“Live“ Compost Tea

Frustrated with disease and pest pressure on your plants? Going bonkers trying to figure out what to feed your plants? It’s a struggle we all have encountered.

Moving away from artificial fertilizers was a huge game-changer on our farm. It solved nutrition and pest problems by letting nature take charge. Instead of trying to “feed” the plants, in the typical Western approach to growing plants, our model changed. We feed the microbes in the soil.

Here is the Basic Concept: What if Pests and diseases are nature's way of getting rid of sick plants? So the question becomes: “How can we increase the health of our plants?”

How can we take the stress and work out of growing our plants? Is there an easier way?

Research now shows that a highly sophisticated system is already in place to feed plants, and our chemical approach interferes with it. We create bigger & bigger problems with our industrial “fixes”. Over the last billion years, nature has developed a system we need to tune into.

Microbial life in the soil, mycorrhizae, fungal, and bacterial systems have a symbiotic relationship with plants. In short, soil life feeds the plants what they have asked for, and in return, the plants feed the microbes carbohydrates they have photosynthesized.

Better yet, the microbes feed plants the nutrients they ask for, in a FORM the plants can easily take up.

Our “Live Compost Tea” offers a salad bar of ingredients for the microbes to utilize. You can take one gallon of “tea” and dilute it with 4 gallons of water (non-chlorinated) and use it as a spray or soil drench. You cannot add too much; you can apply it to container plants, as well. We use it about every 2-3 weeks during the growing season, starting in February in our area of California, to jump-start the season.

We have been doing a “proof of concept” with our live compost tea.

Anybody can tell you anything on the internet, but the proof is in the pudding! Over the last 5 years, we have seen phenomenal health in our plants and a corresponding decrease in pest or disease pressure. You are welcome to come visit the farm and see the results.

We sell the tea on-site; bring your own bucket (with lid). 1 gallon/$5. 5 gallon/$35 (one gallon of tea to 4 gallons of water). The first gallon is free for you to trial.

You can dilute 1 gallon of tea: 4 gallons of water, for all plants, dilute up to 1:10 (for seedlings).

Once you are familiar with the process, you can come at almost any time and serve yourself.

(There is a money jar for cash and Venmo for cashless purchases)

Honor System

WHY and WHAT

We go back to nature for a broad array of potential nutrients. There are micronutrients in natural ingredients that we may not even realize plants need. Into the tea we add alfalfa pellets, worm casings, fish fertilizer, kelp meal, molasses, soluble calcium, and wet/fresh cow manure. Additionally, DE (diatomaceous earth), Baccillus, and mycorrhiza.

This is all added to a barrel of aerated water for a minimum of 3 days before use. Aeration keeps microbial life alive, while molasses feeds the microbes as they reproduce. When added to the soil, you are inoculating soil microbes as well as a salad bar of nutrients for the microorganisms to draw from to feed the plants.

Why wet/fresh cow manure? Because the gut system of cows have the microbes needed to innoculate the soil. Like the buffalo, they are forage creatures. You can use the other ingredients without the manure, but the cow manure microbes enrich the soil itself. (Horse manure does NOT have the microbes desired).

No petrochemical artificial components. By feeding artificial fertilizers, we break up that symbiotic relationship, starving the microbial life in the soil when the plant does not deliver the carbohydrates it photosynthesized. They essentially kill the life in the soil. Yes, you can feed artificial fertilizers, and plants can grow big & fast… but are they healthy? I use the example of eating a hamburger, French fries, & a milkshake every day. You will get bigger faster, but will you be healthy?

Here is the Basic Concept: What if Pests and diseases are nature's way of getting rid of sick plants?

The question becomes: “How can we increase the health of our plants?”

Your first gallon is free, so you can trial it in your own growing environment.

On Farm Pickup - just text that you are coming out