How to Make Organic Fertilizer at Home in the Form of Aerated Compost Tea! Life Back in the Soil!
This video is about how to make organic fertilizer at home in the form of aerated compost tea. What this organic fertilizer does is add microbes to the soil. Bacteria and fungi are essentially little sacks of fertilizer for the plants. The plant's roots creates exudates in the form of simple carbohydrates directly around the root zone called the rhizosphere, and these exudates attract the bacteria and fungi. I'll make another video about how plants use microbes as fertilizer but this video is about my process of making compost tea.
To start off, I use rain water as the base for my tea because any water containing chemicals such as chlorine or chloramine will kill off any microbes, which is the exact opposite of what we want to do with our compost tea. We want the microbes to multiply like mad so we can add it to our soil and spray it on our plants. You can also use filtered water or well water. You can also use tap water as long as you let it sit for a couple days. Apparently the chlorine and chloramine dissipate or something. I've also seen people use vitamin C in their tap water to eliminate chlorine and chloramine. So those might be some options for you to look into if you only have tap water as a water source.
I use comfrey because it is a dynamic accumulator, which means that it brings nutrients up from the sub soil and stores it in its leaves. Left to its own devices, it will deposit the nutrients to the soil at leaf fall. I like to cut some up and steep it as a tea, or in this case, compost tea. So the comfrey is adding nutrients to the compost tea.
I started using worm castings because I just so happen to have it available and I wasn't using them for anything else. The worm castings or vermicastings are full of bacteria so it is a great option to inoculate the compost tea with microbes. You can easily use healthy compost (which should have a healthy dose of microbes as well). I have used compost in the past with great inoculation success.
I use molasses as my microbial food in the compost tea. You need to inoculate the tea with microbes but then you need something for them to feed on so they can multiply quickly and in large numbers.
The molasses is mixed in with the rain water which is in a 5 gallon bucket. Granted, this can be scaled up or down depending on your needs. I use piece of panty hose as my make-shift filter, and I put the chopped up comfrey and worm castings in it.
The air stone goes in the bucket before I pull the panty hose over the bucket and once everything is added, I turn on the air pump and wait anywhere between 24-48 hours. It will look nice and bubbly when finished, and I will probably make another video once it is finished ti show you what it looks like and how I use it.
I lied about putting a link to the air pump in the description but I think it would be better if you look for a used one first. Try facebook marketplace or craigslist.
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