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Pennsylvania

This year will be the first I ever tried compost tea. What do you guys think about adding corn starch and blood meal? Corn starch is almost pure complex carb and blood meal should be pretty good for getting the tea hot. What do you guys think?

3/10/2009 9:44:40 PM

South East

mollases, fish hydrolsate, kelpmeal, rock phosphate, humic acid, peat moss, all of these are additives that have specific effects, For a basic tea, you might wont to use wormcastings, a bit of kelp, and then use mollases and fish as an activator. If you wonna use something like starch of oatmeal then you might want to mix it with the castings of compost a couple days before you start brewing. you can add a touch of bloodmeal to. But it wil not make your tea hot. all you want is to extract microbes and fungi from the compost and provide oxigen and nutrients for them to multiply. The better you do this, the better your tea wil be. There are many recipies. Use chlorine free water if you can.

3/10/2009 11:26:43 PM

Rhode Island

ron and i have been using several in seasonal sprays of compost tea for a few years now.
we prefer to let the experts put the additives together so for us using a professional product is a better fit.
our brewer is a 25 gal system, air activated.
in it we use a combination of worm castings,25 gal of water and and a nutrient solution that contains bat guanno,mollases,kelp,to name a few.we also will add additional kelp/fish water soluable to the finished product just before spraying onto plant.
you need to be carefull with homemade brewers because you dont want to put the time and effort into brewing if your results are not effective,
id advise anyone interested to research "compost tea" and get a professional product.
pap

3/11/2009 7:33:40 AM

Somers, CT

I used Kelp Meal, Molasses, Alfalfa pellets, leaf compost and a little fish and seaweed. I placed it in a stocking and hung it in a tub of water. I have a fish bubbler that runs for 24-48 hours until it stops bubbling. I used a watering can to spread on the plants. Pretty high-tech system.

3/11/2009 10:24:10 AM

Billerica,Massachusetts

FYI: just make sure if you are using city water that it does not contain chloramine. as it will not gas-off from sitting as regular chlorine will, using water that contains chloramine will kill your microbes.
if you do not know either check with your water dept. or fill a white 5 gal bucket and check for a greenish tint, or if you have a white bathtub you should be able to notice it as well.
Glenn Peters

3/11/2009 12:52:04 PM

Seattle, WA

Good advice Tina and Frank, I totally agree! I haven't experimented with corn starch, but baby oatmeal is a good fungal activator that selects for wide hyphal diameter fungi (according to Dr. Ingham these are the most beneficial). You just want to add some to your compost 5-7 days before brewing.

3/11/2009 2:35:21 PM

valparaiso, in

Rob T would alfalfa meal work instead of using alfalfa pellets?

3/11/2009 11:01:39 PM

Seattle, WA

We use organic alfalfa meal and it works very very well as a microbial food and also an additive to the compost prior to brewing.

3/12/2009 5:38:10 PM