Compost Tea

[Bretts]

Fighting the Trident leaf fungi this season I was put onto the benifits of Compost tea.
Sounds good but it also sounds like if you get it wrong you could cause all sourghts of trouble.
Looks like alot of study trial and testing to make sure you have it right.

Has anyone tried this?

Dr Elaine Ingham seems to be the expert!
http://www.soilfoodweb.com.au/

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/compost-tea-notes.html

[Bretts]

Essentially, compost tea production is a brewing process that extracts microorganisms from compost followed by microbial growth and multiplication. This includes beneficial bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and nematodes. When compost teas are sprayed onto the leaf surface, these beneficial organisms occupy spatial niches on the leaf surface and gobble up leaf exudates that pathogenic organisms would otherwise feed on to prosper; other microbes directly interfere with pathogenic organisms through antagonism....
Ideally, compost teas contain both an Abundance (immense total number) and a Diversity (vast mixture) of beneficial microorganisms which perform different functions. Pathogenic organisms that land on the leaf surface simply cannot compete with the beneficial organisms and therefore have a greatly reduced chance to initiate disease in the first place.

[paddles]

I mix sieved compost into my mix in the first place....

[Bretts]

From what I understand Paddles this gives a different effect than that.
It is brewing a concentrated amount of beneficial organisms and then applying them to the plant.
What scares me is that you could concentrate bad ones if you make a mistake or you get bad ingredients

[paddles]

watering with camomile tea (as in buy some teabags) is supposed to stop fungal disease......

[Mitchell]

Just surfing the web for info, as I need to give a talk to 4th graders thursday on composting.
I figure with the syllabus these days, they could probably give me/us a decent talk on composting.

That's lead me to try and find something a bit more complex, something on a finer level than just composting techniques. Bacteria seem to be the way to go, at 4th grade I believe they have already grasped the concept of compost being a living medium.

I think they need an experiment type arrangement, where they can take their sweet mix and turn it into another medium for different usages.

I was already familiar with composting/bacteria and by-product generation/fuel harvest in the form of gases, but the breeding of beneficial bacteria in chambers with food source, aeration and oxygenation fascinates me.

I think today I may take some coke bottles and start several microbial generation chambers. Just need to find a fish tank bubbler, which is somewhere in the garage and some compost. Won't be a fully aged tea, just a weak one as I believe you need to age it for a few weeks for bacteria to bloom.

This is through work (Buzzings) as part of our schools project, we donate plants/seedlings, pre-made vege patches, rainwater tanks, landscaping etc, to schools who request assistance.
This time they requested we talk for half an hour on composting, we don't have many public speakers at work so they put the hard word on me. I hate public speaking but love kids, so volunteered for it.



Does anyone here brew tea? Any recipes for the compost/added ingredients? Any tips, points, suggestions on the talk..?

[kcpoole]

I was already familiar with composting/bacteria and by-product generation/fuel harvest in the form of gases, but the breeding of beneficial bacteria in chambers with food source, aeration and oxygenation fascinates me.

I used to work in a Sewerage Treatment works (Quakers hill), and that is exactly the way it is treated

Stick in a big pond, add Sulphuric Acid and pump millions of litres of air into it.
took about 16 hrs to traverse the pond and then sat in still pool for the sediment to separate out for 24 hrs.
result clean water and lots of Sludge

Ken

[Mitchell]

You worked in a sewage plant? SWEET!!

So, was the product just cleaned or was it processed to obtain fertilizers etc? I'm guessing not as it is only a recently acceptable practice. Being herbivores human produce one of the best ferts available, just wish Australia was as open minded as other countries.

So settled with a little home project for them. A desktop Organism farm.
This farm contains Common garden worms, Periplaneta australasiae (Native coachroach) and Isopoda slaters .



I personally believe that the native cockroach and indeed the native slater, have a higher consumption rate than composting red worms per mass capita.

Here's the farm for them to make.




Or a side note and more in tune with this thread, I spent this afternoon constructing a bacterial spawning chamber, completed in sub 9 degree temperatures, including only organics materials and pure rain water, sourced by squeezing it out of my saturated shirt. Truly a spectacle to behold, stay tuned for the thread.

[Mojo Moyogi]

Brett, compost tea may well help you be rid of the dreaded fungus that chemical treatments have failed to cure. If you can resist the urge to use chemicals for long enough for anything natural to be beneficial. Chemical fertilisers as well. That is a big if. Most people chuck in the towel too soon and take the chemical treatments up again, undoing any potential progress that has been made.

Good luck.
Cheers,
Mojo

[Bretts]

Thanks Mojo,
I have found the Bravo works excellent on the tridents and Kocide blue extra does the job for my carpinus or anything else that the bravo does not seem to help? This issue set me back some over the last two years so I want to stick with what I have found works for now.
My thinking is as we see the back of the blasted drought I hope that things will settle down and we will see less fungus, disease and pests in general around. Many of the street trees last year where much less affected by this fungus as where my trees but many purple plum trees where hit with a rust that practically totally defoliated them by mid Summer. It will be interesting to see how all the street trees go this season.
Running a little late due to the miserable weather this Winter but I was hoping to get a Winter spray of Lime Sulfur in Followed by Specific fungicides in late Winter and also at bud burst. With at least a couple more sprays through the start of the growing season.
I would hope to head for a more natural remedy in the future if things settle down as I really don't like mucking around with these chemicals Especially Bravo it is nasty and not generally available to the public. I tried to move away from it last year using the Kocide extra Blue which as said works well for carpinus and some others but is not as effective on the tridents as the bravo so I will return to using it on the tridents this season as I know it works. Just have to be careful when using it