How to Make Compost Tea Like a PRO

[Music] hey you all farmer jesse here my buddy troy hinke of living roots compost tea and the what's brewing podcast is back again this week but this time we are talking compost tea production uh in this video we are going to get a glimpse into how troy does compost tea for his business and what that would look like on a small farm like ours do i need to say anything more than that i don't think i need to say anything more than that just don't forget if you enjoyed this video make sure to subscribe make sure to like it if you like it and if you want more videos like this let us know in the comments section also consider signing up to be a patron at patreon.com no-till growers you can also support this work oh kitty cat to support this work by going to notelgrows.com and picking up a copy of the living soil handbook or some merch proceeds from that sale at notelgrows.com help us to make more of this sort of video for you alright so let's get to it with troy hinke of living roots compost tea you're the worst kitty cat you just don't care so with this troy i like to do like a beginner's compost tea 101 maybe we can start with some basics about what is compost tea and how it's used and then maybe just take us through a basic recipe of how you do a basic compost tea sure yeah so compost tea is basically a liquid form of compost that's the easiest way to explain it um and a lot of people think of compost as a fertilizer but it's actually the biology and the compost that we're trying to work that we're wanting to work with that's making all the difference so with the compost tea what we're doing is pulling all the microorganisms off of the surfaces of organic matter in compost into water and then we're giving them foods to eat and the idea is that we're getting those microorganisms to reproduce to much higher levels within the compost tea uh so you're basically making kind of a concentrate that you can then spray out onto your plants and soils that's great okay so what kind of materials do we need super easy to make uh all you need is a container or brewer so in this case on a small farm all you need is a five gallon bucket uh and then a brew bag this is jesse's brew bag for a five gallon bucket it's super easy you can go to your local paint store like sherwood and williams or benjamin moore they make five gallon elastic top paints paint bags that are made exactly for this purpose so the bag fits in the bucket like that and then the elastic top fits out over the edges there if this bag were to be a bit bigger but that's what the elastic top paint strainer bags are so they work perfectly for a five gallon bucket so you've got your brew bucket paint strainer bag and then uh an air pump is good so at a local uh pet product store or aquarium place or hydroponic store you can purchase different types of air pumps this one comes with a hose here and a manifold so you can either just use this large size hose and get a little bit longer that or split it up into these smaller quarter inch hoses and then when you're making compost tea you want the air from the air pump to travel through the entire column of water so we're wanting to have these the ends of these hoses on the bottom of the bucket a lot of people use air stones on these now the problem with air stones when you're making compost tea is that they're full of they're just super porous and they're gonna hold all the foods the sticky foods from the uh what we're putting in here to feed the compost tea and then you've got all those microorganisms that are then stuck to the surface of that once you take these out you're not able to clean those porous stones well so they're going to likely develop a biofilm on there that you wouldn't want to incorporate with your future bruise so i like to use other methods usually through composting i've got different old forks because we're composting food scraps and i'll have different silverware that's come through the process so i'll take the tines of forks and stick these tubes in there and those forks will weight this on the bottom of the bucket it's hard you can use maybe like uh nuts for nuts that you put on a bolt it's hard to find one that's heavy enough to keep these all the way down that's why i've started using forks and then in my brewer setup that i have at home um i've got a 50 gallon barrel and i've got a uh it's a 3 8 inch hose that's a little bit bigger than this and i've got a set up where i've got a pvc tube that runs all the way to the bottom and then that hose runs into the pvc and then it puts the hose at the bottom of the of the brewer uh they also make conical brewers but um for somebody that's got a small scale farm you really don't need to spend that much money all you really need is five gallons so i'll get into more details but yeah just to mention like the amount you know when i worked at rodale institute we were doing research with compost extract at five gallons per acre which is barely anything i usually go out with 10 to 20 gallons per acre but you know like jesse here's he's got a whole acre and it's not likely that he's going to be going out and spraying compost tea over his entire acre anyway so all you really need is a five gallon bucket you can make up a batch cover whatever plants that you need to in a certain part of the day you know make another batch and then do some more tomorrow so a five gallon bucket keeps it super simple the most that you're gonna be spending is uh 25 to 45 25 to 40 on a pump like this so these pumps come rated either liters per minute or gallons per hour um you can look at the liters per minute and as a rule of thumb it's good to go by one liter of one liter per minute for every gallon of water that you have so for a five gallon bucket you would want to get at least a pump that has at least an output of five liters per minute so it's going to be plenty with this pump right here if you're using a vermicompost or worm compost is going to be higher in microorganisms it's going to be a little bit stronger so you'd use maybe two to three cups of vermicompost or three to five cups of regular compost you'd put your compost in the bag here put it in the water and then i like to sit here and i'll put my hand inside and i'll squeeze the material i'll work it between my fingers like that i'll take the material and push it up against the edge of the bag here so what we're trying to do is to break down all the aggregates break down all those particles into a small particle size as we can get get as much sediment out into the water as we can because all those tiny little pieces of like even microscopic pieces of of uh organic matter are gonna have microorganisms on there so the more we can get out into the water