Compost Tea, anyone?

Cellar Rats (ITB)
1

I’m setting up a tank to start brewing compost tea for the vineyard. We will be using it as a foliar spray, as it contains microbes that will live on the leaves and stems, and feed on the same food source as PM and Botrytis, there by lessening thier chances at gaining much of a foothold. These same microbes also heal over wounds on the root system, when added into the irrigation water, increasing the health and immune system of the vine. The beneficial protazoa and nematodes also catylize nutrients in the soil, literally spoon feeding the vines nutirents in a form that is available to them.

Do any of you use compost teas? How do you brew it, or who do you buy it from?

2

John, here’s my take on this subject, by no means a last word, but I have experimented with CT over the last 5 years. I’ve tried all sorts of different brews - fungal, bacterial, biodynamic, etc.

I don’t think CT belongs on the leaves. Yes, there is a slight benefit from a small nutrient boost, which probably allows the vine to fend off mildew a little easier. But CT is really compost, which means it is a decomposition process. It provides the same function that mildew does - it decomposes dead or dying plant tissue. I found that spraying leaves with this actually made the mildew issue worse over the long haul. I’ve had better luck spraying milk or whey. There are a number of current studies out there which are finding the same thing.

It does have some benefit through the irrigation system, if you don’t count the clogged emitters and the time spent clearing the lines. You can filter all you want - your lines will become a breeding ground for all sorts of “bio-sludge”.

Honestly, the gain is more easily (and more cheaply) found in proper soil nutrition - monitor your Ca levels in particular, as calcium is very important for plant disease resistance. Also, proper boron levels will insure proper sap pressure which insures that nutrients are getting around the vine where they are needed.

My brewer pretty much sits idle now.

3

Hank,

Were you brewing different teas for foliar apps vs apps via irrigation?
What you’re reporting is similar to what I’ve heard, though it seems that a tea strong in fungus scavengers (high in protozoa and bacteria) might have an anti-fungal effect.

That’s what I’ve been trying to achieve: a tea rich in protozoa, etc for the leaves vs. one high in fungi for the soil drench.
Not sure I’ve gotten it anywhere close to “right”, yet. The vines I’m working with were just planted this spring so disease isn’t much of a problem anyway, and it’s too soon to tell if the soil nutrient cycling is making any difference in a nutritional sense.

For John:
Welcome to the club.
CT’s aren’t very well researched, so the info comes in fits and starts, and is often conflicting.
If you haven’t already done so, you should read all you can by Elaine Ingham. There’s also a relatively new book, Teaming with Microbes by Lowenfels and Lewis, that’s worthwhile. Lastly, there’s a yahoo group called “compost_tea” where discussion with others can provide some support.

Cheers,

4

We brewed our first batch this week. The device came from some folks in Cottage Grove OR. My boss has been using CT at his place in Anderson Valley for 6-8 years now. He thought it was good for mildew until he lost his crop in 2006 and decided that sulfur wasn’t such a bad thing.

Our injection after 24 hours of brewing was a disaster. Kept clogging the filters on my 300 gallon rears sprayer and then when we could get it into the system it clogged my Netafin disc filter in 10 minutes. Nothing like trying to inject dirt tea into 40,000 emitters. Right now we’re on hold until we figure something else out. [oops.gif]

5

Bruce, I have brewed up just about every imaginable formula. Some of them get pretty complicated with all the different ingredients, the foaming, etc.

I found that the best teas were those that were pretty basic - just good quality compost (make it myself) and maybe a little kelp meal and soft rock phosphate. Adding too many nutrients (fish, for example) just caused problems for me.

6

I have a friend in Sebastepol who is commercially making CT for the vineyard industry- Sonoma Biologics. He has been selling to some pretty big players and they have been happy with his product. He has gotten me started with a 30 gln cone tank and regenerative blower for airation. My next step is to buy a microscope to moniter the quality and what kind of populations are in the tea.
I have The Compost Tea Quality: Light Microscope Methods manual, by Elaine Ingham

7

One thing I think CT is great for is spraying on your cover crop just before discing. It will really help speed up the breakdown and release of nutrients.

