Compost Tea

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1. Why Use Compost Tea?
Compost tea is used for two reasons: To inoculate microbial life into the soil or onto the foliage of plants, and to add soluble nutrients to the foliage or to the soil to feed the organisms and the plants present. The use of compost tea is suggested any time the organisms in the soil or on the plants are not at optimum levels. Chemical-based pesticides, fumigants, herbicides and some synthetic fertilizers kill a range of the beneficial microorganisms that encourage plant growth, while compost teas improve the life in the soil and on plant surfaces. High quality compost tea of will inoculate the leaf surface and soil with beneficial microorganisms, instead of destroying them.

What is Compost Tea?

Compost tea is a liquid produced by leaching soluble nutrients and extracting bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes from compost. The brewing process is performed at constant temperature, although the growth of the organisms may elevate temperature as a result of their reproductive heat produced.

Tea production is a brewing process, and as easy as making beer or wine. But we all know that wine or beer brewing isn’t that easy. Brewing compost tea can be fraught with problems. But if you think about what you are doing, and pick out the right tea-making machine, making compost tea that will help your plants is easy as flipping a light switch.
What is your purpose in making tea? If you want to inoculate a highly beneficial group of bacteria and fungi, protozoa and possibly nematodes, buy good compost that has these organisms, and make Actively Aerated Compost Tea. There are a number of excellent tea makers on the market (see How to make AACT).

Benefits of using of compost tea containing the WHOLE foodweb include:

Improve plant growth as a result of protecting plant surfaces with beneficial organisms which occupy infection sites and prevent disease-causing organisms from finding the plant,
Improve plant growth as a result of improving nutrient retention in the soil, and therefore reduce fertilizer use, and loss of nutrients into ground- and surface waters
Improve plant nutrition by increasing nutrient availability in the root system as predator-prey interactions increase plant available nutrients in exactly the right place, time and amounts that the plant needs,
Reduce the negative impacts of chemical-based pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers on beneficial microorganisms in the ecosystem
Improve uptake of nutrients by increasing foliar uptake as beneficial microorganisms increase the time stomates stay open, while at the same time reducing evaporative loss from the leaf surface,
Reduce water loss, improve water-holding in the soil, and thus reduce water use in your system,
Improve tillage by building better soil structure. Only the biology builds soil structure, and ALL the groups in the foodweb are required to be successful. You can’t have just bacteria, you must have fungi, protozoa, nematodes and microarthropods as well! Please be aware that plate count methods don’t tell you about the whole foodweb.

What is in compost tea?

Tea contains all the soluble nutrients extracted from the compost, but also contains all the species of bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in the compost. Not all the individuals in the compost, but representatives of all the species in the compost are found in the compost tea. Making sure only beneficial species are present in the compost is therefore critical.

Outdated methods of assessing numbers of organisms in samples might lead you to believe compost tea doesn’t have much diversity. But, consider that species diversity in soil is much, much greater than plate count data would lead people to believe. Plate counts miss 99.99% of the bacterial and fungal species in soil. You need to use molecular methods to understand true species diversity in compost.

Plate count assessments of diversity in compost and tea, and soil should not be used. They are misleading about the true diversity, or even as an indicator of diversity in soil, compost or compost tea. Good, aerobic compost contains a huge diversity of organisms.

Foods extracted from the compost, or added to the tea, grow beneficial organisms. A large diversity of food resources is extracted from compost. The species diversity of organisms in the tea is much higher than those hundred or so species of bacteria that grow on the food resources added by people. Together, the beneficial bacteria and fungi growing on the compost foods, and on the added foods, result in a many individuals of many different species. Molecular diversity analysis is required, however, to assess even a small portion of the species present in compost tea.

Only aerobes are desired. Anaerobes make alcohols that kill plant tissues very rapidly. Putrifying organic matter, which is anaerobic, also contains organisms, just not organisms that do anything beneficial for your plants.

Most introductory microbiology books can answer most questions about the controversy between direct enumeration and plate count approaches. Reading the sewage treatment literature also points out clearly the conditions that allow E. coli to grow, which means reduced oxygen atmosphere. In full aerobic conditions, only if the beneficial bacteria have been killed or harmed can E. coli win in competition with aerobic organisms.

