Organic Materials Management

Compost Tea

Your soil needs the right biology in order to grow the plants you want without the use of toxic chemicals. If your soil, potting mix, hydroponics medium, or compost lacks the minimum set of organisms, steps need to be taken to re-establish the right set of organisms and compost tea may be the answer for you. Remember! A healthy soil equals healthy plants!

• What Is Compost Tea, and Why Use It?
• Making Compost Tea
• Compost Tea vs Other Teas and Extracts
• Compost Tea and Disease Suppression
• Resources

What Is Compost Tea, and Why Use It?

As the name implies, compost tea is produced by "steeping" healthy compost in water using some method of aeration. Compost tea is brewed from compost and a microbial food source additive, such as molasses, kelp, rock dust, and humic-fulvic acids.

But why go to all the trouble of "brewing" and spraying this tea instead of just working the compost into the soil? Two reasons: To inoculate microbial life into the soil to feed the foliage of plants, and to add soluble nutrients to the foliage or soil in order to feed your plants. Compost tea is a readily available form of compost that will impact the plant more quickly than compost mixed into the soil.

The compost tea brewing technique, an aerobic process, extracts and grows populations of beneficial microorganisms. This is especially important if your soil has been subjected to chemical-based pesticides, fumigants, herbicides, and some synthetic fertilizers that kill a wide range of the beneficial microorganisms that encourage plant growth. Compost teas will improve the life in the soil and on plant surfaces.

It is clear that the emerging national acceptance of compost tea as a biologically-based crop production tool by organic as well as conventional growers indicates the necessity for further scientific investigation to validate the benefits and concerns of compost tea use. The Board is working to compile and make this information readily available to you. Please let us know if there are questions you have but for which you can’t find the answers and we will try to find the answers.