Hoping someone can help. I started a compost tea last night. It’s been going for almost 24 hours. I have some nice bubbles chilling on top, but it has sort of a funky smell to it. I had it in my shed and the best way I can describe the smell was almost like a faint smelly sock smell.
My recipe was
2.5 Gallons of water
1/2 cup worm castings
2.5 tbsp molasses
2 tbsp alfalfa meal
5 tbsp seabird guano
Should I toss it and start again? It’s 90 degrees outside today.
I can post picture soon but the top looks nice and bubbly
Well almost everything there is poop so I don’t imagine it would smell good. Compost is rotting crap so what’s the difference if you’re tea’s a little bit rotten. Seems to me the plants would dig it. Although the odor might linger…
I’ve used two years old fish emulsion and didn’t have a problem.
When my kids were small they were always leaving doors open. Constantly getting flies in the house. I hate having flies in the house. I also hate squishing them where they lie. So while I was contemplating how to kill a bunch of flies one day I remembered some thing I learned A long time ago. Flies jump backwards when they takeoff. So I got out the shop vac fired it up and just snuck up behind the flies on the ceiling with the vacuum and as soon as they took off they went backwards into the vacuum works great as long as you have a shop vac and electricity.
We shut all the curtains and turn on the tv. Flys goes to light. Then we would vaccum em up. Or lure the fly into a small room like the bathroom. And wop em with a towel to stun them and then its a fun waterslide down the toilet.
My friend had a mouse problem. I got live traps and peanut butter. Get toilet flushing good and spinning around then quickly dump the mouse in and away it goes weeee! Waterslide. If the water isn’t going fast enough the mouse will jump out of the toilet and then you got toilet mouse scrambling around! Ewwww
By no means name I an expert. But ther is a video on YouTube where a guy compares “bio-activity” of compost vs compost tea. Long story short he concluded just top dressing the soil with compost and watering would be more effective for soil grows. Simply because you’re not running the risk of incubating bad bacteria/fungus and feeding it to your plants.
good recpie - ever consider “insect frass” (Build-a-Soil) Anyway Kelp can be a addition to you mix along with a long with (volcanic rock dust ((forget the name of )) for minerals - your molasses amounts can be reduced a bit (use in a flower mix). more casting, more meal - guano is good for veg. Many make a veg tea and a flower tea can get a great tea from Extreme Gardening.com - cheap and easy -excellant result, depending on time and “stuff” available is when use pre-mixed teas for brewing --Happy Cooking !!! some times I feel like a “Mad Sciencetist” mixng. mixing and mixing hopeing nothing will make it explode
A good compost tea shouldn’t have any funky smells, should smell earthy if anything. That recipe your following seems extremely basic and only seeing two air tubes makes me think ur not getting enough oxygen
There’s the revs recipes I follow, only thing I do different is blend up a few fresh aloe leaves to throw in the veg recipe and my worm castings are fresh with the fan leaves of my plants being the main source of food for em, excellent results with those recipes
