Pregled posta

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Well on Saturday night I was reading more about techniques for making compost tea.
The standard method is allowing compost to sit in a bucket of water for any period up to about a month, then decantering the liquid, diluting it with more water and finally feeding it to your plants.

You can mix the compost directly in the water, agitating it every now and then, or put it into a hessian bag and insert that into the water. Of course mixing directly allows larger and a greater number of fragments to become part of the final mix, ie, the barrier of a hessian bag will stop the flow of many organisms.

Further, I expect the origin of the compost will heavily influence the effectiveness of the compost tea, but that's beyond me at this stage.

The compost was taken from a pile started in September last year - that's about 9 months ago. Many buna and kunugi leaves were thrown in, grass cuttings were added at times, about 50 large pumpkins (minus the seeds) were cut up and put in around November, and kitchen waste was added on an irregular basis. I did add about 500 grams of compost worms (= tiger worms / ·Ţßßş) and found a few of them and many of their eggs, but it looks like most have migrated - or were eaten by the moles that often dig through the pile. Moles also leave many tunnels as evidence.

ANYWAY, what I'm doing here is trying to produce a compost tea with higher microbial activity. Fast growing annuals such as vegetables thrive in an environment with high activity of microorganisms - so I read. I think I've been promoting such an environment in previous years, with the addition of cow manure and copious amounts of leaf mold as mulch. This year I'm putting in a more conscious effort with specific goals.

The picture above shows rainwater falling from a hole in the guttering into a 70 liter bucket which I half filled with the former mentioned compost. Aerated Compost Extract (ACE) involves mixing compost and water and aerating it with an aquarium air pump over a period of a few days - the extra oxygen is supposed to bring about an explosion of microorganisms. You are supposed to add some molasses - which is probably a critical factor - but I don't have any on hand. SO I'm just doing the aerating, which is heavy splashing of many raindrops into the mixture - so far it's been going non-stop for about 16 hours. When it stops I'll let it sit another couple of days before use.

With these parts I have built a forced-air fogger. It is a fully-enclosed system which pumps the fog through three planters and returns the remainder to be reused. It is based on a 5 gallon bucket and an aquarium fogger. Total supplies: $120.