Yes, you can use store-bought compost. Just be sure to get the best quality you can find. Exerpt from the FAQ on Compost Tea: The following factors will determine the quality of the finished tea: Use well-aged, finished compost - Fresh compost can burn the plants or contain harmful pathogens and that which is too old is nutritionally deficient. The contents of the compost - It should be balanced and of good quality if using purchased compost. That which contains some portion of aged animal manure apparently remains active longer than that composed only of plant matter but it isn't required. You will find several discussions on the aeration of tea on the Organic Forum (I don't aerate mine except by frequent stirring so I can't help you with specifics there) but from what I have read, for a 5 gallon pail you only need a very small pump. The goal is to get it to bubble up to the surface to collect O2, not to create any sort of fountain or spray. A search using "compost tea" will pull up 100's of threads for you to read with lots of info. Good luck. ;) Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Tea Basics

I started making and using compost tea about two months ago after a wonderful Texas lady named Janet told me about it. She has a lot more space than I do and brews without aeration and has a bucke for each row of her garden. I have only two buckets worth of space so I did more research. Searching on Compost Tea will give you many links and everyone of them are different. I stuck with the ones not trying to sell me anything. My compost tea made my plants grow faster, transplant better, and now I hope also to produce better! I do not have a compost pile ready to use so I buy a bag of compost instead. I put a small coffee can of compost into cheese cloth and tie or rubberband it together to make a tea bag. I fill a five gallon bucket with water (not all the way to the top or it will spill over) then I drop a fish pond pump with a one inch hose connected to it in the bottom and let it bubble for 24 hours. This is supposed to help remove chlorine and other chemicals from the tap water-same principal you use to refill an aquarium! At the end of the 24 hours I dump my compost tea bag into the water, add about 1/4 cup of molasses ( all I can find here is liquid at grocery store, make sure it is unsulphered) If you have dry molasses ad a handful or so. Let it bubble for another 24 hours. Find something to drain the tea bag with, I use a flat from Lowes that plants came in sitting across the top of the bucket and I let it drip as much as it will. When done, I turn off the pump and use one of those battery operated sprayers made to replace the caps on things like bug spray, and I spray away until it is gone. Note I did have to tie cloth around the sprayer end that sits in the water because it gets clogged even when using the teabag. You can add other things as your plants need before spraying such as fish emulsion, kelp, seaweed, corn meal (whatever your plant needs)or add them at the beginning of the brew, you can even add miricle grow. I spray both the foliage and water the soil with it. The addition of molasses seems to have chased off a nasty colony of huge black ants I had building a city in my back yard and making my weeping willow into a nursery! Oh and after you untie your compost tea bag, use whats in there to mulch with or throw it in your compost pile. There is also a company that makes reuseable mesh bags for this that I think were about $5 each. I may buy some later but for now with drought and no work, I will stick with an old tshirt or cheesecloth! If you would like to see how my garden grows here in Villa Rica GA, it is out of control, and I have never had this kind of growth in any kind of garden, check out my myspace page...look for pics, albumns, garden albumn and then the tomato plants, you can also see my friends garden and we started seed at the same time and put plants into the garden at same time. His are disturbingly samll and need some attention while mine are overgrown and lush and beautiful! I definitely recomend compost tea! http://www.myspace.com/kelleyville Here is a link that might be useful: Kelleyvilles's myspace page for garden pics!

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.

I believe I am the one who stated "compost tea." ... but I do not have a "WF." Rather, I have several barrels that are watered by gutter rain and fed with kitchen and garden scraps, as well as chicken poo. At the bottom of the barrel there are several spouts that feed into holding containers. The water that drains through to the holding tank is what I refer to as "compost tea." I use this directly on plants without diluting, and have had only marvelous results. As for the smaller tubs of concentrated redwigglers -- I use the large Wal-Mart totes that held items sent to the thrift store. Stacking two, three, four, or more depending on the amount of worms and accumulated castings. On the very bottom is a solid tote with holes in the lid which holds anything that drains through the top bins. I equipped the bottom bin with old spouts from large detergent containers to dispense the liquid as needed. This liquid...I have no name for it. It is sometimes there, sometimes not, and sometimes I drain water all of the way through to have a bit of concentrated liquid. The concentrated liquid I use on my open-air compost piles or throw in the Compost Tumbler to heat up the compost. But if you have an indoor worm bin, which I believe a "WF" is...I wouldn't want water on the bottom. When my indoor worms (meals and supers) get too wet I think I am seeing spots...then I realize fruit flies are multiplying like crazy. Then it's off to the big-box for some apple cider vinegar and some Damp-Rid. :)