How to Grow Amazing Plants with Compost Tea - Masterclass with Dr. Elaine Ingham (Part 1 of 5)

any um introductory geomorphology textbook agronomy textbook and you can find the table in the first couple of pages that shows you the actual mineral concentration in any soil on this planet there is no soil lacking the nutrients to grow your plants what we've done is killed the biology that makes them in the nutrients the enzymes at the direction of your plant to pull those nutrients out of your sands your shields your clothes your rocks your pebbles how many of you lack sand silt clay rocks or pebbles in your soil so why are you putting on organic fertilizers inorganic lime out there it's they're they're doing everything necessary to kill the biology in your soil all of those inorganic fertilizers anything high in insult anything high in any of our npk is going to kill the very biology that you require to do this work for you if you kill them then you're going to have to do their work and how easy is that how expensive is it for you to have to be doing their work so get them back to back into the

soil get them working for you now you do need to realize that of course the bacterium fungi are making the enzymes to pull those nutrients out of the crystalline structure of your rocks your sands your shields your clays your rocks your pebbles and so they get to keep those nutrients but where these guys are living is right up here next to that root system we have a massive number of bacterium fungi we've got um somewhere around a thousand billion bacteria per teaspoon of the soil around your root systems we've got a couple miles of fungal hyphae around the soil around your root system so of course they're going to attract into that root system their predators so the protozoa that eat bacteria the bacterial feeding nematodes the fungal feeding nematodes what do fungal feeding nematodes eat yep fungi kind of yeah it's pretty simple you know so yeah i always love it when you know somebody says i don't know okay let me repeat fungal feeding and all of you got it so um and then of course fungal feeding microarthropods anytime any one of these eat one of those nutrients are going to be released in a plant available form because the concentration of nutrients in your bacteria or your fungi are massively higher than the concentration that the predators require so there's always excess nitrogen phosphorus sulfur magnesium calcium potassium sodium zinc iron cobalt you name it whatever mineral nutrient you want to talk about is being released when any one of these eat any one of those and it's in the proper balance for your root system to take up so those soluble inorganic mineral nutrients that your plant needs to take up are going to be handed to it right at the surface of the root system it's kind of like your plant calls the pizza delivery guy up so on the phone you know and so it's going to tell the pizza delivery guy to please make boron pizza for me and so the bacteria go out there they make the boron pizza the fungi go out there do their job and then of course you got to have the delivery guy that actually brings the nutrients uh the pizza to the door and those are predators and so you know when the nutrient is delivered the plant says thank you very much now what i need next is so here's the immediate the instantaneous response system that your plants require so do you have adequate biology do you have enough of the different species of bacteria do you have enough biomass do you have enough of the different species of fungi their biomass do you have the protozoa the nematodes the microarthropods and that's really what today's talk is about is making is giving you some information about how to get these organisms back into your soil if you're lacking them so we've got to make good compost

first of all if we really want to start getting these organisms back into the soil if you've inherited something that somebody else has destroyed okay it happened we need now to fix it we need to get this biology back into the soil so let's make compost because you can take almost all of your waste materials on farm from your kitchen from your neighborhood and you can convert those waste products into something worth its weight in platinum put it on your own property put these organisms back into the soil if you find spreading a solid compound

solid material hard to do it's can be you know you and your shovel doing this all over your property it can be time consuming can be fairly expensive so perhaps an easier way of dealing with getting this biology back out into the soil is to turn it into a liquid form so in our compost we want to make certain that we're taking high nitrogen containing materials which is the party food to get the temperatures going in your compost pile we want green plant materials because the bacteria need to eat something if you don't feed your bacteria they're not going to be growing and so if you're not putting greens into your compost pile you're missing a whole community of really important microorganisms we need the bacteria but not too much not too little here's the goldilocks principle holds throughout nature you need enough but not too much so what's the proper balance for the plant i want to grow so i'll try to briefly go through that too just in case you haven't heard that message but we've got to get bacteria in there we have to get fungi so what are the fungal foods that's the woody material wide sedan ratio wood chips sawdust stalks of any of our plant materials brown leaves that fall from the plant at the end of the growing season so wide seed and racial materials those are fungal fruits green plant materials seed in ratio is about 30 carbons for every one nitrogen party food you always have to have party food to get