Wow! Alot of questions. I think you can experiment on a piece of your lawn. Unless, others here say otherwise.

tey

good questions, can't wait for answers...been waitn all day! lol

I've never made compost tea, but I do know that it's not a fertilizer, so the proper times to fertilize don't mean that those are the proper times to apply compost tea. I think you can apply compost tea almost any time.

I don't know the answer on the cold compost, but I think you'd be ok to use it.

I don't think you need compost tea at all. What type of grass do you have? If it's a cool-season blend (fescue, bluegrass) and is in weak condition, I would fertilize it soon with an organic fertilizer, AND sprinkle on up to a half inch of screened compost. Then wish it luck and wait until September to feed it again. Mow high during the summer to improve drought and weed resistance.

If it's a warm-season grass (bermuda, zoysia), so the same drill as soon as it starts greening up, and feed it again in midsummer.

Yes, do some casual aeration. Before you fertilize and amend, go through the area poking holes 2-4 inches deep with a digging fork or something similar. That way, bits of organic matter and fertilizer will get down where you need it to be.

Cold compost is often great compost. Believe in it, and forget about tea. Nature never makes compost tea.

Here is a link that might be useful: my website

Compost feeds the microherd. Either topdress or mix in it.

If you help the microherd, you help the soil, and whatever is growing in it. Increasing your microherd will help the plants hardiness, ability to weather more extremes, and ability to take in available"food" that without the microherd would not be available. A healthy aerobic"tea" will help increase the herd, but still feeding the herd with a higher N and a simple sugar such as molasses or honey (in small amounts) will benefit your soils health even more.

Compost tea can, for a short time, be of some benefit if a soil is devoid of sufficient organic matter but it is not s substitute for putting enough organic matter into the soil. The microherd in your soil needs a lot of organic matter to live on and that compost tea, or manure tea, will not provide enough, long term, to be of any benefit. A high nitrogen fertilizer, the most common type sold for application in the spring, will push your grass to grow even more than it normally does (grass does not need any "fertilzier" in the spring to grow) which could create problems during the normallyhot, dry days of summer, but that too can be normal since most all grasses have evolved over eons to go dormant (some people think the grass died) during those hot, dry summer days when there is little water to support growth until the fall rains start and the grasses resume growth. It really has only been since the end of WWII, the 1950's, that people have tried to keep lanws green all summer.

think of aerated compost tea like an inoculation of good microbes to boost the micro herd in your soil. If your soil has been abused, then compost tea might be a way to help repair the damage. Of course, you still need to apply the actual compost or other organic matter so that the microbes will have something to eat. The tea is just a delivery method of spreading the microbes themselves along with some trace and micro nutrients.

Simply spreading the compost will do the same things as using compost tea and spreading compost, just maybe a little slower. Using compost tea alone will likely not have much long term effect.

When to use compost, when it is available.

Cold compost is fine so long as you weren't putting lots of so called "compost no-nos" like meat and carnivore poo, in it.

Here is a link that might be useful: My garden