Spreading Compost Tea
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Here’s a video on spreading compost tea. I outline the need for filters and show you the 4 main systems a home gardener has for spreading compost tea around in the garden.
How to Make Compost Tea
Here’s a video on how to make compost tea - not something you’d want to invite the Queen to …
But you could invite her to the garden afterwards.
Note that this video is part of a series of videos I’m producing for my seminar series and it’s only the first one in the series (more on the way). Also that some of the links mentioned in the video are not active on the seminar site yet.
Contaminated Composted Manure
Thanks to GardenRant for the lead on contaminated manure in the U.K. This story actually got me thinking because my daughter - raising lettuce and tomatoes in containers in Toronto - claimed this past weekend that she and her partner got sick when they ate their lettuce. Now this was containers with potting soil and she used some purchased composted manure and claimed she washed the lettuce really well.
Here’s the EPA link to the datasheet.
The concern seems that it survives the gut action of ruminants and stays active in the manure pile. Studies submitted to the EPA show that “Under aerobic conditions, degradation of aminopyralid in five different soils resulted in the production of CO2 and non-extractable residues. Half-lives ranged from 31.5 to 533.2 days in 5 soils. For risk assessment purposes, EPA used a half-life of 103.5
days. ” So it can stay active and kill crops in soil for up to a year and a half. And it seems it stays alive after passing through the guts of cows.
Now, the toxicity on humans would seem that the major problem (according to the this factsheet) is dermal irritation although you may read it a little more carefully than I did and find something else of concern. So this isn’t likely what created the problem for my daughter.
She did say she washed the lettuce very thoroughly so that she’s hoping there wasn’t e-coli on it and this was at the height of the tomato concern so we thought it wasn’t necessarily the lettuce. She wiped it off the face of the earth anyway and now it’s composting somewhere.
The bottom line as always though is that you will be further ahead to use your own compost. And if you don’t produce enough, use compost tea. And if you don’t produce compost because you live in an apartment of town house, then get a worm bin. And if you don’t do compost or worm-compost to use as a compost tea starter - then you really can’t call yourself an organic gardener, cause you just don’t get it.
Compost Tumbler Review Update
This isn’t going well.
A few weeks ago, I posted a video of me putting the simple compost tumbler together. It was an adventure and you got to see the process (shortened drastically) along with some tips to make your process easier.
I have to report that there are some problems with this kind of system.
1) The composter is half full of material from the kitchen and garden trimmings. It is so heavy that Mayo can’t spin it. This isn’t a problem if you have a strong person around but I have to tell you that this baby is heavy and doesn’t want to move too much. (Maybe we have heavy vegetables?) 
2) There is a screen in the bottom to allow excess moisture to leak out so your compost stays at the right moisture level. It works much like your sink drain I’m afraid. You know the one that plugs up when too much wet vegetable matter is compressed on the bottom of the sink and you have to take the guck out by hand to let the water drain?
Right - well, I have a bunch of sopping wet compost on top of this drain and I’m darned if I’ll insert half my body to clean out a screen that’s sure to clog up again with a few seconds of cleanout.
I know it’s clogged because when I spun it last night, a foul stench water poured out the “top” (which was now the bottom). Opening up the lid (after turning it I note) I was greeted with a full, foul smell that surely isn’t cooking compost by any stretch of the imagination.
Luckily, I had cut some tall grass in the orchard so I loaded up the other half of the composter with half-browned grass that I figure will absorb all this moisture. Locked her up and turned it over so the moisture would leak down and soak up the grass. If I hadn’t thought of the grass at the last minute, I was going to use newspaper to do the same job.
But it surely isn’t making compost at the moment.
We’ll see how it works in the next week or two as the grass becomes part of the equation and we continue to load in the veggie trimmings.
So I’ve either missed totally on getting the right combination of green to brown or the compost tumbler doesn’t work well.
So for the moment, I’m not a big fan of compost tumblers and the garden plans call for old-fashioned compost bins behind the shed.
I might have a compost tumbler to give away this fall to somebody local. Doesn’t come with any guarantees however. 
Compost Tumbler Review
One of the trials we have going this summer is this compost tumbler (we got ours from for review purposes from http://www.organic-compost-tumbler.com/)
Start to finish in the construction process, about 45 minutes. I deliberately didn’t study the instructions and still managed to get it all together. Mind you, I had to refer to the sheet more than once during the process as you’ll see.
Two tips - let the poly (it’s really heavy duty stuff by the way) sit out in the hot sun for at least an hour before you put this sucker together. Otherwise, it will be hard and not at all easy to work with. Don’t even bother trying to do this on an overcast, cold day in the spring - you’ll wind up hating yourself and this compost tumbler
The second is to really apply the vaseline or cooking oil to the lip. You’ll see me struggle to turn it, hit it with darn near everything I had close to hand (my tools were still all packed away after our move) and even manage to whack a finger. The tight fit works really well once you have it together and it doesn’t leak on the stand but getting it together means really having to hold your mouth right and using a lot of slippery stuff.
After one month, we’re surprised how much organic matter we have in the drum. Because we eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, theres a lot of trimmings being composted. As soon as the gardens get going, I think we’ll see a great deal more going in. The tulip flowers and stems will be the first garden debris to hit it so it should start seeing some serious loading.
This thing is heavy. And loaded up, it is becoming a bit of a chore to turn it around. There’s a lot of weight there so put it where you want it. You aren’t moving it once it’s full.
Here’s the video.
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