" (for lack of a better phrase).

I also read and talked to a serious proponent of aerated compost tea (she has been studying for quite a few years before SoilSoup Inc ever got started) and there is a lot of serious documentation out there (most of it over my head until I get a friend to translate all the scientific terms). Various universities and agricultural programs/grants started testing all the different versions of compost tea--including the 3 day barrel and short term aeration, and other techiques and found quite a difference in the results. A lot of people began bringing in fresh samples of tea using whatever technique they preferred, non-aearated, different nutrient sources and many of them were very successful. There is a whole "world" of nutrient solutions out there used for all types of farming--many of which I would not wish to brew or use in my own yard but work very well for rooting plants to providing special soil culture for specific crops. SoilSoup Inc. was the first group to make it even close to affordable for a home gardener. Some of the orignal aerators cost about $1800.00 to purchase and a good deal of farm used them. Like I stated before most of this was very technical but can be found on the internet. BBC labs, "Worm Digest", Ann Lovejoy and many others have articles and sites that can be found on the web. Also the SoilSoup site has links to articles of all levels (simple to very scientific). The following text was borrowed from Ann Lovejoy's article on SoilSoup.

One of the best known researchers is Dr. Elaine Ingham. She is the soil scientist from Corvallis who developed the brewing technology, she stated "if we can coat each leaf with 60% coverage (top and bottom), we can avoid all or nearly all of the foliage disorders our plants experience. Foliar spraying is best done in a light rain or when the leaves are damp from rain or being watered. The tea will migrate into the leaf surface, taking up residence and providing ongoing protection against pathogens." Dr. Ingham is not talking about the product specifically produced by the SoilSoup system.

All this said I would be curious to know the biota level of a barrel standing for 3 days, the aquarium pump and airstone or compost tea aerated by an irrigation hose. Admittedly, I am definitely a SoilSoup advocate (or perhaps I should say groupie) but if there is a better, less expensive way to produce similar effects it would be nice to share with friends, the local garden clubs and those to which I donate tea whose funding wouldn't cover the small cost biweekly or monthly. Many interested nurseries have begun selling the SoilSoup by the gallon and I know that SoilSoup, Inc. has been making more of an effort to get to vendor and garden shows to spread awareness and, of course, make sales. If you do choose to buy a gallon from a nursery or other store make sure that the decanted soup has not been sitting in the sun and has only been decanted 5 or less hours before otherwise the biota could be dead or dying from heat without air. Many of the local nurseries who recently started brewing and selling didn't seem to be aware of the effects such conditions would have on their soup. If you are gardening completely organically you can use the soup at full strength the first time you buy it and then start diluting each time afterwards (the recommended amount is usually 1 part soup to 10 parts water-I rarely need more than a gallon or two a month except for tne problem areas such as my waterfront slope. Also I am now up to 20 roses OGR and English and have used the soup to get the roses through my indecision of where to plant.

If you're really going into mass production, I wonder if a Jacuzzi pump would put enough air into a couple hundred gallons? I like the really fine bubbles in mine. I suppose you could hook a Jacuzzi pump up to a hundred air stones.

After purchasing a soil soup mixer my pure sand soil has improved greatly. It is equilevent to spreading 3 inches of compost over the soil surface. It is much easier for me to spread soil soup than making that quanity of compost and then moving it. I started with Roses only after getting my machine and have had no trouble with black spot, etc.

Okay.. I have a Q..
The biota in the soil soup lives only when aerated and moist.... Correct?

Then you spray it on your plants and drench your soil.. Correct?

What happens to the biota as soon as the leaves dry off and the soil is no longer saturated.. don't they die?

If so what is the purpose of needing to keep them alive until spraying/drenching? Sorry but I must be missing a fact in the process or two.

Inquiring minds want to know
;-)

I found a great article from Taunton Press on making your own aerated compost tea brewer.

I too have been eyeing the soil soup sight and have been put off by the cost. The Taunton Press article solves that issue!

Here is a link that might be useful: Taunton Press - Brewing Compost Tea

I also have eyed the soil soup contraption myself. I signed up in the tab that says "Win a soil soup brewing system" because I couldn't afford the price either. Well that added me to there e-mail mailing list and they have a special around twice a year where they sell there systems for about 1/2 off. They don't advertise it, it is only for members of there mailing list. I jumped on that and got the 25 gallon system. I absolutely love mine and I use it on all of my plants. I have some bananna plants in the front of my house that never gave fruit. This was the first year I had the system and 3 of the trees gave fruit. My roses are much hardier, and the system is easy to use.

By the way the full price of the systems have gone done alot. The 25 gallon is now $269 and the 6.5 gallon is $189.
The bio blender is the same for both so if you wanted to save money you could get just the bio blender and use a larger container. The manual will tell you how much of compost and how much nutrient to use for the 6.5 and the 25 gallon system.

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Soup Systems