BENEFITS OR AERATED COMPOST TEAS vs. CLASSIC TEAS

Several of you have requested me to write a tea article In the intrim I found this article which I believe is the best article on teas I have ever read. If anyone were to follow these instructions or principles there really would not be much more to learn except the creation and use of larger batches.

This article is of "sticky" quality. If others agree maybe someone would see that it happens.

http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/lists/organic/2002082739009975.html

This message was edited Nov 3, 2008 2:30 PM

Doc, This is a great article.Thank you so much. It's demystified the brewing process for me. What do you brew your tea in? Do you use tap or rain water? Do you use it as a foliar spray or do you soil drench? Do you use a watering can or something more geared to larger applications?

I brew my tea in a forty gallon batch as brewed by the Bobolator shown on the site of North Country Organics. I deliver it to the property....all over the property using an $89.00 sump pump and a garden hose. My thumb over the end of the hose is my highly scientific method of making a spray. I spray to a heavy run off which is both foliar and drench all at the same time.
I also use buckets and various dippers or home made sprinkler to apply it to small beds and my potted plants.

In the early season and late fall season I make five gallon brews which mostly hit the fall garden preps and the innoculation of the new leaves and manures added to the compost piles.

My picture shows the Biti-Bobolator in a five gallon batch. Everything but the bucket was purchased by me from North Country Organics. They also have boosters and tea quality compost which I suggest you should use to innoculate your own patches and compost piles. After learning using the purchased your native compost should be as good as the purchased. You can then continue as long as you wish using your own compost.

If you or your better half are creative you can build the Biti Bobolator by looking at the web site and my picture. The use of fish tank bubble stones is no longer felt to be the best yet they will produce as described. The Bobolator design is easy to clean and that is a major factor not found in most other brewing equipment.

Thanks, Doc. I love your highly scientific delivery method. That is a method that I would also employ as I already have a sump pump. I was wondering why you suggested that I look into building one until I saw the price of the Bobolator. $700+ OUCH!!! But as I looked around, I found that this is not one of the more expensive ones.

I surfed and came across several sets of plans for building tea brewers, but none of them looked easy to clean. I will download the details of the Bobolator and see if DSO can figure how to make one. As I've way overblown my gardening budget for this season, I'd probably not make or get one for use until the spring.

At $700, if I could feed my beds only with compost, mushroom soil and tea, then it would be a good savings after about 2 years. Several of the articles on the websites said to spray every 2 weeks, but are they referring to folks who don't use any other feed method?

How large an area do you treat with a 5 gallon brew? I'd be spraying perennial and shrub beds, not food crops. Thanks

By the way, doc has given a detailed thread about building the brewer, somewhere down here I think, unless it was in Soil and Composting. It seems like with the tube and the good pump, it really churns up the stuff, much much more than my aquarium pump in bucket plain.

Yep I did the thread you speak of. I am not geek enough to tell you where and how to find it. Here is a little more help.

Doc, your geek is here! Is this the thread you are refering to?
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/826302/

Yes those are my rants and rambles. I think anyone could get a Biti-Bobolulator up and working for $250.00 or less. I have been told there is a guy still making the Biti-Bobolator but that he calls it something else. I do not know who he is or where he is either. The one I show is similar to the Biti Bobolator with four years or more of experience added in.

Thank you Ladygeek and Doc!!! That's a great thread and I will show it to DSO who just happens to have 4 large Fish tank pumps and heaters. However he is usually allergic to plumbing supplies!!! Well, I maybe able to get a treatment going before the ground freezes.

Right now he and I are discussing the merits and detriments of mushroom soil. He says that I have to find the right type of mushroom soil or all kinds of uglies will start growing in my beds. Do you have any advice on this subject doc? A local landscaper's supplier here sells it for $20 a yard. An employee told me that it is mushroom leavings mixed in with manure and straw.

Mushroom waste is a very good soil builder. It contains little or no harsh chemical elements. It is as mentioned horse manure, straw and possibly in some mixes a portion of sawdust. After it is used it is well on the way to becoming compost. It is often called mushroom compost......however it is rarely truely finished compost. It should be mixed in the soil for best results or added to your compost piles and finished for an even better finish.

Real or true compost contains no parts that can be identified because all parts are converted into humus which is the real compost deal. Unfinished compost has to use your natural soil biology to get the job finished. That's OK it just takes longer and ties up various degress of your soil's goodness while it is still working to become compost.
Real honest finished compost is a ready made soil builder ready to go to work and make your soil better the moment it is applied.

This brings us back to square one............A bale of hay put on your soil will slowly decompose through the whole process or rotting to the state of humus. Right it will take longer. The old jolk is that it may even be better because it has not been run through the horse first. We could argue this "till hell freezes over. Really...no one would be completely wrong or right. Fact....there is only one thing that is "all" right. That fact is the truth that man made chemicals contain no biology and will harm or kill the very biology we need to build our soil content and structure.