----- Original Message From: Allan Balliett
> Why so much tea, Lloyd?
>
> Elaine is recommending 5 gallons of good tea to the acre and says
> that tea has less than a 24 hours container life.
>
> I want to thank both you and Frank for reminding me that simple
> pumped air is impractical for working with large volumes of liquid.
>
> -Allan
Hi Allan
1. Mine is not compost tea (by Elaine's definition - or
mine) - Elaine's style of brewing is pretty dramatic - the whole thing is
over in a couple of days - a wild rush of microbial growth - followed by a
spectacular crash - fantastic but difficult to manage - the one day shelf
life makes things interesting too - I am not well enough organised to do
this on 1000 acres of wheat and barley and anyway we dont have much of a
disease problem.
2. I am aiming more for a nutritional effect - we do a slow
brew that takes 7 to 10 days and my critter numbers probably would not be
worthwhile counting - but with a little careful feeding we can keep a tank
going for a couple of weeks if needed - it makes a nice base for our foliar
sprays and we can usually get a couple or maybe three to four points lift in
brix using this system - even for a week or two after the brew has cooled
out it is still worth using ( if the smell changes or the pH drops at all we
would throw it out).
3. This stuff would go out at about 1or 2 quart /acre (2 to
4L/ha) as part of a mix that probably has some chemical fertiliser, maybe a
little calcium nitrate or some food grade phosphate - (for the certified
there are organic substitutes just costs twice as much) probably have some
straight seaweed and/or kelp too - pendulum and refractometer tells me what
to do.
4. Our feedstock consists of anything good that you can
think of and find to put in there. We manage to brew 1 litre of fodder
(liquid fish, kelp, humate) into 20 litres of brew that seems to have at
least equal value energetically and nutritionally. I have and use, Elaine's
course notes and the compost tea manual as scientific reference.
5. you can do these brews slower in a fifty gallon
plastic drum with a couple of fish tank bubblers and a bucket
Regarding the pumped air there would be a way to do this I just
have not figured it out yet - maybe my wife's leaf blower hooked up to some
pipes ???????????
I really enjoyed Frank's return post on this
Cheers all
Lloyd Charles