the more microorganisms that we're gonna be working with either put your foods in ahead of time or put your foods after you're massaging it uh if you're using like a super stinky fish you may not want to put that in first because you're going to get that all over your hands i usually put my water and my foods in and then put this in there and get it brewing and then as far as foods go for microorganisms there's normally a plenty of bacteria so we don't normally need to worry about feeding bacteria in a compost tea we mainly want to focus on giving foods for fungi so foods for fungi are going to be kelp uh you want to get a celt soluble kelp if you purchase a meal for kelp meal it's likely going to be a little bit too large in size that it's not going to be soluble and break down within the water so soluble kelp powder or liquid kelp for this humic acid is another fungal food or fish hydrolysate and there's a difference between fish hydrolysate and fish emulsion fish emulsion is when they take a company would take the oils and fats out of the fish and then process the fish into a liquid a fish hydrolysate is where those fats and oils are left in the fish so you're basically taking the whole fish blending it up into a liquid so you've still got all those amino acids and proteins that the fungi can feed off of and when we're brewing here it's not likely that you're going to have a lot of growth of fungi within the water or the brew we're giving it food so that we're taking the fungi that's in there and providing them with foods for when we spray it out that then they've got stuff to eat and help to take off into the soil so when it comes to food foods for microorganisms when we're working with a five gallon brewer here we really want to keep it minimal we're working with tiny microscopic beings we don't need much food because they're microscopic it just doesn't take much so five gallon bucket we would want to use one tablespoon of humic acid one tablespoon of fish hydrolysate and one tablespoon of kelp if you don't have one or the other that's fine you could just use one tablespoon of humic acid and one tablespoon of kelp or one tablespoon of humic acid and one tablespoon of fish hydrolysate the idea is that let's say we're putting the compost in here extracting microorganisms and we start with a thousand there's gonna be way more than that but just for an easy number we're gonna use a thousand and then the idea is that we're adding these foods we're trying to get that thousand to turn into one million or one billion microorganisms um what happens is at a certain time so we're trying to reach a peak population so we're going from that one thousand it's doubling to two thousand doubling to four thousand doubling to eight thousand it's going to keep doubling and doubling and doubling and at a certain point you're gonna hit a peak population and you've provide you've created all these mouths to feed and now at a certain point they're going to run out of food and use up the oxygen within the water so it even if you're continuously have these on air some people think that you know i can brew for 12 hours and then i'll just add some more food at the end of 12 hours because that'll help to keep the microbes going well it doesn't really work like that you're going to hit a peak population and then you're going to want to use that compost tea up so the brew time is going to be dependent on the ambient temperatures that you have outside that's another good point is that you always want to brew at the same ambient temperature that you're going to be applying to plants so if we were going to be uh if this caterpillar tunnel were shut up and it was a lot warmer in there and we were wanting to apply to plants in there we would want to brew and brew over there for our time brewing so that it's at the same ambient temperature or if we were to be applying outdoors here we would want to be brewing at the outdoor temperature uh and that's because at different temperature levels we're going to have different microbes that are active all right so uh we talked about what you're going to need for compost tea we've got our bucket full of water here which is going to be our brewer we've got our brew bag we've got our compost and we've got our micro microbial foods one thing about the water that i hadn't mentioned before it's going to be best to use well water or rain water since there's not going to be any chlorine or chloramine in there chlorine or chloramine was put into water to help kill bacteria while it gets shipped to you through the pipes in the ground to get to your house so that you're not drinking bacteria but we're trying to grow bacteria and other microbes so if you were to be dealing with chlorine or chloramine you would want to fill this up and let it sit out for 24 hours to off gas any of that chlorine or chloramine you can also let it put it on air for 12 hours and the air is going to help to speed up that process uh humic acid is also so we talked about using humic acid as a food for microorganisms humic acid can help out to tie up chlorine ions so if you happen to be using chlorinated water and you don't have time to let it sit around if you were to be using humic acid as a food for microorganisms humic acid does all kinds of great things in the soil it's going to help feed microorganisms it's going to help the uptake of nutrients within the soil which is super important and in this sense it can also tie up the ions of chlorine um which different acids can do that but it's a humic acid is an acid obviously and it's something that we already use so why not use that to tie up the chlorine so we've got our water i don't have a measuring spoon but i'm going to eyeball a tablespoon of fish hydrolysate so we've got organic gem here that's a fish fertilizer i'm going to shake it up real well and then we're going to add just about a tablespoon of that into this so a lot of people i'll just mention real quick a lot of people like to use or will use uh molasses blackstrap molasses unsulfured blackstrap molasses as a microbial food that food is going to strictly be feeding bacteria and like uh well i guess it was our other other video we made but we were seeing only bacteria in the soil so we really don't need to normally worry about feeding bacteria and multiplying bacteria uh we're mainly wanting to multiply fungi but there's going to be things in this fish hydrolysate that are also going to feed the bacteria as well so you never really need to use uh molasses because we've got enough foods for micro uh the bacteria but um yeah this is going to feed bacteria as well as fungi so i normally use a little stick to stir stuff up i'm just going to use this stick real quick and we'll stir that fish