Showing posts with label compost tea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compost tea. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

June 15, 2010 Weekly Square Foot Garden and Compost Tea update



Most of the garden has had two compost tea applications, the first one was kind of lite because the ground was already very wet after a weeks worth of rain. But the past week was rain free except for a shower last night so the second application was a real watering. I'm seeing good results within a few days of first using it plants that had been kind of yellow and limp were standing at attention and getting greener. The tomatoes in the greenhouse still aren't as green as the ones in the garden but there is a big improvement and they have grown several inches this week. I think there are a couple of factors at work here just a few days before the rain started I gave all of the established plants a feeding of a slow release organic fertilizer then the rain would have leached a lot of that into the soil and from what I've been able to read on the internet the compost tea both feeds the plant and enables it to better use nutrients that are already in the soil. So I guess it was lucky that I put the fertilizer on when I did. I've seen real improvement in beets, fennel, chard, lettuce and tomatoes.

My Ground Cherries in the grow bag greenhouse are in bloom, first time I've grown these and I have never tasted one so I'm kind of excited.

Sand cherry blossoms in the grow bag greenhouse

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

SFG up-date and Compost Tea



Things are progressing in the garden as well as could be expected after a week of wet weather. I've been seeing a lot on the internet about the benefits of the new method compost tea. In stead of just steeping a bag of compost in water as people have done for many years the new method says to add two tablespoons of molasses, a crushed 1000 milligram vitamin C tablet and some seaweed or fish emulsion to five gallons of water and to bubble air through this for 24 hours. The resulting tea is applied both to the foliage and soil in your garden and must be used immediately as it has a very short shelf life. From what I've been able to learn from the internet the enzymes, bacteria and fungi that develop in the tea are both a nutrient to the plant and help the plant to process the nutrients that are already in the soil.

Well I bought an aquarium air pump and some material to make compost tea bags from and I have made my first batch. I didn't add any seaweed or fish emulsion but the compost that I'm using is Seafood Compost. The first batch has been applied and the next batch is brewing. It is recommended that you reapply the tea every seven to ten days, with the size of my gardens that means I will likely always have a batch on the go, because by the time I finish one application it will be time to start over again.