The list of papers specific to compost tea and compost have been summarized by Steve Diver, and are listed on the ATTRA website, www.ATTRA.org

When buying a tea machine, you should ask the manufacturer to provide information about oxygen during the tea brewing cycle in the compost basket or bag. You should insist on being given molecular analyses of diversity, and total and active bacteria and fungi, and protozoa, present in the tea made under standard conditions.

The METHOD is critical in making tea-

In order to have the organisms in the tea, brewing conditions must be correct to produce the end product desired.
The biology that is active and performing a function will be very different, depending on:

temperature of brewing,
the foods added to the brew,
oxygen concentrations in the brewer during production,
the initial compost used, and therefore which species are present to be extracted,
The length of time tea is brewed.
Temperature

Temperature during brewing should be related to the temperature of the soil, or of the leaf surface. If tea is applied in the late autumn, when temperatures are cool, it may be wiser to apply a tea where the organisms are mostly asleep, or that are selected to grow on plant residues. Selection for this ability would be enhanced by addition of plant material to the brew, such as oatmeal, alfalfa meal, feathermeal, etc.

 

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Foods

Foods added to a brew will select for particular species that can use those foods. Do you want a bacterial tea? Add sugars, simple proteins, simple carbohydrates. If a fungal brew is desired, add more complex foods, such as plant material (oatmeal, soybean meal, flour), humic acids, fulvic acids (which will release bacterial foods after fungi begin the process of decomposition). Predators can be enhanced by adding hay (cut green and dried), or by soaking hay for a few days and adding the water to the tea brew.

Oxygen

Oxygen is perhaps the parameter that has been least understood in centuries of tea-brewing. Most beneficial organisms, the organisms that promote the processes that plants need in order to grow without stress, and therefore with greatest resistance to disease, are aerobic organisms. To enhance this community of beneficials, tea must remain aerobic.

Fermentative microorganisms are organisms which can grow in aerobic as well as reduced oxygen conditions. Since these organisms have dual metabolic abilities, they have to maintain the genetic material for both sets of enzymes. They have an energetic load that means they are not as competitive with true aerobes, when oxygen is in fully aerobic concentrations. They are not as competitive when in competition with true anaerobes at low oxygen concentrations. They do best in the conditions where oxygen is fluctuating in the intermediate aerobic – anaerobic range. These organisms can make very interesting waste products when growing in anaerobic conditions. These materials are known to have significantly inhibitory effects on a variety of less-desirable organisms.

The problem is maintaining the conditions exactly correctly so that the desired organisms grow. This knowledge is not public domain, and remains proprietary. Until attention is directed to understanding what products result from different aerobic – anaerobic conditions, with which foods, and with different temperature regimes during brewing, fermentative compost teas remain in the questionable realm. These teas don’t produce the same effects time-after-time, which is the reason that compost teas have languished in the “snake-oil”, and “voo-doo-juice” category for so long. If the tea you brew today has one effect, but the tea you brew tomorrow has a different, and possibly negative effect, that lack of reliable results will destroy the reputation of a product. It is most important to clearly maintain production conditions when making tea.

Anaerobic conditions (below 2 to 4 mg oxygen per L for example) during brewing can result in the growth of some quite detrimental microbes and production of some very detrimental metabolites. It is best to avoid extremely low oxygen concentrations during brewing, or if low oxygen concentrations occur, brewing must continue until the organisms stop growing on the added foods, such that oxygen will diffuse back into the brew. Only after the brew returns to the aerobic conditions should it be used on plants or soil.

If you want to make a mix of unknown, but possibly quite anti-bacterial, or anti-fungal materials, then a fermentative approach might be best. The specific conditions needed for production of a consistent mix set of inhibitory substances are not well-documented. More work is needed to understand production parameters for this kind of tea.

Is compost or compost tea “better” if it is aerobic or anaerobic?

Bacteria that cause human diseases almost invariably require anaerobic or reduced oxygen conditions in order to survive in competition with aerobic organisms. Only in reduced oxygen, or anaerobic conditions, can human disease-causing organisms out-compete the normal set of beneficial bacteria or fungi growing in soil, compost or compost tea.

If you’ve done a good job choosing or making your compost, the compost will not contain any human disease organisms. The tea will not contain human pathogens if there were none in the compost. What do you need to know in order to be assured that the compost contains no human pathogens? The temperature cycle of the compost. Insist on getting that data from the compost maker. What do you care about the amount of nitrate, if there are human pathogens in the “compost”?

