Grass Clipping Tea - How Bad Should It STINK?!

So I put some grass & weed clippings (being careful to not include any dirt or roots) in a large water jug about 5-6 days ago & covered them with water. After leaving the lid off for a day to help the chlorine evaporate, I put the lid back on the container as that's what all the "recipes" tell you to do. I made sure to vent it by removing the lid daily & stirring the mixture around.


Stink Tea

So I go to use the tea today and HOLY SH*T does it smell terrible! I would describe it as 100 dead rats roasting in the July sun with a twist of halitosis & cow shit. I applied a little diluted tea to my plant about 2 hours ago & it hasn't drooped or died yet, but I have to wonder how safe that stuff could be if it smells that rank?

Is this just what rotting grass is supposed to smell like? Or is it actually turning harmful? All the recipes I've read instruct you to let the tea steep for up to 2 weeks. It's only been about 6 days.

I'm trying to decide whether to throw the stuff out or not. I don't have a fancy aerator machine or what have you. If this method doesn't work I'll just scrap the whole thing. Thanks~

So when you make a plant extract it shouldn't smell rotting. You want it to ferment and not just sit in the bottle and rot. You need to add molasses or organic brown sugar to the mixture so the microbes have something to eat. Adding em1 or lacto will help get it going. Make or buy an airlock so your container doesn't explode.

Eww sounds nasty...I would toss that on my outside shrubs and/or azaleas. If it stinks it's anaerobic. What you want to make is ACTIVELY AERATED COMPOST TEA...for your pot plants... google it. You don't need anything fancy just go find a bucket, worm castings or compost, a cheapo airstone, and a form of sucrose like molasses or honey or maple syrup to feed the microbes you grow in the bucket. Bubble for 24+ hrs and serve. Add a liquid fish and/or seaweed fertilizer if you want to give an NPK boost. There's about a thousand variations on this recipe for different purposes: veg, bloom, etc.but they all do the same thing which is to increase microbial activity which will feed your plants and keep them happy & healthy. The idea is that if the microbes have easy access to soluble food they start fucking and fighting each other. Once they are released to your soil they consume the amendments in your mix and make them available for absorbtion by the plants root systems. Throw your grass clippings in a compost pile/bin.
Go read up on this shit; Teaming with Microbes by Lowenfels is good reference but my favorite organic grow book is still True Living Organics by The Rev.

Thanks y'all. That's what I suspected. There's gotta be somethin' bad brewing in there for it to smell that terrible. Grass simply doesn't smell like that at any stage of its natural life, lol. "Actively Aerated" sounds like the part I missed. I'll copy/paste that for next time, thanks. Don't know why these tards are putting up foul recipes that tell you to leave it to rot for 2 weeks.

My plant seemed to like it though so at least I got some mileage out of it.