hi, well i share your passion for growing stuff. Trees are my first love, i grow as many as i can from seed or seedlings and i love trying to plant rare and new varieties. I have run out of space now though .. it’s very rewarding and so i guess i am a garden geek now. There must be loads of people want to but you just need the space. This seems to be a fair forum for us such minded folks ! I too was on AOL way back in the day, it was a shame their chat rooms ended as they were useful and interesting to chat on. I don’t and won’t ever use facebook . I suppose i am now old fashioned but i think facebook is a spying tool that you all should avoid. Just my opinion. :) keep on planting ! ps anybody want some trees ? i have a greenhouse full of baby conifers and many are very rare varieties i can share , i am struggling to find them their spots . Any other tree enthusiasts out there.? Love to chat on trees ...Ivor

Sugars such as molasses grow bacteria. There is always sufficient bacteria in compost if the compost was kept aerobic. The compost if properly made will have more than sufficient bacteria and if the compost contained a high percentage of woody material such as wood pellets or chips for horse bedding it will also have sufficent fungi, again assuming it was kept aerobic. If you want to brew tea and you do it aerobic it will smell good and be good. Don't put any bacteria food such as molasses in the compost tea since the bacteria can grow so fast the aeration cannot keep up with the growth and it can still go anaerobic. The trick is to grow fungi. Daylilies prefer a soil that has three times as much fungi as bacteria so you need a compost that is primarily woody material with about 30-40 % manure. The wood grows fungi. You need fungal foods such as rolled oats, cornmeal, feathers. Then you can get the fungi to attach to the fungal foods and you are on your way to excellent aerobic compost tea. Good compost is better than compost tea, but more expensive and more difficult to spread so that is why compost tea is used. It takes about 1 cup of compost to make 4-5 gallons of compost tea.

nannc, there is a light yellow bar across the bottom, you type there. Right now, there is just me, myself and I, and it is BORING! :) Moni

htb