8

I’ve worked with compost tea before…but not vineyard related. A couple of large/older trees in my Mom’s backyard were not doing well, and I set out to make them healthy again since my Mom loved them.

My sources of information were:

The Jury is Still Out on Compost Tea - FineGardening" onclick=“window.open(this.href);return false;
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/compostteashow/compost-tea-slides/sld001.htm” onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are lots of other websites as well, these two seem the best to me. I also looked at Dr. Elaine Ingham’s book, which was excellent and interesting, tho I didn’t buy a copy.

Compost Tea folks make a distinction between bacterial dominated compost and fungi dominated compost. Apparently, compost from a high percentage of green and high nitrogen materials creates a bacterial dominated compost, which is what you want for a foliar applied compost tea. My compost was a combination of compost from American Soils (in El Cerrito), green garden clippings (minus the weeds), coffee grounds (from beans I roasted :slight_smile: and some rehydrated dried beans/legumes (10+ years old, from my Mom’s pantry).

I made the tea with a compost tea catalyst that I got from:

Grow Organic: Organic Garden Supplies, Farm Supplies and Plants Online" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had problems with the sprayer clogging as well, so I strained the tea into a clean bucket and let that settle until it was clear enough.

Before I sprayed, I mixed in some liquid kelp:

Grow Organic: Organic Garden Supplies, Farm Supplies and Plants Online" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I sprayed just after the tree finished leafing out, again in June, and once more the following spring. The trees are in pretty good shape now…tho they need a few more years of good pruning to regain their shape.


For a vineyard…seems like you’d want to make your own compost, and compost it at the vineyard site. That way you’ll keep the same balance of organisms at the vineyard. Does Sonoma Biologics talk about when the tea should be sprayed on the vines? Seems like you’d want to spray it before flowering…partly to give an early boost to the vines, partly cuz I think you’d get more anti-Botrytis effect, and partly to avoid spraying tea on the berries themselves…esp if you do native ferments.

Sounds like a fun/interesting experiment…let us know how it goes. Will you be spraying part of your vineyards, to compare tea applied to non-tea applied vines?

9

I was told to strain the tea through a 200 mesh filter before using it in a sprayer or through emitters.
I am planning on spraying it on a few rows only, spray and fertigate with it on a few rows, and just keep on with my normal fertigation/spray program on the remaining 27 rows of Syrah in front of the winery.


I’ll have to do some more research on applying it on the berries, although we use commercial yeasts for our ferments- used things like BDX, D21, 254, ect. in the winery for the last six years, so I doubt I’d get ‘natives’ even if I wanted.

10

I took Elaine Inghams seminar, bought her books, made some teas about 8 years ago when I was studying biodynamics. I noticed that in a 70 f. climate it has zero effect on powdery mildew. In a 90 degree plus climate it was very effective and realized it was just the temperature killing the pm.

I also realized adding it to the soil where the microbe mass was on a scale larger by several exponents, was like adding water into a lake with an eye dropper.

At the same time I observed vines I unknowinly purchased that were infected with petri disease aka black goo, when I planted them in living soils though covered in brown black mold, they kicked off the disease and grew healthy. The same vines in methyl bromided soils (to kill phylloxera) in Sonoma, in soils that were sterilized and devoid of life had over 90% mortality. [winner.gif]

I started dripping the kelp and molasses to my own microbes in the soil. Then I started focusing on growing compost in place. I do no tillage, but before winter rains I would broadcast a small amount of fertilizer to the grasses and forbs to build organic matter. I don’t do it very often any more because the soils are now producing enough of their own nutrients and have reached an nice equilibrium. I spary foliar nutrients every spray, and I think that is enough. No deficiencies or chlorosis in 8.2 pH soils where when I started even the Malva was chlorotic.
Feed the soil microflora. You don’t need to add more microflora. Feed them through growing compost in place. Do not use tillage. Tillage kills soils and disrupts the carbon cycle. Its all about the carbon cycle and sequestering carbon and building humus. Tillage disrupts the hyhae of fungi and oxidizes the carbon in soils. Don’t till. The plant roots do it for you. When they die, they leave pores where the roots were for air, nutrient and water infiltration and the soils are less compacted.

