help plz compost tea!

so buying compost tea by the gallon has gotten expensiveand ive chosen to brew my own. i want a general bacteria dominant tea.

i attempted to brew my own this week but it never got frothyy like ive seen in videos (so was it any good?)



my recipe was this
7 tbs of molassess mixed in 4.5 gallons of water

with a sock filled with two cups of worm castings as the tea bag

1tbs of hum-boldt humic acid

1 airstone pumping air through the five gallon bucket for 36 hours


no frothiness why? i feel like it means no life



RO water as well btw

these are the worm castings i used

what did it smell like after 36 hrs?

i really dont remember but it wasnt foul

Did you let the water airate the chlorine from the tap water? If not it can take a few days before the bacteria can thrive. Keep adding non sulfured mollases and a little more worm casting.

it was ro water i thought that removed all the chlorine....

Sorry did not read that part. Try more castings and more mollases mostly more mollases.

use the tea. dilute it. weak iced tea. that's alotta molasses; not bakin' a sho-fly pie.....lol

5 gal is a huge tea for an indoor garden IMO. 1 liter of microbial tea covers 5000 sq ft as a soil drench. Maybe brew a smaller batch so your dissolved oxygen levels are higher?

25ml/L EWC (fresh as possible)
5ml/L blackstrap molasses
2ml/L kelp meal
1.5ml/L fish hydrolysate

Brew for 30-36 hours. That will net you a thick microbial tea as long as it is sufficiently aerated (0.08 CFM per gallon)

From microbeman organics:

"First of all I’d like to make it clear that most aquarium air pumps don’t produce enough air to use in a container larger than 1 gallon when considering making an aerated brewer. So don’t even try the 5 gallon pail with the aquarium pump idea everybody is passing around. You need a minimum 0.05 CFM (cubic feet per minute), open flow of air and an optimum 0.08 CFM per gallon (US) or higher to make aerated compost tea (ACT). ACT should have the DO2 sustained at or above 6 PPM. Generally, aquarium pumps produce around 0.02 to 0.16 CFM. Another generality is that 25 watts of power usually produces 0.75 to 1.0 CFM in diaphragm air pumps. The wattage is usually marked on the pump which will help you figure out the approximate output."

u need more ingredients add these with your molasses and worm castings bat guano or dog shit ***only*** if you feed them the best dog food and know there dieat i use liquid karma and seabird guano this tea recipe works great!!! JB

You need 3 basic things

EWC, kelp, molasses

Use 1 tbsp per gallon of each.

Dilute 1 cup to 10 gallons.


Froth isn't necessarily a sign of it "working"


It should smell "alive",,,like beer or wine fermenting.



You can add a lot of things to tea...but the three things I listed are all that you gotta have for a bacteria dom ACT.

what is ewc?

anyways there are few parts to a good tea. first you need inoculates of fungi and/or bacteria several company's make them.(you can wait to culture your own bacteria/fungi but that could take up to a week and you might still never have the diversity they supply in powdered form) the best way to get a hugely diverse amount is use to use several types of compost. bat guano worm castings and bone meal are what i use, these are mainly a nutrient source for bacteria/fungi that is shared symbiotically with the plant (worm castings break down fast guano medium fast bone meal slow used) i also keep the contents from the first tea in the bag so i dont have to use as much inoculate because Bacteria/fungi is already all over it. next you need your carbs. complex carbs and simple sugar both are needed. bacteria thrives off of simple sugar and fungi off of complex carb. so you will need sugar source such as molassas and a complex carb source such as hay or oatmeal. this will provide you micro herd with need food. next you need additives that are inert and wont affect the microherd such as seaweed extract which both feeds microherd and contains plant hormones or vitamins/micro nutes which most bacteria does not feed on or use. the last but most important thing is water temp and oxygen. water temps of up to 110 degrees are ok i have a air pump that pumps heated air directly from my lights into my tea a heating pad will work fine too if the temp is around 70 degrees you will see foam in less than 48 hours next is the air stone make sure stone is clean upon initial immersion in tea and put airstone in a mesh bag or pantyhose to keep it clean longer. if you follow these guidelines you should be making bomb ass tea in a day or 2

You should not be handling dog or cat poo for compost.

Earth Worm Castings.

EWC, molasses, kelp.

5 gallon bucket,
10 dollar 2 hose wal mart aquarium air pump
2 airstones

Thats it to get started.

Bubble a bucket of water for 24 hours.
Put the EWC and kelp in a sock and tie a knot in the sock. Drop it in the bucket along with the molasses
Bubble for 36-48 hours.
Dilute at 1c/10g

There are a million different variables you can add. This is as basic as it gets, IMHO.

a scoop of worm poop, a scoop of corn meal, a pinch of azomite, a pinch of humic acid, a bit o' kelp, and molasses (un-sulfured). the corn meal is a fungicide, so i omit sometimes. if the plants look hungry, i add a pinch of blood meal. after 36 hour bubble, use 1/2 strength. i refrigerate the rest for up to 10 days. just pour some into your watering can, stir it up, and let reach room temp. if it smells bad, it is bad. sweet/earthy/musky is good.

have not tried my azomite in a tea.. I have a 2lb bag of it.

indoor gardening forces us to dry out root ball a bit extremely. we lose large numbers of microfauna with this necessary way of growing, so always replenish your microbes.

Going to begin my brew now.. @ 2:30am.

should I add azomite in beginning or wait until before I water

RawBudzski said:

Going to begin my brew now.. @ 2:30am.

should I add azomite in beginning or wait until before I water

Click to expand...

its part of my brew.....i want the microbes to get the trace minerals throughout, while their numbers are exploding. sorta.....gettin' used to it

Refrigerating tea is bad. It kills the microbes you are culturing.

If you are refrigerating your tea, you are not utilizing the full potential of the ACT.