Compost teas can supply soils with the necessary bacteria and fungi that may be lacking if the soil does not contain adequate levels of organic matter. Spraying a soil with a compost tea and not adding adequate amounts of organic matter to feed these bacteria and fungi means they will shortly stop working, no food, and be of no benefit to the soil or the plants growing there.
Adding adequate amounts of organic matter provides the Soil Food Web with a food source that will get them up and active. There would be no reason to spray compost tea onto a soil with adequate levels of organic matter which has a good, active Soil Food Web.

Kimmsr, you think all compost teas are a waste of time? I could just buy that bag of dr earth acid soil for 13.99 and not make it into a tea. I would just add the soil to my soil, which has a lot of organic matter. I may get some new bacteria and fungi I did not have before. I hope they would be good or would they just perish because the native ones would kill them or they would not like my climate?

I agree with tropical thought. And I understand what kimmsr is saying.

Kimmsr, your coming from a place of perfect soil. Not everyone has what you have. If you noticed I said I was going to "supplement" my original program with the tea. And how could something so nutrient rich be bad? Not everyone uses strictly OM in their grow regiments because if I did, all the ingredients in this "tea" would be ALOT of OM to keep on hand and IMHO be hard to accumulate. Some people, myself included, use a mix of layered OM combined with a tea for convenience. Yes we all know that nutrients are in the ground when you add OM. But my soil is CHERNOBYL and I have only begun this year to use an organic approach. Also, how could a tea hurt? I dont think it can. Regardless of how much OM you have in your soil, you dont always have EXACTLY every nutrient you need. If you do, great, because I dont and I have found that supplementing my OM "layered" regiment with a good tea provides great results and I know exactly what NPK I am delivering to my plants. As I have said before, I respect your wisdom but for some reason I dont know why you dont like teas? Or other supplements?

But back to the point, how can you argue against the ingredients in this product? For people like me who dont have the greatest organic soil, how can this be bad?

Oh BTW I was thinking about using only the "bloom" version of the tea to supplement flowering/fruiting. All of my "grow" or vegetative cycle will be organic matter and manures/dry fertilizer/compost.

I do not have perfect soil, I need to work at making the soil I have into a good, healthy soil just like everyone else does.
However, I do not believe most of the advertising hype about many of the magic elixars people try to get us to buy, try to seperate us from our money. I always look with a great deal of skepticism when someone tries to tell me "this product will do X" for you and what they are telling me sounds too good to be true.

I have wasted lots of money on gardening in the past, so I try to be economically. Often it is a rip off to buy expensive soil blends in small bags instead of larger amounts of sheared wood to mix with my soil. Dr. Earth is like that, expensive in small bags, but if buy just one, no problem. If I buy 25 bags it would be too pricey. I wish they had more information on the fungi and bacteria. Lots of people buy some expensive stuff but then over all they lapse on gardening because it is too much work. In other words they quit, but I know I won't quit. The weeds get them down and the pests are too numerous and difficult. Plants die or do badly.

I agree. I dont give into all the "hocus pocus" either but I have a certain fondness for mychorrizae and organic teas. Especially considering Im BROKE and dont have the patience for hunting down all the OM itself. The pre-made tea seems like a convenient way to add organic nutrients in a pinch. Id rather not have fifty bags of different kinds of poop or fish meal and humus laying around. I have enough cow and chicken manure bagged to the ceiling as is. Not to mention a few different bottles of stinky stuff and a slow growing pile of sweet sweet compost.

Im using all this stuff now because my soil has not seen anything organic in almost 7 years but if things go well, and my soil finally becomes "perfect", I wont need to add anything else. It will be self generating. All I would need to do is throw my kitchen waste out my window and watch it dissolve into my black soil ;-) hehehe

Some people use fungi to create colors and patterns in wood.
But, it is more complex then you think. If you introduce one fungi, it works against another.

Here is a link that might be useful: Spalting

If you want the trees to be healthy, noticed the spalting weakness the wood. So, it would be awful if one buys some fungus only to find it weakens the roots.

Here is a link that might be useful: do more research

We did a couple of trials (my soil company) with Michigan State University.

The compost teas tried (multiple) provided very little nutrients for growing. Also they didn't provide squat unless the entire solution was applied (don't strain the tea before applying).

Lastly, I have seen multiple commercial hort growers experimentations with tea and it didn't provide any kind of noticeable improvements either (zero statistical differences also).

What does work - depending on the soil it is applied to - are the microbe ammendements (like mycorrhizae and actinomycetes). However the results are much better when they are added to a soil which has an available carbon supply (soil must contain organic matter).

We recommend Bloodmeal (source of nitrogen) when combining with nutrient rich materials like dairy manure (possesses a lot of Ca, P, K, Mg, etc.).

The only benefits we saw with tea was that it was good excercise :)

Although - other things like grape growing - or maybe using as an organic fungicide to prevent mold on the leaves seemed to bear results for tea application.

Also, Daniels 3-1-1 (balanced feed of organic nutrients).

Or even something like a 8-3-4 made by Sustain (derived from Turkey Manure/Bedding).

From fine gardening... It doesn't sound like the benefits out weigh the time it takes to brew it up. Please note it has 2 pages.

http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/jury-still-out-on-compost-tea.aspx

Mojo what teas did you test if you dont mind me asking? And is it possible to share the results? I was wondering how a well established company like Advanced Nutrients could advertise a certain nutrient and NPK content on a product that has been around for quite some time now without any complaints or re vamping of the product details. I am always looking for a good list of teas and its benefits (or according to your post, NON benefits)

I can probably give you at least 5 different positive reviews of this exact product from people I know and another 5 or more from people that I talk to online that use this product in their line up and have been for at least 3 years. They love it and from what I can see, so does the crop.