If the compost was kept fully aerobic, and temperatures between 135 F and 155 F were maintained for 10 to 14 days, or the compost was processed by adequate numbers of earthworms, the likelihood of human pathogens in the compost is just about nil. Contamination of finished compost by something else containing pathogens is possible so be aware that this can be a problem too.

If the compost wasn’t processed correctly and disease-causing organisms weren’t destroyed by temperature, competition with beneficial organisms, or passage through earthworms, the probability is reasonable that disease-causing organisms will grow rapidly and be in high numbers in a tea that goes through reduced oxygen, or anaerobic, conditions.

If the tea was made with good compost (high numbers of beneficial bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes; good soluble nutrients) using aerobic conditions, there is little likelihood that human pathogens could grow, because not only are conditions not correct for their growth, but they will be out-competed and inhibited by the aerobic bacteria and fungi growing in those aerobic conditions.

It is critical to know that the tea maker you are using can maintain aeration rates greater than the rate the bacteria and fungi use up the oxygen.

Oxygen or carbon dioxide can be monitored to determine whether aeration is adequate throughout the whole brewing cycle, and in all parts of the machine. Please be aware that the data needed are from the inside of the compost basket, or inside the compost bag. Currently, all national level compost tea manufacturers display SFI data on their websites, with only two exceptions. People who bought machines form these two companies have sent data to SFI showing that either inside the compost baskets or the bags, the tea went anaerobic during tea brewing, or serious anaerobic bio-films develop in places that you can’t see or can’t reach easily during cleaning.

Oxygen in the tea should not fall below 5.5 to 6 ppm dissolved oxygen, which is typically about 70% dissolved oxygen, or 15 to 16% oxygen when measuring total atmospheric gases. These values change based on altitude and temperatures, so make sure the oxygen probe comes with information on typical maximum oxygen levels, which is where your water in your tea maker will start out.

You can’t tell whether oxygen use, or carbon dioxide production, was performed by bacteria or by fungi. Since you need to know, at least occasionally, the ratio of fungi to bacteria your tea, you need to test your teas so you can be certain you are making disease suppressive tea.

Fungi grow very well indeed in compost tea.

For good fungi in tea, first of all, fungi in the compost have to be extracted adequately. This is a function of two things, presence in fungi in the compost, and rapid enough water movement through the compost to pull the fungi off the compost particles. Work with Bruce Elliott of EPM ([email protected]) has shown how easy it is to get great extraction and growth of fungi in the tea.

The EPM, KIS, WormGold, and BnBrewer machines in the US, Tea-riffic® in Canada, the Compost Tea machine in New Zealand, and Compara in Europe, in do excellent jobs of extracting fungi from the compost and allowing it to grow in the tea. Testing, over one to two years, shows that these machines continue to make good tea. Machines with hidden surfaces that develop biofilms do not maintain good tea production over time.

Sales people from companies that cannot pass SFI standards like to say that “fungi don’t grow in tea”, or “there are lots of fungi in the soil already”. Please realize that what they are actually telling you is that the machines they sell do a poor job of extracting fungi and growing fungi. Fungi can be extracted and grow quite well in tea.

When soils have been treated with fungicides, including copper sulfate, or sulfur, the soil cannot possibly maintain normal levels of beneficial fungi. Adequate beneficial fungal biomass does not occur in any field treated with fungicide, insecticide, bactericide, nematicide, herbicide or high levels of inorganic fertilizer.

Fungi require foods to feed them.

If the compost contains complex food resources, that can be enough to feed many fungal species, but usually additions of humic acids, and complex nutrient resources enhance the growth of beneficial species. People involved in making tea often research nutrient food resources. Hendrikus Schraven Landscaping ([email protected]), EPM ([email protected]) and Leon Hussy at KIS (www.simplici-tea.com) make some outstanding food resources for bacterial and fungal teas. Many ideas for foods for bacteria and fungi can be found on the compost_tea list serve, [email protected]

 

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Species diversity

Species diversity is the same in compost and the tea made from that compost. Species diversity in compost is higher than fumigated or sick soil. But at least one plate count microbiology lab is giving out data suggesting that compost has lower diversity than bad soil and that “ok” tea has less diversity than bad compost. It is clear that plate count “diversity” methods are not effective in assessing species diversity, or species richness, in soil, compost or compost tea. Molecular methods tell us that species diversity in soil, tea, and compost, can number in the thousands and tens of thousands per gram.

