New to forum on 11-05-03

I have been making compost tea in the fall and saving it in gallon jugs to use on my tomatoes I grow from seeds.(I start using it right after they sprout.) So far, I have had no trouble, but with all I have read on the forum, I'm wondering if this
is o.k. to do.(Sometimes ignorance is bliss.) I had not heard of using corn meal in gardening. If I had I might not have lost my 100 tomatoe plants to blight this year. With all the rain they didn't have a chance. All my neighbors lost theirs, too.
I just make straight tea with nothing added. But if it is safe to save it, would it be o.k. to add the cornmeal to it before I use it. Would there be any benefits to doing this?
The only vegetables I grow are tomatoes and a few cukes in the 3 raised beds I have.
I also raise a few flowers. Is the tea with cornmeal good for flowers' too?
Thanks for any help. I can read these forums for hours. There's a lot of good advice in them.

My Zone 6 is in the east TN mountains of Johnson City.

Tomatomama

Yes! Compost tea recipes are perishable. Think of them like fresh milk, they can spoil.

The best teas for plant/soil fertilization, disease control, soil texture building, etc. are all aerobic or aerated tea versions. The old classic non-aerated, anaerobic teas still work, but they are really more of just a liquid fertilizer, not many beneficial aerobic composting microbes living in them. Aerobic teas are more of a living microbial, biostimulant than a mere liquid fertilizer. Some anaerobic teas are so strong, that they can be homemade herbicides! Some even spread diseases and pathogens to plants and soils. All aerobic composting microbes in good mature compost and aerated tea brews, do not have this problem.

Any tea that is not aerated, or stirred over 10 days, will become totally anaerobic, and all the aerobic bacteria and fungi in it from the compost will eventually die off. Any anaerobic tea or tea remains are perfect for the compost pile. The compost pile will revive the aerobic microbes from any old organic materials you put in it.

The science of making compost tea is still in its infancy. A lot of great work has been done but the quality control, especially for home brews, is, well, out of control. Without temperature control, recipe control, feedstuffs quality inspections, compost control, special microscopes, and oxygen meters it is virtually impossible to get the same results twice simply because there are so many variables that will be different every time you make it. Even if you made it in a laboratory, you would have to have a very strict protocol to follow for the recipe and aeration process to get repeatable teas.

Now does any of this matter? Good question. I think that while you may not get identical results from making aerated teas time after time, you will still get reasonably good results if you have cool enough tea. Where I live, San Antonio, TX, the summertime temperatures force us to make tea indoors. Warm water simply does not hold oxygen like cool water does, so even a hyper-aerated compost tea will be anaerobic if it is being brewed at 85 or 90 degrees. The reproducing microbes use it up as fast as it is pumped in. And when it goes anaerobic, it becomes foul smelling and even dangerous depending on what you started with in the way of bad boy microbes. But if you start out with excellent finished compost, use dechlorinated water, brew at 70 degrees F, aerate it well, feed it well (molasses and seaweed are good feedstuffs), and stir it properly (I'm not sure what proper is); then you should get a decent tea in 24-48 hours.

Next to the lack of quality control, the lack of shelf life is the single biggest problem with compost teas. When they go bad (almost immediately after the air stops flowing) they go really bad. As the Captain [sort of] said, good tea can be used to feed plants one day and kill them the next. It depends on so many factors that are invisible to us that I would not chance it. When you make a batch of tea, you should use it all right away and clean up your equipment right away (unless you are making another batch immediately).

Regarding corn meal in teas, if you want to smell possibly the worst smell on earth, drop a quarter cup of corn meal in a glass of water and let it sit for a week. Wheeeeuuuuiii! That stuff will shut down your nostrils! If you are going to use corn meal in a tea, add it in the final 24 hours before using it. This will give it time to produce some beneficial fungi. Still, I'm not sure whether there is a net gain or loss by using corn meal in tea. I'll have to check that out with the folks with all the scientific equipment to do the testing.

Great info! I'm glad I checked it out.All I've been doing is putting about a lb.or 2 in a stocking and dangling it in a 5 gal bucket of water overnight and watering the plants with it.I refill it a couple times over a day or two but it never smells bad.I sometimes suppliment it with fish emulsion or seaweed too.Am I doing anything wrong here? It has been working so far!Also,I have a question.would the products that are used for septic systems that contain microbes and enzymes and stuff be usable as starters for compost piles?

Old Zeko Makamura was a big fan of making manure tea one year and using it (very diluted) the second on his bonsai.

Everytime I make aerated teas, all year round, whether in the hot summer or cool fall seasons, I see differences in the color, foaming, and smell of my teas. In the summer, as stated above, my teas smell a little more funky, a look more like slightly foamy coffee. Right now, my teas look more like foamy dark root beer, but have almost no stinky smell. Now in both of my tea brew experiments I use lots of mature horse manure compost, dry molasses powder, cattle/horse grain meal feeds, and rotten fish waste mixed with rotten sawdust.