up and then i don't have a cup but i'm going to use my hand as a measuring device we've got our compost here so i'm going to grab i'll just go ahead and grab five handfuls so one two three four five and what i'm grabbing is a little bit less than a cup if you were to measure that out so we have close to that's probably about three cups i'm just going to add a little bit more so that's six handfuls but like i said uh worm compost you wanna use maybe two or three uh if it's extremely good you i've seen people use one cup of compost and get results in five gallons spraying a whole greenhouse full of plants i don't know the quality of this compost i know it's pretty decent but i'm just gonna go ahead and use close to five cups so five cups compost five gallons of water we're gonna put this in here like this and i'm gonna stick my hand in the bag and hopefully you can see the water there you're gonna see the water starts to turn brown as this goes out into this isn't quite as smelly as the one that i normally use and i'm not as concerned about smelling like fish but most people don't want to smell like fish especially if you're going to do other things during the day it's a bit of a turn off to other people but i'm not too concerned about it today so i put in the fish in first you can wait to put in the fish afterwards so you just put in your compost first mix all this up and then you could add your foods afterwards that's strictly so your hands aren't stinking but yeah so i'm grabbing this what i'm doing is grabbing handfuls like with that within the bag and squeezing it trying to working it in between my fingers like that breaking up all the little chunks pushing it up against the walls here kind of what i'm doing within the bag here is pushing those chunks up against the walls and really breaking those down trying to get all those out into the water here and it's going to be okay if you get some chunkies out into the water here because if we're putting it through a sprayer we're going to want to run it through a second filtration anyway so i mentioned about wanting to get all the sediment out into the water which we do want that but there's also going to be a good amount of sediment in there that is a heavier larger sediment that can cause it clogged sprayers so most of this is small enough micron size that it's going to pass through it obviously pass through this bag so it's going to pass through a sprayer but you're going to want to put it through a second filter if you're using some type of spray or drip emitter if you're just using a watering can it's not going to be as big of a deal obviously because you've got some bigger holes but i'm not going to spend a full three minutes working this but i would stand here like this massaging working it like that and then going outside the bag here squeezing it like this just really working that compost to get it all out into the water and you can see we started off with five cups of compost and if i were to hold that bag up i know you can't really see the contents of that but i've gotten so much out into the water now that we're only looking at like one to one and a half cups of compost that's still in the bag the rest of that all that sediment has gone out into the water and that's going to go and feed soils and plants uh on top of a compost tea there's also a compost extract so accomplished extract is a lot easier and quicker to make uh in the beginning of our video here i was explaining how we're putting compost into water extracting microorganisms from the organic matter into the water and then adding foods to feed those microorganisms and get them to reproduce to higher levels higher populations with an extract this can be a little bit confusing with an extract all you're doing is putting the compost into the water not adding any foods so you're just putting this into the water mixing it up and like i said before i use the example of having a thousand microorganisms that with tea we're trying to get that to a million a billion microorganisms with extract your strength strictly going to stay with the population that you have so it's available for immediate use um this is okay for great for soil application uh compost tea is a little bit better for foliar application but it's a super simple super easy to make just put some compost in a bag put it in some water agitate it for five minutes and you can be ready to go after five minutes you can put it on air for a little while the longer you agitate it just like when you're making tea that you drink you know if you let it steep for longer you're pulling more of those flavonoids and stuff out into the water so if you were to put it on air and let it bubble for a while you're just extracting a little bit more microbes off into the water so you could could put it on air for 12 to 24 hours if you want but you can use it as quick as you know just mixing up in five minutes and it's ready to go so put that in your spray tank and spray it out on your plants and soil so that's the basics of compost tea making from here you're going to want to apply that i said we've done research at five gallons per acre i normally go at 10 to 20 gallons per acre but it really doesn't take much and then like i said you want to get that out you'd want to get this out as early as possible in a plant's life and you could do it once a month for the rest of the details you can learn all kinds of information and more i've got my own podcast it's called what's brewing a compost podcast it's available on spotify if you just search for what's brewing a compost podcast or on itunes you can search for the same thing but it's going to pop up under diego footer's farm small farm smart podcast you'll find it there uh but it goes through soil food web knowledge compost making compost brewers uh compost tea making compost tea application and then kind of an afterwards of how to go keep life in the soil once you've gotten that life down into the soil so check that out you can learn a lot more details and learn everything you want and more all about compost tea all right i hope you enjoyed that video links for all the things that troy talked about and all the different stuff are in the show notes and make sure to follow troy on instagram and all the places again make sure to subscribe to this channel for more nerdy farm stuff pick up a copy of this book here uh from no-till growers.com to support more videos like this there's also some merch there thank you and thank you for watching we'll see you later bye [Music] [Music] do you

Channel: No-Till Growers

Views: 323,077

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Id: 8XiieZaDoSU

Length: 20min 39sec (1239 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 28 2022