Use of methods that tell you that soil contains only a few 5 to 10 species, or that compost contains only 8 to 15 species need to be viewed with a great deal of incredulity. Plate methods are missing only about 99.9% of what is actually present!

Do plate counts or direct counts assess tea quality? The clear answer is that direct counts assess tea quality, while plate counts do not. Take a look at the results (below) from a test where two different teas were used to control blight on tomato plants.

Compost bags

Multi-layer fabric, or felt, bags are a poor idea, because the hyphae get held in the fabric, and mildew grows in the damp material. Single layer, nylon or netting bag material is necessary.

Time to brew

Small, well-aerated, well-mixed compost tea makers can give great tea within 10 to 12 hours. The KIS machine gets great organism extraction and growth of the beneficial organisms in 12 hours, based on direct counts of the individual bacteria, measurement of biovolume of fungal hyphae, enumeration of protozoa and nematodes from those teas.

Pay attention when you buy a machine or develop a design. Different tea machines take different amounts of time to brew good tea. Especially those machines that take 48 hours or more to brew a decent level of organisms in their tea, the salespeople tend to be very reluctant to tell you exactly how long the tea takes to reach a certain organisms-in-the-tea level. For example, some machines take a minimum of 48 hours to brew the tea, and as a result, tend to have more problems with becoming anaerobic.

Several “tea-brewer” manufacturers have no data about maximum bacterial or fungal production with their machine, and certainly no clue at all about protozoa or nematode numbers. Their salespeople will tell you their tea is ready in 24 hours, but they don’t have any data to prove this to you. Buyer beware!

What is the shelf life of compost tea?

The shelf life is short in high quality tea with active organisms necessary to attach to lead surfaces and not be washed off. In the research that we have done with 24 hour brewing cycles, after just 6 hours without any aeration, the oxygen levels are lowered by over 300 %. If the compost tea is not used within that time, aerate, agitate and add more food to the tea to feed the micro-organisms.
3a. How to make Actively Aerated Compost Tea
Aeration must be adequate to extract the maximum amount of soluble nutrients, and to maintain oxygen in aerobic concentrations in order to produce a tea high in aerobic bacteria and fungi, and with maximum extraction of protozoa and nematodes. The more diverse the community of microorganisms extracted and grown under aerobic conditions, the greater the disease suppression and the better nutrient retaining the tea will be. The greater the concentration of nutrients extracted, the more food there is to grow beneficial bacteria and fungi in the tea during the brewing cycle and after the tea is sprayed out.

It is CRITICAL to understand that tea must remain aerobic. If too great a concentration of food resources for the bacteria and fungi are added, the growth of the organisms will be so rapid, that they will consume oxygen more rapidly than oxygen can be added into the tea. The tea will go anaerobic, and then human pathogens can grow in the tea.

Any compost tea machine can be caused to go anaerobic, if too much microbial food is added, too much compost, and aeration is lacking.

Compost tea is used to add bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes to the soil or onto foliage. Compost tea also contains soluble nutrients that feed the organisms in the tea and may feed plants. Use compost tea any time organisms in the soil or on the plants are lower than optimum levels. Chemical-based pesticides, fumigants, herbicides and some synthetic fertilizers kill the beneficial microorganisms that encourage plant growth, either in the soil or on foliage. Compost teas improve the life in the soil and on plant surfaces and help plants take-up the nutrients they require, and suppress diseases at the same time as building soil structure, and reduce erosion and loss of nutrients into drinking water. High quality compost tea of will inoculate the leaf surface and soil with beneficial microorganisms, instead of destroying them.

Given a good set of organisms (see Compost Tea Standards for what those numbers are), the following benefits can be brought about :

Improved plant growth
Reduced application rates of chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers
Reduced impacts of chemical-based pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers on beneficial microorganisms in the ecosystem
Occupation of infection sites on the plant surface so pathogens cannot infect the leaf
Improved uptake of plant nutrients through influences on stomata,
Increased numbers of organisms on and around plants to compete with disease-causing organisms, reducing disease incidence,
Retention of microorganisms in soil or on leaf surfaces, resulting in an increase in retention of nutrients,
Increased plant nutritional quality,
Production costs are reduced
Reduced application of toxic chemicals, thus reducing run-off into lakes and streams,
Reduced toxic impacts on humans and pets.
Step-by-step Approach to Making AACT
One, choose a compost tea machine that has documented ability to extract and grow the beneficial organisms from the compost you are using.

