Are you talking about straight manure or compost with manure added to it (aka manured compost)? Or plain compost which is any organic materials without manure added? Straight manure is great IF it has been age/stockpiled for 60-90 days first. Fresh manure from any animal isn't recommended for the food garden. If you are going to apply fresh then the recommendation is that it be applied 90-120 days prior to planting. Manured compost - a mix of all sorts of organic materials such as hay, straw, bedding, table scraps, etc. plus some manure is also great stuff IF the manure isn't fresh. And plain compost - quality depends on what all was added to make it - is also beneficial but not as high in nutrients. Does wonders for the soil tilth but it takes time for it to supply nutrients to the plants. Keep in mind that all compost requires time for an active soil bacteria herd to develop. The micro-herd is required in order to convert the compost to useable nutrients for the plants. So the first year you will have to supplement the nutrients with other organic or non-organic nutrients. You'll find many more discussions about this all over on the Soil & Compost forum here so be sure to check it out. Do I just mix it with some topsoil? I'm trying to do it organically. Well you mix it in with soil. Ratios vary from 1/3 to 1/2 compost and the rest soil. Whether or not you use topsoil all depends on its quality. Lots of things are call 'topsoil' and some of them do NOT belong in a garden so get the best quality dirt you can afford. Good luck with your new garden. Dave Here is a link that might be useful: Soil & Compost forum

After initially answering the question about what type of water is best for aerated tea I found myself going into greater detail than what your question asked. So, I decided to simply go ahead and describe the entire process just in case there are some people who are interested in a more indepth explanation. First, the best water is pond water, where there are fish living in it is the best. Ponds with fish have all kinds of material that microbes really like. There will be a significant increase in the quality of your tea if you can use pond water. However, you can make great tea using tap water where the chlorine or chloramine has been eliminated. Be sure to check with your local water district to determine if your water is treated with chlorine or chloramine. If your water is treated with chlorine all you have to do is put the airstones in your bucket of water and turn it on for about half an hour, and that will take care of the chlorine. Chloramine, on the other hand, is a totally different situation. Chloramine is far more toxic and it will not outgas like chlorine. You have to go to a pet store and buy the drops that are used in aquariums that break the chloramine bond. Be sure to use twice as much as the directions say to use. The stuff is very inexpensive so don't worry about the cost. I think I use 4ml for 5 gal of water. For some reason I thought my city used chlorine and so I was aerating the water before using it. I made two batches of tea for myself and one for a neighbor before I called the city to verify the situation. When the water guy said chloramine I said, to myself, CRAP. I just wasted three batches. And since I use worm castings it was an expensive lesson. I don't know why I assumed the city used chlorine. But it was really dumb not to call first. Also, do not use pantyhose or a pillow case if you put your compost in a bag. The openings are too small to allow fungi to pass through. Fungi are simply too big. And when you consider the fact that there will be a certain amount of sediment that will build up inside your bag the holes are made even smaller to the point that even bacteria might have difficulty passing through. Use a paint strainer bag. And be sure to put an airstone inside the bag holding the compost as well. The bubbles inside the bag really help the bacteria to release from the organic material and push it into the water where they can really begin to multiply. I use a 70gph aquarium pumt that has two hose plugs. I have found that this allows me to attach the hoses to a three hose gangline. A gangline is much better than using a manafold to split one of the lines for two airstones. What I found is that air takes the avenue of least resistnence which means that if one of the airstones is not as poorous as the other then little air will be pushed through that stone. However, if you have a separate air hose for each airstone then air seems to be more evenly distributed resulting in all the airstones being very usefull. Many people do not use a bag to hold the compost. They simply put compost in the bucket, then fill the bucket with water and begin to aerate the tea that way. The problem with this method is that 99% of the compost settles at the bottom of the bucket which prevents effecient oxygenizatin (I think that is how you spell that). Unless you intend to stand there and stir the sediment for 32 hours, use a bag. After putting an airstone in the bag, tie it closed with a piece of twine and then tie the other end to a wood dowel or some other thing that will keep the bag suspended off the bottom of the bucket. With a bag, all I have to do is squeeze the bag every couple of hours just to make sure the bacteria in the compost is getting well aerated. I fill my bag with about 5 cups of worm castings. You can use any good quality compost, just be sure the mateial is FULLY composted. When you place the bag of compost into the water add 1oz of unsulphered molasses. This is the energy source the microbes will need to sruvive. Take a stick or a long spoon and stir the water so the molasses does not simply make a blob at the bottom of the bucket. Turn on the air pump and walk away. At no time should the water stink. It should smell earthy, or even slightly sweet. This is an indication that you are making a good aerobic tea. If for some reason your tea has an amonia smell, or it stinks at all I would suggest tossing it out and starting over. If for some reason the power is interrupted for a couple of hours, I would toss the whole thing out and start over. If you get a lot of foam on the top, use a couple of drops of vegetable oil. DO NOT use olive oil. Olive oil,like honey, has antimicrobial properties which will kill your tea. Also, do not use honey in place of molasses. After about 8 to 10 hours take the bag of compost out of the water and put the airstone that was in the bag into the bucket with the other two airstones. You can either put this compost in the garden or back into the compost bin. After taking the bag out of the bucket let the tea brew for between 24 to 32 hours. The tea will hit its max benefit, for a 5 gal bucket, at about this time. If you are going to brew the tea for longer than this you will need to add a tablespoon or so of molasses. Remember bacteria reproduce very fast, like every five minutes. During this process the number of bacteria will be increasing exponentially. All these bacteria need something to eat or they will die. One comment about the amount of air. Some people have gone to extremes and push so much air through their bucket that the water looks like the water you see in a juccuzzi. This is way too much force. Fungi are actually very large structures and you will totally destroy them if you push the air throught the water with too much force. A 70 gph aquarium pumt I bought for $15 at Petco is all you need for a 5 gal bucket. If you are going to use a 55 gal barrel then you would need to increse the size of the motor on the pump, but not for a 5 gal bucket of tea. The water should look like ther is a gentle rolling boil. Not like it is splashing out of the bucket. If you want to add fish emulsion or seaweed, add these at the end, a few minutes before you take out the airstones. Fish hydorolisate is really good stuff that fungi really like. Seaweed is another excellent product. If your tomato plants have problems with spider mites use seaweed every day until they are gone. Seaweed is fabulous for treating spider mites. If you intend to watering the garden with the tea try and apply it to soil that is moist; water penetrates moist soil much faster than it does dry soil. This will help the microbes penetrate into the soil faster which will result in less UV destruction. This also applies if you are doing a foliar application. The less UV the better. That means before 8:30 or so and after 5pm. It is the same idea why we should not till our garden. Tilling exposes the microbial matter, bacteria and fungi, to the sun where they oxydize and die, but that is a whole other discussion. Finally, be sure to apply your tea within two to three ours (no more than four hours) from the time you take the airstones out. Immediately if you can. Do not let it sit around for longer. Application: I just use a 2gal bucket that has a nozzle. I use the nozzel when I intend to foliar feed and I take it off when I simply want to ground water the plants. When you intend to foliar feed it is always best to try to get the tea on the bottom of the leaves too and a pump up sprayer works great. If you use a sprayer do not use a really fine mist. Be sure to use the setting that gives you the biggest dropletts. There are two primary reasons for this. First, you want the tea to stay on the leaves as long as possible. If you spray a really fine mist there will be a significant amount of evaporation before the plant has time to take in the tea. If you apply the tea using the largest dropletts you will greatly increast the time the tea stays on the leaves which will allow more time for the plant to take in the tea. Second, as I stated earlier, fungi are much larger than bacteria. If you try to use a setting that produces too fine a mist you will simply turn the fungi into mush, killing the fungi. Using large dropletts allows the fungi to be applies without killing them. This is a good thing. Clean your bucket, hoses, and aristones after each batch with clean water and a little hydrogen paroxyde. Do not use Clorox bleach. Clorox has added an ingredient that is designed to keep the bleach on stuff longer. This addative makes it difficult to fully remove the bleach film. Obviously, bleach is not something you want in your bucket or on your airstones the next time you go to make a batch of tea. I know I went way beyond just what kind of water is best, but I figured there might be people who are interested in the whole process. Sorry if I turned a simple question into a novel. The short version: one 5 gal bucket - lid is optional. unchlorinated water an aquarium pump (minimum 60gph) and three aristones. My airpump came with hoses. a three-line gangline paint filter bags (package of two cost .95 at DoIt Center) unsulphered molasses. I bought 1gal at Smart and Final for $16. a little twine Extras: fish emulsion or fish hydrolisate, seaweed. Total cost, not including fish emulsion or seaweed = $48.00. Bucket, pump, airstones, gangline, paint filter bags and chloramine drops.If my city used chlorine I could drop $12 off the price tag. If I used a splitter in stead of a gangline I could drop anothe $9. Tom