The tea I was referring to in the original post is pre-brewed and has a ton of great nutrients (If anyone bothered looking) and was going to be used as a supplement(bloom) to an already compost/organic diet.

From the research Ive seen with my own eyes, when done properly, brewed teas can offer plenty of good benefits. When done at home you better start with good ingredients and use proper methods or just forget it. Might as well just use the solid ingredients and forget the brew. But Mojo is right, the brew has alot of nice little critters in it. Organic Teas are just liquid organic fertilizers minus the OM (compared to their organic granule/compost counterpart) such as miracle grow synthetic liquid is liquid form synthetic granule. Same principal but different genres or whatever.

Sometimes I think people read the topic and a couple of lines of a thread and then assume the rest while typing a response:)

I noticed you mentioned being broke & the tea being economical. Wouldn't it be much cheaper to buy compost ( if you don't have homemade) and make your own tea? I've been growing hydro awhile and even economically priced nutes are not cheap. I'm using advanced nutrients jungle juice which is the cheapest I can find $30 gal. It out grows some of the highest priced stuff out there. I'm with Kimmsr on this one. 99% of that stuff is just snake oil! Overpriced crap that the grow store or ads make you think you need. If you want something to really boost your plants in bloom try organic molasses. It will blow any of the store bought stuff out of the water.

Apparently some people did not quite grasp what I said earlier. If your soil does not have adequate levels of organic matter spraying compost or manure teas will add, for a short time, needed components of the Soil Food Web whinch will then either go dormant or die because there is not sufficient levels of organic matter to feed them so they can continue the work they are supposed to do.
Spraying compost, or manure, teas may be a short term solution to a problem. Spraying may help someone just starting to get adequate levels of organic matter in their soil by providing some of that Soil Food Web that takes some time to develop. But it is short term.
Perhaps this link will be of some help to some.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Soil Food Web Primer

Is what I posted at the top of this thread snake oil?? Why do people keep bringing that up? This has nothing to do with my OG post. How can you look at all the ingredients in my top post and say that is not good. Tea or not, I dont care! Ill take it in granule form, doesnt matter. Go back and read my OG post and actually take the time to look at the ingredients and tell me that is snake oil. Post a link of something you consider "snake oil". I really want to see because this aint it. Please post something that is SNAKE OIL. Seriously.

And Im not talking about "compost tea"! Does compost have sea bird guano in it? How about bat guano? Fulvic acid? Humic acid? Fish emulsion? Alfalfa meal? Seaweed extract? Thats why I wouldnt buy compost and make tea. Number one because I make my own compost and number two because none of the ingredients I want (as a SUPPLEMENT) are in my compost. And Im not knocking compost so dont start with that. I can guarantee you that I will get better results using this tea as a supplement than by just using compost alone. Is that so hard to grasp? Enough with this snake oil crap.

Actually, blazaglory, compost *does* contain humic and fulvic acids.

Also, guano is just another word for manure, and you seem to indicate that you already have access to that. Thile it's true that manures from different animals have different proportions of nutrients, they certainly do have a lot in common, and for myself, when I'm given the choice of "my dream manure" and "the manure that's pretty good, and which I can get easily and for free," I go for easy & free every time.

Compost does not have those things, but it has stuff you can't buy. This is only if you make your own. It has apple cores etc.. all kind of other fruits and vegetables from your kitchen. The soil needs fiber which you can't get from tea, but this thread is not even about tea. Kitchen scraps are free. If you want to improve drainage and save water, you want real compost. More people should do it, but the get stuck or discouraged by all the conflicting information and things like bugs and maggots or the work involved. Buying something is just not a good as making it yourself, but I guess it's better then nothing. I don't even know anyone who does composting. Many people get a bin and start and then quit when it's not a magic machine like the companies try to pretend it is.

Another topic that has so many variables that there is no one correct statement that can be made.

I'm wondering whether you are pushing these products for some ulterior motive. I'm not calling those amendments snake oil, in fact I haven't looked at the links. I've just come to the opinion over 60+ years of gardening that expensive fertilizers and amendments are usually overpriced for what they are and there are usually less expensive ways to obtain the same results.

Anyhow, here's my 2 cents, which is more than anyone is paying me for it!

I don't get all hung up on whether my soil has every nutrient imaginable. IMO if one adds organic matter regularly, uses a good quality mulch, and perhaps uses an appropriate fertilizer/amendment for certain plants that may need that, the soil will be healthy and the plants will do well.

I've found making teas and applying them a lot of work. I used to have up to ten 5-10 gallon buckets of alfalfa tea brewing at any given time and constantly applied it to my large garden as well as the lawn. Way too much work for me altho I did it for years. I now make one bucket and apply small amounts to various plants that may need more nutrients because they are heavy feeders. I mostly depend on the worms to fertilize my soil which requires me to *only* provide a healthy environment for the worms. As another poster mentioned organic molasses is a good amendment which is probably under-utilized.

Every gardener has to find what works best for them but I know that expensive and/or extremely labor intensive methods are not self-sustaining. Gardening is a lot of work and it's worthwhile to find the easiest and cheapest methods or you'll soon give up.

Best of luck to you blazeaglory with whatever you decide to do.

I certainly wasn't saying your stuff was not good. As I mentioned I use advanced nutrients JJ. They make IMHO the best nutes on the market. I'll admit I didn't read the ingredients and that's why I didn't say it was bad. When I referred to them being snake oil I was meaning that what you get for your $ & what they claim this stuff does is not going to compare to the results you could get from your own compost and a bit of attention to your specific plant needs. I've always been a tight @$$ so free is at the top of my list. You should see the envy on my friends faces when my dirt cheap to free method out grow their $300 nutrient regiment that takes a degree in chem. to use properly. Hahaha its priceless.