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Figure out the amount of tea you need to put out at any one time. If you can put out 5 gal today, and 5 tomorrow, and 5 the day after, why buy a machine that makes 50 gal? If you own 10,000 acres, ok, you need a big machine. If you own an acre or less, a 5 gal machine will likely do fine.

Read and ask questions on the compost-tea list serve (http://groups.yahoo.com/) put 'compost_tea' in the search box, relative to each brewer you are considering.

You need a tea brewer that the seller can document oxygen remains in the aerobic range!

Here’s a graph showing the type of information you need.

In this case, the red line is oxygen concentration in the water (in ppm or mg oxygen per L of water), and the green line is the active biology in the tea (micrograms of active bacteria and active fungi per ml of tea). When the organisms are growing the most rapidly, activity peaks (after about 16 hours in most brewers, although about hour 8 in small brewers).

The reason for the peak is that the microorganisms have maximized use of foods, and after that peak, their activity slows down, because they are running out of food. Activity usually stabilizes about 24 hours, so it is safe to take the tea out of the max aeration brewer and put it into a sprayer tank that has just re-circulation.

If the aeration is turned off, it typically takes some time for the organisms to use up the air, and plunge into anaerobic conditions. A truly stable tea would only slowly use up oxygen and go anaerobic, usually in about 5 to 6 hours. But if the tea is not in a stable condition, then when aeration is turned off, oxygen levels will plunge within mere minutes to low, anaerobic levels.




Two, find a GOOD source of compost! Ask the compost maker for documentation of the bacteria, fungi, protozoa and nematodes in the compost. If they don’t have the data, they have probably tested, and couldn’t show that their compost really is compost. Lack of data often means they can’t make the grade. You have to have the beneficials in the compost in order to make good tea. You may want to read over the compost section of this website to find out the desired levels of the different organism groups.

Three, decide on the foods you want to use to grow the beneficial organisms in your tea. The company you bought your tea maker from has a proprietary blend of foods that go with their tea machine, balanced already for the oxygen-use of that set of foods, and the ability of the machine to replenish oxygen during the growth of those organisms. It is critical that aeration be adequate. Alternatively, you can design your own tea recipe, but this will take some testing to make sure you are NOT adding too much food, and reducing oxygen, through the growth of the beneficial organisms, below aerobic levels. Foods that should be considered are:

a diversity of sugars for bacterial growth, but realize that often the compost itself contains adequate bacterial foods to grow a great set of bacteria. Addition of more bacterial foods can just cause problems.
Citric acid to help buffer pH to the right level, as well as feeding beneficial bacteria
Cold-water kelp (higher in nutrients) to serve as a source of micro-nutrients (K, Co, B, etc, please check the label of the product you buy to make sure you are adding micronutrients you need. How do you know micronutrients are needed? A soil chemistry, or plant tissue test might be a good idea)
Humic acids fro fungal growth, but realize that you want data to show you that this material can actually help grow fungi. Harsh extractants can make the humic materials very difficult for fungi, or anything else, to use.
Four, you need a means of transferring the tea from the tea brewer to the soil, or to the foliage of your plants. With small size tea brewers, pouring the tea into a sprayer works well. But with larger volumes of tea, you will need a transfer pump to move the tea into the sprayer unit. You need to talk to your tea machine maker and find out the testing that they have done to make certain that the pump doesn’t destroy the organisms in the tea as it is being transferred.

There is a tea maker on the market, clearly one not recommended by SFI, where the transfer pump kills about 50% of the organisms in the tea. So even though that company posts plate count data showing there is bacteria in the tea made by that machine, moving the tea out of that machine into your sprayer will kill about half the organisms in the tea. Please be aware of these kinds of snake-oil salesmen!

