November 21, 2024

29 thoughts on “VIDEO: How We Make Tea Our Plants Can Drink

  1. Hi Luke! Just wanted to add that chloramine does not dissipate into the air the same way chlorine does. Meaning it doesn’t burn off from treated municipal water. For that reason a carbon filter is needed for the garden hose.

  2. Also, so wouldn't using molasses and a bubbler to increase the amount of bacteria will fix the problem of having city water kill the bacteria in compost tea? Or will the chlorine kill the bacteria irrespective of how much bacteria is there? I figured if you multiply the amount of bacteria, you'll still have left to fertilize well. I find it a little tiring to let water sit. I don't have a rain drum and it hardly rains here so I mostly use city water.

  3. I think you're awesome but from what I have seen the purpose of aeration is to add oxygen and help the good bacteria grow. Basically like growing bacteria in a bucket. That's why you should wait 24-36 hrs. If you didn't have the mixture aerated, it would become anaerobic and grow bad bacteria

  4. We used to have ground water in our city before but now we have river water and I think that made our water a little hard so I'm not sure if hard water is bad for gardening not? Would you please answer that

  5. I just watched a 2014 video of you extolling the virtues of 'supercharged' compost tea made with a bubbler. Now here you are in 2019 telling us you prefer 'steeped' tea. What changed?

  6. Hey Luke, Thanks for the video! Have you ever tried making a green manure compost tea from fermenting comfrey leaves, and stinging nettle leaves? I am curious if you have and what your results were. Thanks again!

  7. Luke, I'm going to try compost tea this week with composted chicken manure. At the same time I plan on adding, per directions a microbial instant tea from Mighty Plant, inc. Any experience on this type of "instant" microbial tea?

  8. Just a thought…. more modern thinking is that "compost tea" is an ENRICHMENT of bacteria, fungi, and protozoa (all essential biologics for natural health of plants). The "soluble" components are organic acids (humic acids and fulvic acids) are not enriched in tea, but actually diluted. Enrichment of soil (or compost) biology (i.e., those bacteria, fungi, and protozoa) requires incubation in the tea for some 24 hours or more. In other words, you gotta let them multiply and grow over time (i.e. the 24 hours). Since you want to enrich the aerobic biology, many insist on an aerator during the incubation period. If you don't aerate, you risk growing (enriching) anaerobic biology, which is typically bad, bad, bad. If you don't incubate (as described in this video), what you get is compost extract, not tea. Extract is great stuff too, and perfect for drenching the soil. But if you want an excellent foliar spray, you'd do better using the enriched (i.e., incubated), aerobic, compost tea. Hope this helps.

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