This is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com.
I have another exciting episode for you today.
Today is a real important episode.
I get a lot of questions like, 'hey John how do you fertilize...?'
or, 'what do you use for fertilizer?'
Compost tea should be the number 1 thing you add to enrich your soil to make it more vibrant
and full of life so that your plants can flourish.
So, in this episode I'm going to be happening to show you how easy it is to brew your own
way to a greener thumb today with Boogie Brew because it truly is a one-stop shop, as we
all know.
Nonetheless, brewing a compost tea is super easy, and let me go ahead and explain the
things that you want to use.
Number one, we're going to use a standard 5-gallon bucket.
This is a free bucket that's recycled from a health foods store, and we've filled it
up with about 5 gallons of purified water.
Now, I can't stress that enough.
One of the things you need to use is purified water.
You need to remove the chlorine and some of the bad stuff n the water.
If you keep the chlorine and you try to brew your teas, your compost tea, it's not going
to work as good because the chlorine id not going to allow the friendly bacteria to flourish.
Chlorine is in the water to sanitize it, so it's goanna get rid of all the bacteria, good
and bad, so we don't want that stuff when we're brewing our own teas.
Next thing we're goanna need to use is the tea itself.
So, in this case I have the Boogie Brew tea, although you could use other brands, other
varieties of prepackaged teas, and I will always encourage you to brew your own tea
instead of buying pre-brewed tea.
Pre-brewed teas have incredibly short shelf lives, so it's always best to do it yourself.
Nonetheless if you don't have boogies brew for yourself you can order it online, or another
thing you can do is you can make your own compost tea out of using some compost, also
adding some rock dust, put some kelp in there, and put that in a nylon or burlap sack and
aerate it.
That gets me to the next thing, we're goanna need some air pumps.
So, we have some standard dual outlet air pumps.
This is the 15-16 gallon.
Now, this is for a fish tank.
They makes these specialized pumps for doing exactly this, and those would be best, but
I got these at the dollar store for 99 cents, so that's what we're using today.
We're going to actually use 2 of them.
So, the more airflow, the better.
Besides air pumps you're goanna have to have the airstone.
So, once again, I got these airstones at the dollar store for 99.999 cents, and we have
2 of these, one for each air pump.
Now you wouldn't want to use the dual output on the air pump to feed both stone because
then you might not be getting as much air as you could, and you know, for a dollar,
I'll buy an extra pump, and you're goanna need some tubing to run the air into the stones,
to aerate the water and the compost.
So, it's pretty easy.
Let's go ahead and set this up.
We're goanna go ahead and open the Boogie Brew bag here, and inside your Boogie Brew,
each set comes with your own burlap sack.
Now, you can use a nylon, paint straining bag or something, but I like the burlap sack
because it's a natural material, and from what I've heard this will compost and break
down, but also this may be helpful in releasing more of the beneficial microbes when the tea
is brewing.
So, we're simply goanna take our sack, and we're goanna hold this over the water here,
and we're goanna take about a cup of the compost in here.
Now, this is a mixture.
So, this is basically an off-the-shelf mixture of different things including biodynamic hummus,
worm casting organic soil, alfalfa, hemic acid, rock phosphates, mineral complex, gypsum,
endo (unclear), black molasses, sulfate, borate, zinc, magnesium sulfate, iron sulfate, glazier
rock dust, I mean this is truly a one stop shop.
I mean, you can go ahead and buy all your separate compost tea components, mix it yourself,
or you could buy one that's already pre mixed like this.
Alright, so we've pretty much got about a cups worth of compost mix in the burlap sack.
We're goanna show you how to set all this stuff up but first, I want to introduce stitch.
Stitch is currently my foster dog and he is available for adoption.
He's a nice Chihuahua.
He doesn't do well with kids but he'd be great for older people or also he's probably alright
with dogs and cats as well.
Say hello, Stitch.
Anyways, back to the program.
So, you can see here we've got our 2 air pumps, our 2 airstones, and we've got 2 links of
hoses.
Now, one of the interesting things is these air pumps.
Because they are dual outlet, they can pump air out of these holes.
Now, we don't want air coming out of both holes.
We want all of the air coming out the pump to go into the airstone, to hopefully maximize
the amount of air bubbles being produced.
So we have to plug up one of the holes, and it didn't come with any kind of plugs, so
we're going to make one.
