Compost Tea ?

[Nifty]

Anybody have experience with this?

I've got buckets of black gold from my chickens and I think this stuff would be prime for "Compost Tea".

Is it really that much more helpful than just adding the compost to the soil?

I see all these sites that show how to make it with chemistry sets, bubblers, filters, temperature regulators, etc. Is all this really required?

 

[silkiechicken]

No idea if it is really required or not... I'm lazy, I just literally toss the poo across the ground. Boy it's a sight and smell.

 

[eggchel]

The only compost tea recipe that I'm familiar with involves a gunny sack, a shovel full of horse manure and a bucket of water to soak it in. Pretty straight forward. Perhaps the tea doesnt burn the plants the way that fresh, uncomposted, manure might.

Chel

 

[Rio_Lindo_AZ]

My uncle makes compost for me.
He says that all he does is pull out all old time crops, weeds, old branches, etc. etc. etc. and burn them. The ash that is left over can be added with wood chips or with manure. Then you may use that as compost

 

[Kentucky~Momma]

We just add our compost to our yard. Usually for filling holes and divots. Where we are we have a lot of sink holes and places the ground is sinking. We just mix our stuff from the runs and coops in with our compost each time we clean. Stir it around a bit and let it do it's job.

 

[Dawn419]

I make compost tea the lazy way...2 shovelfuls of manure in a 5 gallon bucket of water, let it sit for 2 weeks. Stir occassionally. To use the tea, I just scoop it out as needed. When I get down to the "dregs", I just pour them in the compost pile. This is my recipe for rabbit manure, haven't used this for chicken pooh yet.

Dawn

 

[MeanQueenNadine]

One of the main benefits to compost tea is to work into your soil beneficial microbes. If you do NOT uses the bubbler you will have anaerobic tea this is not good. You want AErobic tea for these beneficial microbes. So the lazy way may add "nutrients" but will add ANaerobic microbes (not beneficial) not the AErobic.....does that make sense?

Can you add chicken manure to the tea - yes. But other ingredients will need to be added.

Molasses - this is what the microbes feed on (like sugar when you a raising yeast) - a MUST

Compost - it is COMPOST tea - this will also have some "starter" (think of them as the yeast grains) microbes.

BUT - if you buy say bat gauno, seabird guano - etc - NO microbes - these products have been sterlized for smell so you want to buy & use them....so these products have NO alive microbes.

 

[MarkR]

I use a bubbler, for the reasons Nadine already noted. But folks around here use a gallon of cider instead of the molasses. Personally, I'd rather drink the cider.

I also know folks that make it the lazy way and stir it a couple of times a day. Not sure it that's enough aeration though.

Mark

 

[patandchickens]

Another approach: find an old bucket with a crack in the bottom (or one you don't mind drilling a few small holes in). Fill it with manure (I use horse manure, haven't tried it yet with chicken manure), set it over another bucket, and pour some water into it. The water will percolate down thru the manure, and in a half hour or few hours it will have arrived in the bottom bucket, ready for you to give a drink to your plants.

This isn't as 'intense' a manure tea as the kind that steeps for a week or weeks. However it is still really good for getting new transplants off to a good start, or for perking up plants that have stalled out, and it requires a lot less forethought, attention and nose-holding than the longer methods


Pat

 

[MeanQueenNadine]

Stirring is indeed adequate, but the bubblers are cheap, and make it idiot proof (hey I can outwit an idiot proof camera....).

Forgot to mention in my first post that you start off with DEchlorinated water. Chlorine is a great sterilizer but a bad fertilizer (actually its bad for the microbes but that doesn't rhyme). Just let the water sit out for a day.

Also, when you make the tea its really concentrated, so you want to dilute with DEchlorinated H2O if you went the aerobic route.