Compost Teas, what are they doing for you?

[Elijah Growz]

Good morning all, not sure if this is in the correct section so please move if it's not.

I was asked about compost tea recipes yesterday via pm and suggested that Elaine Ingham who is widely considered to be the authority is a good place to start. She has two or three books with recipes and I suggest that her work is likely to contain better researched ideas than a lot of other sources.
As a vegetable gardener, I prefer proven results so I stick to building good soil and use biostimulants to boost uptake and biomass development. This works well for me and I'm very happy with my regime on my allotment.

Late on last night I was asked to give an opinion regarding a video by Brandon Rust on Instagram. He makes some interesting comments on teas. I thought I'd post it here for balance. The gist of it is that without proper equipment and access to dna testing there's always a chance that the tea you're brewing could introduce pathogenic organisms rather than the beneficial one you're hoping for.

That's a very good point imho. I love the idea of teas, it's cheap and relatively easy. What's not to like. But the idea of doing all the work to bring your plants on and potentially introducing pathogens is a scary one. Is the risk Vs the reward worth it?
Here's the link:

[Elijah Growz]

With my beds mate, I put a decent amount of amendments in my mix. It's worth noting that your plants don't draw directly on this, rather the microbial population in the soil (I use an innoculant to put the species I want in place) break everything down as the plant needs it in return for exudates. So the amendments are not used up immediately but over time. I re-amend with a top dress every few months. The other thing I do is use cover crops. As well as suppressing weeds these acquire their own nutrients and I trim the tops every few weeks and leave them on the bed to break down releasing nutrients back into the soil.
The good thing about this method is that your soil is constantly improving so if you tend to it well, you can keep using what you've built rather than throwing out at the end of the season and starting over.

[GMO]

screw teas, top dress is my view :D

aerating teas seems to be the issue. ferments and slow/cold brews seem to have alot less chance of propagating the pathogenic microbes

the general census now seems to be that compost has a life cycle and depending what stage of life your compost is at you will be propagating different colonies

Leighton Morrison (a fellow researcher who worked with elaine) kinda covers this point from about 49 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlQF-v-UtCA

[GMO]

With my beds mate, I put a decent amount of amendments in my mix. It's worth noting that your plants don't draw directly on this, rather the microbial population in the soil (I use an innoculant to put the species I want in place) break everything down as the plant needs it in return for exudates. So the amendments are not used up immediately but over time. I re-amend with a top dress every few months. The other thing I do is use cover crops. As well as suppressing weeds these acquire their own nutrients and I trim the tops every few weeks and leave them on the bed to break down releasing nutrients back into the soil.
The good thing about this method is that your soil is constantly improving so if you tend to it well, you can keep using what you've built rather than throwing out at the end of the season and starting over.

So microbes will continue to feed even if a plants not rewarding them. this is how we cook soil and if you over cook soil the amount of available nutrients and burn plants as the microbes have been working without a balance, they just go at it breaking stuff down but when a plant is in the same food web the dynamic changes as the plants will set some pace to what nutrients are being removed from the medium.

Clover in particular is very interesting because its not only the plant matter that bind nitrogen into the mediun but the roots create nodules around nitrogen fixing microbes as then need an anaerobic environment to live. once the clover plant dies the nitrogen store in root zone becomes available for other plants

[GHO]

With my beds mate, I put a decent amount of amendments in my mix. It's worth noting that your plants don't draw directly on this, rather the microbial population in the soil (I use an innoculant to put the species I want in place) break everything down as the plant needs it in return for exudates. So the amendments are not used up immediately but over time. I re-amend with a top dress every few months. The other thing I do is use cover crops. As well as suppressing weeds these acquire their own nutrients and I trim the tops every few weeks and leave them on the bed to break down releasing nutrients back into the soil.
The good thing about this method is that your soil is constantly improving so if you tend to it well, you can keep using what you've built rather than throwing out at the end of the season and starting over.

So microbes will continue to feed even if a plants not rewarding them. this is how we cook soil and if you over cook soil the amount of available nutrients and burn plants as the microbes have been working without a balance, they just go at it breaking stuff down but when a plant is in the same food web the dynamic changes as the plants will set some pace to what nutrients are being removed from the medium.

Clover in particular is very interesting because its not only the plant matter that bind nitrogen into the mediun but the roots create nodules around nitrogen fixing microbes as then need an anaerobic environment to live. once the clover plant dies the nitrogen store in root zone becomes available for other plants

[GMO]

I use daikon Radish in my mix as it dies over the winter and breaks down rapidly @3 weeks off the top of my head leaving a good store of nutrients in the soil. I must admit though, I don't bother to cook my soil. When I put my beds in I used 33/33/33 compost castings and aeration mixed in a cement mixer and straight into the bed. The compost and castings take care of the nutrient requirement of everything I put into them in the short term and the microbes are doing their thing before that's all used up. I think the cooking really comes into play when you start adding feather meal, blood meal etc with a high values. It's a funny thing talk to ten soil guys and they've all got a different way of going at it.

[GHO]

screw teas, top dress is my view :D

aerating teas seems to be the issue. ferments and slow/cold brews seem to have alot less chance of propagating the pathogenic microbes

the general census now seems to be that compost has a life cycle and depending what stage of life your compost is at you will be propagating different colonies

Leighton Morrison (a fellow researcher who worked with elaine) kinda covers this point from about 49 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlQF-v-UtCA

[GMO]

If you're top dressing and adding worms to your pots they're doing the work for you too!

[GMO]

i do love how dynamic this convo is cos alot comes down to your hopes, aims and inputs

[GMO]

i do love how dynamic this convo is cos alot comes down to your hopes, aims and inputs

That's for sure. There's many ways to skin the proverbial cat.