a party going right so the party foods are very narrow c to n ratio ten to one so manures and legumes and seed material the germ of seeds very narrow c to n ratio so we've got to make sure we put all the foods that we want what if my soil is lacking fungi well then i'm going to make a pile that has more fungal foods in it than bacterial what if my soil is lacking bacteria well then we're going to reverse it we're going to put more bacterial foods in than fungal so what's the proper percentage of green and woody in your pile it depends on what you're lacking in your soil what's the biology you need to put back see where you better be out there looking at your soil and um figuring out what's lacking so getting organisms back into the soil we're going to grow our bacteria with the bacterial foods green stuff seed in ratio thirty to one fungal foods wider seed end ratios and i can go into about a two hour talk about why bacteria use those narrow seat in ratio materials of fungi use the wider but i don't have time this morning so getting that biology going in your compost pile you have to have the party food because anytime we're taking plant material from out there where there's probably diseases there's probably insect pests you've got eggs of some nasty critters on that organic matter you probably have some pesticides that have to be broken down you've got maybe some antibiotics especially if you're getting cow manure or horse manure or chicken manure and they're being fed pelletized chicken chow or cow chow or something like that that's coming with a boatload of nasty stuff in there and so we've got to make certain that we get these organisms growing in our compost and we must get temperatures if we're doing a thermal compost we have to get temperatures high enough to kill all the bad guys high enough long enough and so there's a whole if you will almost like a ritual of here's my pile of compost hot in the middle it's the party foods that are getting the bacterium fungi to grow and it's their reproduction that causes the temperature in your compost pile no growth of the microorganisms no temperature you're not going to be killing the pathogens and the bad guys so the middle of your pile now think about yourself if you go into a nice closed room and you have some fun with reproductive activities is there a little heat involved yes we're raising the temperature same thing in the compost pile see bacteria and fungi they're just like people so treat them like people really small people so middle of that pile they're having a grand old time so it's gotta be high enough temperature long enough so take the compost online course go through all of this that means you're gonna then at the end of that time and is that one day two days three days so you're gonna turn it so that inside material is to end up on top what was on the sides is now in the middle and now you got to wait and let the organisms grow and cook all the bad guys luckily thank god and i think there was probably a plan there that uh the pathogens are very sensitive to the temperature high enough temperature long enough kills the bad guys it doesn't kill the good guys i love it when somebody says well now that your compost has reached 175 degrees your compost pile is sterile oh really how is this the temperature stays at 175 how can you keep the temperature up there if the bacteria and fungi aren't growing yeah so it's not sterile is it and it should be all of the beneficial good guys that like high temperature and they will grow at that temperature so now when it's been hot enough long enough you're going to turn it again so what started out up at the top gets into the middle and now you know what was in the middle to begin with sides to begin with all of that pile after you leave it heat long enough we've dealt with all of the weed seeds they're all killed weed seeds cannot temp tolerate those high temperatures you've killed the human pathogens the plant pathogens the root feeding nematodes you fed you've killed all the parasites all these scared worms so now you've got something that's only growing beneficial organisms it cannot go anaerobic any step along the way or you're losing some of your really good organisms and your growing pathogens and pests and problems so that whole process of composting worm composting passage through an earthworm's digestive system wipes out the bad guys so the problem with an earthworm is you can't feed them too fast you know i like the experiments that they've done at university where they basically take worms and immobilize them and start stuffing food down their mouths and you know if we stuff food into your mouth every five seconds and forced it through if there were pathogens in the stuff we were putting into your mouth and forcing through with the pathogens that come out the other end well duh because if you don't have time to process it well and what happens to the worms they die so what is it about that experiment that has anything to do with reality so let the worm do its own business let it eat what it needs to eat you just have to get enough worms in a worm bin so passage through the earthworms digestive system takes care of the human pathogens the plant pathogens the root feeding nematodes worms however can't take care of weed seed so if you've got weed seed in your material if you've got those old tomato seeds you know the broccoli seeds whatever you know cucumber seeds you're going to have to run through a thermal process so if you only have small amounts of those stick in your microwave for about a minute zap 11 daylights out of them and then that can go right into your worm bin as well if you got lots and lots of weed seeds you're going to have to do a thermal process so making the compost bad guys are the root feeding nematodes