Compost Tea Task Force Report

[epi 1:10,000]

Click on the USDA link for the report

http://www.ams.usda.gov/nosb/meetings/CompostTeaTaskForceFinalReport.pdf

[culdeus]

Unless I don't follow the USDA speak they think teas made

-With no animal manure
-No additives (i.e. sugars, mollases, etc)

Are safest

-No comment about whether areation increases the risks.

[CaptainCompostAL]

Be careful what you read, my friends! Most government officials or soil experts tend to be over-cautious or too conservative for me when it comes to tea brewing or even composting!

I believe that if a well managed sustainable farmer keeps his/her soil well feed with compost, natural mulches, cover crops, and other organic matter, and attract lots of beneficials to the environment, your personal choice and style of compost tea recipes or other biostimulants, is not going to be that detrimental to your plants or soil. It really doesn't make that much of a difference in how you design your diluted organic tea, if your soil microherd and earthworms are well fed and healthy.

The audience that the experts are mainly "preaching" to for making the "perfect" teas, are mainly the non-organic or conventional farmers anyway. Those farmers have to be more careful than we do, because they have far less humus, aerobic microbes, and beneficials in their gardening environment than the sustainable farmers too.

I love making wild, creative, aerated compost teas, using all the free or economic high protein grain, cattle feeds, urine, aged manures, weeds, sugars, etc. as optional bacterial/fungal foods in addition to my rich horse manure/sawdust compost that I make and sell to farmers. And all my plants love them, and my soil looks great!