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compostteas - Re: [Compostteas] Teamaker basics

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Subject: Compost Teas: 24 hour, EM, IM, BD & fermented plant extracts

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  • From: "Frank Teuton" <fteuton AT sympatico.ca>
  • To: <compostteas AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Cc: <miraclefarms AT videotron.ca>
  • Subject: Re: [Compostteas] Teamaker basics
  • Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 05:12:26 -0400

Sorry for the blank message.

The title might better be, "Scaling up."

I have been making tea for a couple of years now, and we are scaling up to
make it in batches of a couple of hundred gallons.

Looking over the commercial tea makers on offer, we decided that they are
pretty much out of our price range at this point, and decided to make our
own 'good enough' teamaker.

Knowing that high powered aeration technology is available, we opted for
giantizing Elaine's Kitchen Gardener system; we have a big air pump and
multiple large airstones from Aquatic Ecosystems www.aquaticeco.com .
Specifically, we have the SL88 linear piston air pump and 12 1.5" x 6"
airstones which are supposedly a happy medium between small bubbles for
oxygenation and large bubbles for mixing/water movement. Other bubblers and
diffusers are possible.

My inclination is to let the compost bubble loose in the 200 gallon vat we
have, then strain the resultant tea just enough to keep the big chunks from
causing clogging problems.

I have to admit that I don't understand why baskets are so widely used and
touted; to my mind, the best pelagification (aka extraction) of organisms
should occur in the more open environment of compost freely bubbling
throughout the system, rather than closed up in a basket.

Our vat is about 3x3x3 and open on the top, and will be used underneath a
tunnel structure for UV protection and to restrict access by birds and other
critters. It is forklift compatible and thus has three troughs in it, where
the airstones are to be placed; each corner will have its own airstone.
Looking at the commercial units we see that cone bottom tanks are just about
the only ones used, and we may switch to one if tea quality is not up to
snuff.

We will make some teas with this setup and get them tested; we are in Quebec
not far from the NY border, and if we can get samples across the border and
send them to the NY SFI lab, we should be able to have reliable feedback and
reasonable costs of shipping.

We spray our tea with a little 25 gallon Agri-Fab lawn tractor-towable 12
volt diaphragm pump sprayer, modified with a 13 foot high mast and ten
nozzles for going between apple orchard rows.

We've had some clogging problems with this system, and have gone to using a
paint filter fabric (5 gallon bucket size) to remove the offending particles
whilst hopefully letting most of the free organisms through. Earlier teas
were made with a SoilSoup machine in a 55 gallon plastic drum. Our first
batch of big vat tea will probably be ready by the end of the week.


As always, I have a ton of questions and curiosities about this process, and
some other things too, for example, is tea on apples compatible with the use
of kaolin clay (Surround WP) as an insect control, and if so should the tea
precede the clay (sounds like it should) and should the tea be sprayed over
the clay (no clue here)? Perhaps clay after tea would protect the organisms
from UVs? Certainly new growth will need both tea and clay in such a regime.
Perhaps they can be applied at the same time, a la fois as they say?

In addition to the tall mast sprayer we built, the sprayer comes with a
ground application boom that covers an 80 inch swath. We expect to use this
to encourage ground decomposition of leaves and drops in the fall.

This orchard is managed with sheep; no drops are harvested for human
consumption of any kind.

Any warnings or friendly advice, comments or questions are most welcome.


Frank Teuton









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