11

Bruce, Great to see you here!!!

12

Hi, Peter.

I was thinking of you when John asked his original question, as we’ve talked about Ingham’s philosophies in the past.

Two quick questions re: your experiences…
-Any thoughts (intuitions, WAGs, whatever) on how CTs would work against Botrytis and Downy?
[PM is not really much of a problem here.]

-While you were testing CTs as a fungal treatment did you forego using other anti-microbial treatements?

Best regards to you,

13

Compost tea seems to conjure many different definitions to many people. The ingredient list, composting technique and food source as well as the brewing technique will all have a signifigant outcome on the quality and availability of the microbes cultured. Compost tea is not a silver bullet. However, quality brewed teas and monitored for the appropriate organisms can greatly reduce particular pests and pathogens and at the same time greatly improve the quality of your soils and reduce the need for other resources. The important thing to keep in mind is your tea can only be as diverse and rich in microbial content as your starting material. If you start with a shitty compost and food source then your only going to grow and expand whats available.

There are so many variables that go into a tea, especially if you are aiming for a specific task. For instance Hank suggests that compost is in a state decay thus the teas provide the same process that mildew does by decaying dead matter. This is true however the idea of compost tea is to harvest the specific organisms present in a compost. The compost is really used as the growing media for these organisms. Understanding their relstionship with one another and the ingredient list to your compost pile is unlocking the success of the tea. Manure based teas will also have anaerobic organisms that could outperform the other “needed” organsims and then you have a real big problem on your hands, NO MANURE in biologic teas. I am not saying that the use of manure is not needed but if we are talking harvesting the beneficial bacteria and fungi then manure teas are something totally different. I personally think a better name for “compost tea” might be “cultured biology”. The brew times and temperatures will also give you a different result. In essence you are providing probiotics for your soil. Much in the same way if someone has digestive issues one way to help prevent those issues is to eat yogurt. While this does not knock out the issue with one serving but rather incorporate this into your diet and over time these probiotics benefit the digestive track. tea works much the same way in the soil.

I have had tremendous success culturing specific organisms to aid in powder mildew, soils born pathogens and other leaf and wood based pathogens. However we don’t wait for the issue to show up, we are working with our clients to prevent it from even showing up. We monitor weather and soil conditions and brew from there. I also spend a lot of time monitoring our source material constantly looking at it under a microscope too insure the organisms are where we want them to be. Food source is also crucial NO MOLLASSAS this is a huge misunderstanding amongst the tea crowd. While a lot of great research has been done thus far alot of it is being recanted now that we have new ways to monitor the biology.

Many managers ask me “does this actually give you better fruit?”, my response is usually no, but given your being diligent on your biology it will yield as good of fruit (and in a lot of situtations better) than you are currently producing but you can now do it sustainanably, organically and knowing you are fostering a relationship with your ranch that will insure your great grand kids will be farming the same piece of land.

14

Malcolm:

Thanks for the input.
Obviously the composting and brewing processes are filled with myriad variables, and results can differ widely because of this.

Quick question: you say “no molasses”. What do you recommend, then, as a food source?

TIA

15

Hi Bruce,

I actually make my own food source, it takes me about 15 days to create a batch. It is basically a fermentation based amino acid (without giving up too much), I am in the process of receiving OMRI cert on it.

I would be more than happy to send you some. I would love some feed back if you are currently using molasses do a side by side with my food source and see what you think.

Cheers,

Malcolm