The compost tea brewer is a custom designed machine by Living Soil Network. Assembled on site, it aerates the compost tea mixture over a period of time. The plywood box is sound insulation.
The device is a cylindrical plastic bucket tapering to a cone bottom. An air pump (like in an aquarium) is placed in the bottom of the cone, the bucket is filled with water, and the biologically complete compost is added while aerating with the pump. The compost is massaged by hand while also aerated in the water, creating an oxygen burst. Beneficial microbes are aerobic, which use the oxygen for a growth spurt and repopulation/ multiplication.
A 2.5 gallon bucket of compost, once aerated into compost tea, can be used as a foliar spray for a quarter acre of vegetable crop. The microbes create a film of living protection over the plant, and the insects flying past do not recognize the plant as food. They also feed the plant via nutrient cycling, microbes eating microbes and then pooping out nutrients.
Typically, a soil drench is compost, massaged into water, without the bubbling, but with the wheat and other farm processes we did a light compost tea.
Compost tea is typically bubbled for a period of time—hours to days–and while this is ongoing the operator is watching the life cycle of the microbes using samples and a microscope to determine the optimum time to stop the process and apply the tea. The objective is to maintain the optimum level of aerobic microbes.