Five, you need a sprayer that will distribute the organisms evenly on the leaf surface. Typically any sprayer meant to apply pesticide will evenly apply tea organisms. The only thing that needs to be checked is that the sprayer re-circulates tea while the tea is in a large size tank (back-pack sprayers or smaller don’t need this, it typically doesn’t take hours to apply tea in small amounts), and that the pump used by the sprayer doesn’t kill organisms either. Talk to the tea machine makers about their lines of spray equipment.

Factors affecting Compost tea Quality

Compost source – make sure it contains the organisms your plant needs
Compost tea bag or container – the simpler the better, but opening sizes have to be right
Brewing time – longer is not better
Brewing temperature – make it right for the system the tea will be sprayed on!
Water source – get rid of chlorine, chloramines, sulfur, other preservatives
Extraction – the organisms have to be ripped off the compost, but not harmed in the process!
Amount of tea applied to the soil or to the foliage – 5 gallons per acre for each 6 feet of foliage height, 20 gal per acre for the soil applications are the latest test results using EPM, KIS, BnBrewer, Clarke, AG, CT Brewer (NZ), and WormGold brewers.
The Pump
If you are going for the bigger machines, pay attention to the kind of pump on the machine. Did the manufacturer check to see if his pump kills organisms? Where are his data? Don't accept "trust me". There's a machine on the market that we demonstrated to the manufacturer that his pump to take the tea from the brewer into a holding tank was reducing numbers of fungi and bacteria by 50%. Keep that in mind, when buying something. How are you getting large volumes OUT of the tank?

 

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Ease in cleaning is important.
Can you get to the bottom of the tank? Are there square corners in the pipes, knowing that in a month or so, that corner will be bio-film filled. It isn't right away that the problem develops. With the commercial Microb-Brewer, altered from the original design we tested at OSU, the pipes and pumps were changed to make the machine look prettier. The numbers on the changed machine were similar to the original, not-pretty design for the first couple of runs, but then, look out, the numbers dropped terribly as the bio-film developed. The manufacturer claimed that our methods had gone awry, that we didn't know what we were doing, because the numbers were coming out lower. It wasn't us, it was bio-film. But the manufacturer got mad at me. Stopped speaking to me all together. Called me all sorts of bad things.

SFI just tests the tea, we don't have to know why the numbers are coming out poorly. Usually I try to figure it out, and with the Microb-Brewer, we did figure it out. But not until after the damage was done. The Microb-Brewer is no longer for sale in the US.

Are there surfaces in the machine you can't see, can't get to to clean? Those places build-up biofilm. There's a brewer on the market that has discs in it, and you can't see, and you can't reach, the bottom sides of the discs. It is not fun getting the discs out to clean their bottomsides. Think about the time involved in cleaning. Most LARGE brewers should have a way to rinse the tank down as you pump the tea out. Talk to Bruce Elliott on this one. He developed the solution for this.

The compost container has to allow free movement of the compost.
Solid baskets that don't allow compost movement, that allow the compost to compact in the bottom, are going to cause you fits. Compost should be in bags, so easy-flow is possible. The EPM baskets are there to keep the bag of compost from twisting in the water flow, so the compost isn't constricted in that bag-basket design. But any other brewer with a basket has to have an aerator inside the basket, or the compost compacts, and goes anaerobic (happens at about 10 hours into the brew, so beware of the brewer that only has data for hours 0, 8, and 24)

Bubble sizes should be medium to large, not micro-sized.
Tiny, tiny bubbles are a bad idea. They shatter the fungal hyphae. Ask for the data showing good FUNGAL results. And please make sure the lab they are testing with uses decent methods.

No data? Don't buy the machine.

Only plate count data? Don't the machine. Ask what plate count data mean. Typically, you'll get gobble-de-gook as a reply. There are no data documenting a consistent relationship between plant growth and plate counts.

Some links:

How To Make Compost Tea:

http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/pages/g00030.asp

http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/depu...le/Tea/tea1.htm


Compost Tea Brewers:

http://vermico.com/compost_tea_brewers.htm

http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech/...1/msg00045.html


General Info:

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/rep...post Teas.pdf

http://www.vg.com/gardening/content.asp?copy_id=5026

http://members.valley.net/~garden/a...xirNYTimes.html

http://www.composttea.com/


copied from Ganjaden

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[LeeroyJackson]

Fantastic, thanks for sharing this info man.
Its just what ive been looking for.