Compost Tea Questions & Answers

by Doug
(Somewhere out in Lake Ontario)

Let's see if I can answer a few questions that came up after the video.

My Compost Tea system

My system is a KIS system - the regular one and I'm delighted with it. In tests, it produced a consistent tea high in both fungal bodies and bacteria.

I'd recommend you go to their site and read the data they have on their brewers and then compare that to your own.

Is it expensive

Do I think an expensive thing like this is necessary?

Well, first of all I don't think they're overly expensive compared to what you're getting for the overall health of your garden. For some folks this is a lot of money - for others it's not. I was at a nursery the other day where the daylilies were running about $100 each so pricing is all relevant.

In the case of compost tea, it's the base of a good garden and in an urban area, I think it's the best thing to do. So yes, I think the tea maker is the right choice.

Can you do with an aquarium pump?

Yes. But understand that fungal mass is slightly different than other things you're trying to produce. (and you do want fungi in your compost tea).

If you've ever left a board sitting on the ground for a season, and then turned it over to see white strands all over the ground and the board, then you've seen fungal masses at work. These strands of fungus have very powerful influences on our garden soil and productivity. Quite the equal of bacteria. So you want fungi in your compost tea.

The wrong kind of bubbling cuts these up as does high pressure applications. And once you chop them up smaller than a few cells, they die off. This is not what we want to happen. In the case of the KIS brewer, the water roiling away is not full of fine bubbles that chop up the fungus but rather large rolling masses of water created by a high pressure pump and large air holes.

If you use a smaller aquarium pump, you may produce great compost tea and then again, you may not. It depends on how much air you have and how big the bubble sare. The only way to tell for sure is to get the compost tea properly tested.

I didn't see the compost tea video.
Well, that depends on your computer system. It's there.

The sound had static

Yes, it did. Some glitch somewhere in production. No idea where it was and I discovered it was in the master only after uploading.

As we discussed early on in this seminar process, you guys had a choice of taking videos fast and dirty and using the information -or- me taking a month to make a video and make it production perfect. You chose fast and dirty and get us the info videos. So that's what I'm doing. I know there's a bit of sound problems with it but I could wait a week for it to stop raining to do it over again or I could whack it up. I decided to upload it.

But it does seem that there are always complaints about small things - like the way I'm dressed this time.

So to help you out on these - I'm going to slow down production and give you better quality videos and likely fewer of them because it takes so long to make each one compared to writing.

I'm disappointed in your video.

Hmmm, the video or the fact that you may have to change what you're doing? See above for whether you have to change your air supply. See immediately above if the disappointment is in the video quality.

Can you use incomplete compost?

No. You need finished compost to make compost tea.

How loud is the pump?

Well, it's a bit of a roar but I don't have a reference point. I also can't tell if your neighbors are going to be annoyed. Depends on your neighbors. Tell 'em you're doing this so you don't have to spray noxious chemicals. :-)

Put a sound barrier over it (but don't stop the air flow) if you're ocncerned.


There's lots more coming - in the next video.