the human pathogens like salmonella shigella pasteuri listeria e coli bad guys e coli zero one five seven h um with a fungi the fungal diseases that require reduced oxygen conditions to grow well they all do so things like fusarium pithium phytophthora rhizoctonia i can name a couple thousand others boring so we've got to get rid of all of the problem organisms so if we keep things aerobic that doesn't allow any of the problems to grow and if we run it through a thermal compost we kill them with heat if we run them through an earthworm we kill them because the earthworm crushes them to death so making a compost that has the proper biology but as i said it's kind of expensive to spread a solid material over a large area if you've got a 10 foot by 10 foot garden not difficult but let's say you have a 500 acre field okay now is there an easier way to get this biology spread out and absolutely yes there is let's take that compost with all these wonderful organisms in it and use water to extract those organisms away from those solid surfaces so those organisms are now in the water if you've got really good populations of these organisms in your compost and you're extracting and then think about the fact that with our compost we have bacteria glued to the surfaces

of those organic matter so there's a big massive glue layer around them when that one bacterium reproduces bigger glue layer now each one of those reproduces and an even bigger glue layer and yep they're going to start gluing particles together how you're going to get those bacteria ripped off those surfaces pull apart those aggregates that they've been building your water has to have some fair pressure in order to do that we can't uh you know here's our bucket of water and just be stirring it lightly not gonna rip anything off anything so that's not gonna do it we're gonna have to apply some force so what we do is get a good air pump send the tubing to the bottom of your bucket and let those bubbles coming out of the bottom let them really be moving rapidly through that water and make sure you're hanging your compost right in though that stream of bubbles coming up so as the water is being impelled by the movement by the bubbles coming up water is now going to move and we've got to get that going fast enough so that water will rip the organisms off the surfaces of the compost so we're going to pull them we're going to break those glue layers and get the bacteria into the water we're going to break some of the strands of the fungi pull them apart and now we've got fungal strands wandering around the protozoa the good guy nematodes we want to pull that out of the compost away from those surfaces and into the water and that is something that we would call a compost extract where we're just extracting the organisms from the surface of the compost and if you're making a compost extract and it's got good enough biology in it go apply that as long as you have lots of really good compost why go the next step of making a compost tea so a compost tea starts exactly the same as a compost extract we've got to get that water moving and rip the organisms off the surface of the compost and into the water but now we're going to add foods to that material to grow those bacteria and fungi that are in the solution so does your soil need more fungi then we're going to put fungal foods into our compost tea but if my soil needs more bacteria then i'm going to put bacterial foods into that compost tea so you need to know what you need before you can really decide what the recipe is going to be for your compost tea there is not one recipe one size does not fit all we need to understand what you need in your plant for your plant so i didn't bring along the graphics for this because i didn't think i was going to actually go here how could that happen um so when do you add the fungus or the fungal food you would add the foods when you start the aeration so typically when we're putting together a compost tea you're going to put the water and i'll go through this again in a little bit you're going to put the water in your container you're going to add some materials to get rid of chlorine or chloramine we don't want any toxic compounds in the water because for example why do we put chlorine in water yeah to prevent organisms from growing and guess what it works so you got to do something to get rid of the chlorine in almost every large city on the planet even small cities and towns they're not putting just chlorine into the water they're putting chloramine is not a gas chlorine's a gas and if you bubble for a little while you'll blow the chlorine off but chloramine is not a gas and it is more deadly than the chlorine but we're having to go to the chloroamine because it's critically important not to have a biofilm forming on the pipes between you and the water treatment plant because what if biofilm forms inside your water pipes guess what nasty diseases are now growing in your water pipes so we are putting more and more toxic materials into city water if you drink city water what happens to the organisms in your digestive system okay that's a whole other talk uh but yeah do we need to be making certain we're removing that chlorine and the chloramine from the water before we drink it oh i could go off for a while but on to this topic so water in your tank let's make sure that you add something so that you remove all of those the chlorine the chloramine the sulfur compounds anything that might be killing your organisms in that so what's the something that you would add humic acid is the best choice in my opinion because as the humic acid is complexed by the chlorine the chloramine the sulfates whatever ionic compound is present in that water it decolorizes your humic acid and so you can tell when you