Yeiks! I was just looking around the GW to see about using dry molasses versus Unsulfered liquid and found this. I thought I would mention, that Kim posted that she is using egg shells, then adding vinegar to the egg shells. Vinegar should NOT be used as a plant food..it is used for weed killing and will kill your seedlings. As for liquid fertilizer, I usually use diluted fish emulsion for seedlings. (1/4th strength) In defense of Organic Guy, I make rabbit manure tea and have for years without ill effects. It is not as if, we are cleaning out the chicken coops, horse stalls, cow barns or rabbit hutches with our bare hands, then going in the house to make a sandwich and not wash up. The year my Aruacana hen, Daisy sat on the tomato cages I won Blue Ribbon for the heaviest tomatoes, 3lb each, and my weigh in total has not been broken at that fair for 5 years. Personally, I think there are more illnesses relating to improper home cannning method and improper hand washing than all of us who use manure tea. As far as getting sick, well I have had one prescription for antibiotics in the last decade. Went in 2 years ago for built up ear wax cleaning. My daughter, who is now 15 has had 3 or 4 ear infections her entire life, that's it and we are questioned if we have a check up to make sure someone didn't "miss" our prescription list, as we have none.

The link below will take you to an article written by Dr. Elaine Ingham who developed hte methods to make compost tea. If you get the dried fish fertilizer, not the liquid, you can mix Alfalfa meal and fish fertilizer, although I'm not sure why one would do that since that might provide too much Nitrogen to the plants. The latest information I've seen from OMRI is that Alaska Fish Fertilizer is still listed as approved. Here is a link that might be useful: making Compost Tea

You don't need to get very complicated. All you really need is the compost and a nutrient source. And an aerator (non-aerated compost tea is just a low dose fertilizer). I'm not sure I'd worry about the alfalfa meal. Alfalfa meal is often used to make a tea itself but it is NOT a compost tea and is typically not aerated nor does one typically add other nutrients. It is just used as a liquid soil drench to add nittrogen. Otherwise a basic recipe for aerated compost tea is as follows: To 1.5 pounds of compost you need to add approx 3 oz. of fish or kelp meal and 1 oz. molasses. The longer you brew the tea, the more nutrients you may need to add (fish/kelp & molasses) to maintain high populations of the microorganisms.

What I have seen happen, around here, with new developments is someone comes in and strips the "topsoil" to go to some other development and then after the houses are built they haul in more "topsoil" and spread a thin layer and either lay sod or seed that. Then people try to keep that lawn growing by pouring a lot of "fertilizer" on it which can make for a lush green, but sick lawn with numerous problems that then need pesticides to control. Short of tilling in what yuu have and starting over spreading compost is a good idea, mulch mow the grass to recycle in place those grass clippings which will help add more organic matter to the soil. If you have deciduous trees those leaves that fall from them every year can be mulch mowed in to provide evenmore organic matter. What organic matter will do in sandy soils is help keep moisture and nutrients in the root zone so the grass plants can be fed by the soil bacteia that digest that organic matter. In clay soils the OM seperates the soil particles so the plants roots can move about more freely and makes moisture and nutrients more readily available. Compost tea can provide some bacteria, and nutrients, tht would then feed on the organic matter in the soil. However, soils lacking sufficient levels of OM won't have much of anything for those bacteria to feed on so spraying the compost tea would be, largely, a waste of time, energy, and maybe money. Molasses can provide a food source for soil bacteria, if they are present because of adequate levels of organic matter. Spraying molasses onto soils lacking sufficient amounts of organic matter will not do much except waste your time, energy, and money.