Anaerobic composting is considered "bad" composting as in "not desirable and needs to be corrected". The fact that plastic encourages it is why plastic is not recommended. A pile that goes anaerobic is very foul smelling and encourages the growth of many types of harmful bacteria. Exposure to the weather is one of the main stimulants for the composting process so while you wouldn't want it to be flooded of course, you also don't want it totally protected from normal weather patterns. If you are simply wanting to lay a tarp over it to keep off snow for example, you could as the sides are open to air but you will risk the pile getting too dry too. Since you and I share the same winter weather patterns, I can only say that I have never found covering my piles in winter to be of any benefit and when we do get a good snow fall the weight of the snow just seals any cover down over the pile. Before you know it, it has gone sour. On the other hand, straw or old hay layers work well to keep the pile semi-protected yet still aerated and the straw just adds to the amount of finished compost. JMO Mowed grass clippings and leaves would be considered a combo green/brown (carbon/nitrogen) but would be more green than brown because the tannin in the leaves makes the carbon in them less available initially. Dave

I don't know about free compost... Mushroom compost can be had cheap, but is high in salts... What you can get free, and delivered, are tree chippings from local tree trimmers. Just try to avoid a load with a lot of palm leaves or the like as they don't break down. Friends with a very large lot had mountains of chippings delivered which they spread around the yard as mulch (Do not dig them into the soil!). After 3 years the chippings had decomposed enough that they could plant directly in them and the soil below was full of worms... Chad