have not yet put in enough humic acid to neutralize all those toxic materials and generally if you put one drop of humic acid into a gallon of water that's adequate to complex all of the problem compounds that might be present in your water but you ought to be looking for the color change you need just a tinge of brown is what we want to see because then we've got excess humic acid to take care of all of the problem compounds that might be in that water you can add citric acid you can add any organic acid will do the same thing but they're not colored so how do you know when you put enough citric acid in you don't so see why i choose humic acid because i do a lot better you know with the dummies approach to doing anything a simple easy way to tell that you've put enough in you cannot call up your water treatment plant and say how much chloramine have you been putting into the water today because the first question they're going to ask you back if they're intelligent people and they know what they're doing they're going to ask you where do you live on the pipeline how many of you know where you live in relation to the water treatment plant because i have to put enough chlorine and chloramine into the water at the water treatment plant so that there's an adequate concentration of chlorine and chloramine in that water all the way to the end of the pipe how many of you live at the end of the pipe yeah so you're going to have to be using the humic acid and looking for that color change so when we're using water here well think about when you're putting water in your watering can and um going out and watering your flowers have you dealt with the chlorine and the chloramine in that water and if you're applying that chlorine and chlorimated water to the soil what are you doing to the organisms in your soil you're killing some of them so now you better put some compost back in there to deal with the fact that some of your organisms got killed but do you want to keep doing that always have to be put more combat posts back on putting more compost tea back out there putting more compost extract to resuscitate the organisms we killed with the chlorinated water let's start dealing with the chlorine before it goes on your soil let's make sure that we're putting our drops of humic acid where are you going to get humic acid from well make compost and extract that nice dark deep rich brown color from your compost because that's the humic acid it is the humic acid causes that rich dark brown color in your compost so how are you going to do that get the combo the humic acid out of your compost take some cheesecloth and maybe put that cheesecloth in a colander so you have a nice support surface and you put about a cup of your good rich finished compost needs to smell really good needs to have good structure that you can see and now you're going to take about 12 cups of water and you gently passively put you know put that water on the surface and just let it passively move through that cup of compost catch the water coming out of the bottom and you can see that nice rich dark brown color that's humic acid make your own humic acid to neutralize the toxic chemicals that are in your drinking water can you drink humic acid absolutely not a problem because when we're passively moving water through our compost you don't get any of the organisms out because remember the organisms are glued they are bound so as you run that water through all you're getting are the soluble nutrients humic acid included coming out of your compost and now you've made your own neutralizer and it doesn't cost you fifty dollars a gallon which is what humic acid costs when you go to the grocery store a nursery so just typically what a good food web will do for you so right there decompose toxins so yes all of the antibiotics easily dealt with within 24 hours the diversity of microorganisms we would have in a typically compost aerobic compost um going to get rid of those antibiotics most pesticides those two that i mentioned the exceptions yeah you're going to have to actually probably find an inoculum of those bacteria that and fungi that will decompose them so want to go on because let's get into the actual topic of the day started on this already

aerated compost tea and we want it aerated because we don't want to be growing any pathogens in here so aerated that isn't that really kind of redundant though because compost by definition is aerobic if you go back and you read sir albert howard's uh books from when he came from back from india with the indore method of composting he was adamant about this has to remain aerobic if you get too much water in your compost and that compost goes waterlogged oxygen cannot move through water at any speed at all and you're going to go anaerobic and that's absolutely the worst thing so really do we have to talk about aerated compost tea isn't that redundant because by definition compost is aerobic but we're trying to emphasize make certain that you've got that concept that it has to be aerobic it doesn't have any bad smells vomit smell it doesn't have any decaying flesh sour milk no vinegar no ammonia no um rotten egg smell start mixing all of those compounds together and what do you call those smells yeah stink if it smells bad it is bad don't use it so a little bit of redundancy just to help you remember how important this is so it's going to be aerobic so the compost the organisms in the compost have to be there so let's get our microscope and take a look at your compost learn how to use your own microscope so identify them know that you've got good compost and you have the organisms you need to replenish your soil well look at your soil so you know what's not in put back the right thing not just more of something you already have too much of