No matter how my aerobic tea brews turn out, I try to keep my soil built up with plenty of organic matter like compost and mulches in my no-till garden beds, then I use my biostimulating teas as a quick fix liquid feed, or disease control, or stress reliever, or just organic matter decomposer accelerator, to build up billions of beneficial aerobic bacteria and fungi on my plants' foliage and around the roots in the soil.

I never depend solely on my teas to feed my plants or build up the soil. The teas complement regular composting, and other soil building techniques.

Since I dilute my teas from a 1:1 to 1:5 dilution ratio with my own version of "rainwater" from my 50 gallon barrels, I actually fed my crops during the hottest summer times, 2-3 times a week, from several 1-2 day aerated tea brews! It worked great with no problems.

Thanks for the input, everybody.
I didn't know anything about aerating compost tea until I read it in this forum. Always made mine the oldfashioned way -- just brewed it in a pillowslip.
Don't remember killing anything with it. About saving it in the basement. Nobody has ever smelled it so it doesn't stink.(Have stored some over the winter for 3 yrs now.) But still wonder if it has any redeeming qualities when used on seedlings -- didn't kill them either. Thought it might prevent "damping off" (haven't
had any) but can't say that the tea prevented it. Lots of things to learn about this thing called gardening. More to it than just sticking things in the ground and crossing your fingers. I got a late start.
Everybody keep writing. Love to read the answers. Have learned a lot.

Tomatomama

Usually good managed anaerobic, non-aerated teas work fine with no problems, if always diluted very well first. This gives the existing beneficial aerobic bacteria and fungi in the air, the soil, your mulches or your compost; time to consume and digest the foods in the tea, and overpower the anaerobic bacteria from the tea. All aerobic microbes are beneficial to composting, mulching, fertilization, and soil building. Some anaerobic bacteria can be harmful or deadly.

I also read recently that when compost tea and molasses is brewed anaerobically, with no aeration, it can produce alcohol or ethanol forms in teas. This if not diluted properly, can act like a natural herbicide, more than a natural liquid fertilzer.

When compost tea and molasses, is brewed with constant aeration, then carbonic acid is formed in the tea, which is the same stuff that occurs naturally in humic acid building in good aerobic compost piles.

Hey Tomatomama, great name. Don't feel guilty about the blight. So much rain this year, everyone seemed to have it. I used baking soda and water spray to beat it back enough to get tomatoes.

Aha! Bootlegging moonshine! "No, I swear, it's compost tea!"

Elfie you're funny!

I actually thought about that this past summer believe it or not! Since I make over 30 gallons of ACT, every week with two 20 gallon plastic tubs hooked up to 2 hoses from a 60 gallon aquarium air pump, I sure thought somebody was going to call the police, and say I was making homemade whiskey on my farm in the backyard!

I'm making moonshine for the microherd and the earthworms! (LOL)

tomatomama ,

Welcome! What a great question! Made me think about some of the same things!

Captain,

Can I use brown sugar in place of dry molasses powder? What are the differences, and (if it is) why is molasses so important? ?:|

TIA
BG

Liquid molasses is the classic biostimulant for feeding soil/composting microbes, to give them quick, fast, energy, because it's a natural sugar product that is readily digestible by all microbes. Also molasses is high in carbon (carbohydrate), iron, sulfur, potassium, and other micronutrients. Molasses products work great in compost piles, tea brews, or as a soil amendment.

Dried molasses powder is usually sold in 50 lb bags as a cattle feed supplement. It's just liquid molasses sprayed and dried on a grain roughage flour, like oat, wheat, corn, or millet meal. Dried molasses powder is a powerful fertilizer/biostimulant because of the protein meals in it, plus the sugar content.

All molasses, corn syrup, or brown sugar products will work fine in any form of tea brewing.

Since all microbes love sugar, it is important to put the right type of aerobic microbes in your tea prior to brewing. That's why most modern aerated tea brewers use mature aerobic compost, plus any bacterial/fungal foods like fish, seaweed, grain meals, etc., that will feed and breed the aerobic bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, etc. in the tea brew.

Using stinky, immature, anaerobic compost, and not aerating the tea while it's brewing, will kill off the good pleasant smelling, aerobic microbes, and only breed the bad, stinky, anaerobic bacteria by using tea water plus sugars, as your tea ingredients.

Using enough constant aeration in a tea brew, long enough, and by adding enough molasses and other bacterial/fungal ingredients, can digest and overpower the stinky, bad, anaerobic bacteria in the tea.

I have two ComposTumblers which I keep going all the time. When one gets full I keep turning it until the compost is ready, and start filling the other one. These tumblers have vent holes in the bottom, and when it rains on them, the liquid drains out through these holes. I keep a couple of buckets under there and use this drained-off "tea" to water everything--flower beds, flowering shrubs, plants in pots (I dilute it about 2:1 for them), the vegetable garden. Everything seems to do fine, even though sometimes the buckets sit for quite a while (after a hard rain, obviously there is no need to water). But is this drained-off liquid really compost tea?