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Aerated worm compost tea

Shundahai

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I live in an apartment setting, and my gardening space is limited. The back of my place, however, is not fenced in, and I have 5 patches of ground totaling about 700 sq. ft. along the fire road to garden. I don't have alot of extra room though, so I have to be creative to get the most out of what I have. To save space, I have a 16 cubic foot worm compost bin on my back porch (doubles as a bench) to handle all my kitchen and some yard waste. Works great and takes up alot less room than a conventional compost pile. It is the source for my homemade liquid fertilizer.

Aerated compost tea is a way to multiply the goodies in your compost, and increase the population of beneficial bacteria and fungi in your soil and on your plants, which has a very positive effect on disease resistance and nutrient uptake. I take a 5 gallon bucket, and fill it about 1/4 of the way with worm compost, add 1/2 cup of blackstrap mollases, fill with dechlorinated water and put an airstone attached to a cheapie aquarium pump in it and let it go for 2 or 3 days. The the culture that results is extremely high in aerobic bacteria and beneficial fungi, which will out compete the disease bugs in the soil and on the plants. Once it is done, I take 4 cups of the tea and add it to 5 gallons of dechlorinated water and water in my new plants with it. A couple of times during the growing cycle I will also spray this solution as a foliar feed. This is the only supplemental fert I give any of my plants all year.

I realize this is an anecdotal account, and not a controlled scientific experiment, but FWIIW I am somewhat known as the Tomato King of my neighborhood. Conventional wisdom says that one should rotate tomatoes to different growing beds each year to prevent accumulation of disease and pest organisms. I don't have the luxury of space for crop rotation, and I have been growing old heirloom varieties not bred for disease resistance in the same growing beds for 12-13 years without ANY issues with disease and my yields are pretty awesome. A dozen plants will give me 300 to 400 lbs of tomatoes a year. Since tobacco is pretty closely related to the tomato, and is susceptible to many of the same pests and diseases, I've been using this routine this year on my baccy plants, and so far so good. I'm not suggesting that one should abandon a crop rotation schedule or other good cultural practices if space allows it, but this may be of benefit when added to the other good tobacco growing practices.

Here is a brief article on aerated compost tea.

http://www.gardeningwithmicrobes.com/aact.shtml
 

Shundahai

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I will also note that my garden bed prep involves planting red clover as a cover crop in the fall, then digging it under in the spring with a healthy dose of organic composted duck manure that I get cheap cheap from a local farm.
 

USHOG

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worm compost teas are great plus I feed the worms and maggots to he fish. I add sugar or molasses to speed up the reproduction of the bacteria and let it bubble for 30 to 48 hours.

My setup is cheap and can be scaled to as small or large as needed.
 

Shundahai

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worm compost teas are great plus I feed the worms and maggots to he fish. I add sugar or molasses to speed up the reproduction of the bacteria and let it bubble for 30 to 48 hours.

My setup is cheap and can be scaled to as small or large as needed.

Sounds like a similar recipe to mine.
 

SmokingCrow

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Although his thread is old it's still relevant. After listening to a bunch of podcasts, I've made a very simple low cost compost tea brewer. Unfortunately I did not exclude a few plants as controls but with all the anecdotal evidence, this is a no-brainer. This could be upscaled to a 5 gal bucket by using a longer piece of garden hose.

I used a couple of handful each of worm-casts and leafmould from a local deciduous forest, both loaded with microbes.

 
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