So, what we're going to do is cut off a section of the air hose, and we also have these little
plugs that you can put in your drip line, so we're just basically going to put the plug
for the drip line into the air tube hose, and then we're going to basically put this
into one of the outlets.
So, we're plugging that up so that all the air is now hopefully forced out into this
outlet of the air pump.
So, this is kind of like quick and dirty work you have to do sometimes.
Hen you don't have the right parts, you have to make do with whatever you got.
So, I think that'll work pretty good there.
Next thing we're goanna do is hook up the air hose.
So, we just have 2 hoses, and we're just goanna slide that in, and make sure it makes a solid
seal with no leaks.
I mean, this stuff is super simple, super easy.
There we go.
Next thing we're goanna do is hook up the airstone.
So, one end of the hose got hooked up to the pumped, the other end goes hooked up to the
airstone.
Once again, that's super simple, super easy.
Just hook it all up like that.
There's one, and here's two.
So, the next step is now, you're goanna plug these guys in.
I have an extension cord here with 2 outlets.
Always best to use a GCFI protected outlet, because you are dealing with water and electricity.
So, you don't want to put your pumps anywhere near water or get them wet, so I have a nice
long chord to go in there, so we're goanna go ahead and plug in these air pumps into
the outlet.
And they're both shaking; they're both coming on.
These air pumps have rubber feet, so it's a little bit more quiet, and this one looks
like it even has some sort of air filter.
Next thing is is you're goanna dump these in the water to make sure they bubble.
So, we're goanna go ahead and put that in, and you can see instantly as I put it in,
you can see the bubbles coming up to the top.
Now, you know, that's probably not as much flowing, not as much bubbling as I'd like
personally.
It'd be better if you got a more expensive, even a $5 airstone from a hydroponic shop.
It'd put out a lot more air and they have even more high-powered bubblers.
So, we got one bubbler all the way down to the bottom of the 5-gallon bucket.
That's already aerating the water.
The next bubble, instead of putting into the water, we're goanna actually put it in with
the compost.
We're goanna pull the drawstrings on this bag, and submerge this bag.
We're goanna get some of the air bubbles out of the bag by squeezing it a bit.
We're goanna tie the bag to the handle so it doesn't sink in too much.
We're just goanna let it float in there, and now our compost tea is brewing.
The main reason for the compost tea is not actually the nutrition, so not actually the
nutrients in the bag.
So, thinking like fertilizers, where we're goanna add in NPK or whatever.
No, no, compost tea for me is more about the microbes, bringing in the beneficial microbes,
beneficial fungus, and beneficial bacteria.
That's really the movers and shakers of your soil.
They keep your soil alive.
They bring in and help escort nutrients into your plant roots so your plants can be healthier.
They can fight diseases and other things, also, in the soil.
So, it's very important to have your soil teeming with microbes, and actually that's
a really good book that I would recommend if you haven't saw it or heard of it, Teeming
With Microbes.
It talks about a whole new way, or actually, the natural way of growing food by harnessing
the power of nature instead of harnessing the power of science, with chemicals, like
so many people are doing today.
Now, that I've got the compost tea brewing, we're going to let it brew.
Now, normally compost tea should be brewed for 12 hours to make sure you have nice microbial
activity, but they say since Boogie Brew is such an active compost and compost tea starter,
you can brew it for as little as 4 hours and still have good microbial activity to basically
enrich your garden with.
So after about 4 hours, we're going to stop this, and then we're going to basically use
the tea to water all the plants in our garden and to nucleate them with the beneficial microbes
and fungi, which are going to bring the soil alive.
So, another way besides pouring these on your plants, you can also sprayer feed your compost
teas.
Now, to do this I would definitely strain out any particulates in the water, put on
a pump sprayer, and just spray it on, because plants can also absorb things through their
leaves.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed this quick episode, learning how to make your own compost
tea at home.
It is really simple, with some parts from the dollar store, pumps and airstones, to
get your started, and a 5 gallon bucket and clean water and a good compost starter, such
as the Boogie Brew tea, which is a one-stop shop.
Hey, did I say that again?
My message overall is to brew your own compost tea whether it's the Boogie Brew or any other
brand out there or your own home-made compost tea using your own compost and worm castings
and other mixtures that are really going to enrich your compost tea and enrich your garden
with the best nutrition ever.
Once again, my name is John Kohler with growingyourgreens.com, and remember, keep on growing.