How to Build Your Own Actively Aerated Compost Tea Brewer!

This is our compost tea brewer as it sits today, designed and built by John,

Getting started gardening here in Mexico has been an interesting experience, considering we don't really speak spanish.  We were able to find organic gardening products fairly easy at the Home Depot here in Acapulco, but it was an interesting experience determining what was what.  Rudimentary pictures of worms and leaves would hint at what was inside, although when we first started buying these things, we weren't sure of what they truly were or their quality.  There were some lower quality products but for the most part, we like what we have found, especially for the price.

For as long as I've known him, John has been working on being able to grow as much as possible, of both cannabis and vegetables, with the least amount of input money.  Necessity is a mother in this situation, as some of the mainstream nutrients can set you back a pretty penny.  Always interested in organic farming, he's developed a do-it-yourself system where we make the most of trash to get results we're looking for. For example, he's been using drinking containers, bottles and cartons, for years as free planting containers.  With a few decent holes in the bottom, you can turn just about anything into a planting container.

When we got to Acapulco, as many know, we were extremely low on funds.  We devoted some of what money we had to soil to get a small garden started,  and we are happy that we did.  The organic products we use here are pretty cheap, so it wasn't an incredible amount of money.  Our roommate was interested in having an apartment garden as well, so he pitched in on soil too. I still have the tomato plant I started when I moved here.  We've been in too many situations where we have regretted holding off on starting gardens, with often uncertain futures.  Worst case scenario, move the garden to a new location like we eventually did. 

John immediately set out to getting a compost tea brewer built, to make it so we could make our own fertilizer with just a handful of compost.  Properly built a compost tea brewer will produce what's commonly referred to as Actively Aerated Compost Tea.  This stuff is loaded with beneficial bacteria, fungi and protozoa that are great for plant and soil health.  Upon looking into it, I found that the stuff has pretty miraculous claims if prepared correctly. 

To make Actively Aerated Compost Tea (or AACT for short), you need to have a brewer, be it homemade or manufactured.  There are all sorts of price ranges for manufactured brewers.  Name brand Vortex Brewer's cheapest system is 1762 dollars for a 7 gallon system, it's most expensive is a 950 gallon brewer for 9687 dollars.  There are cheaper options like the Keep It Simple Brewer, endorsed by Dr. Elaine Ingham, a soil scientist who's been pushing the benefits of AACT. Systems start at 300 dollars for a 5 gallon setup, as well as a 50 gallon for 585 dollars.

As with many things with farming, if there's an expensive manufactured edition, there's a way to do it effectively at home for a fraction of the cost.  Just so long as you have understanding of what you're doing, making your own brewer from recycled materials is easy.  There are four things you need to make the brewer work: water, GOOD compost, Food and Oxygen.  With any one of these missing, you just won't end up with the product you're looking for.

Water is the medium in which all the fungi and bacteria in the tea will live.  It will hold the nutrients, being an effective delivery mechanism to the plants either by foliar feeding or soil drenching. You obviously want somewhat clean water for this, with a balanced ph for best biological growth results.

Good compost is essential for brewing a quality tea.  You need a good compost that was aerobic, teeming with good fungi and bacteria to innoculate the tea. Without living compost, you do not get the live compost tea you are looking for.  It will be full of nutrients, but the soil microrganisms that are essential for healthy soil will not be there. We've been using a product called Organodel which is an thermal compost made from cow manure, with good helpful bacteria.  We also use mushroom compost and worm castings, depending on what type of brew we are looking for.  Flowing plants generally like a more fungally dominant brew, wheras vegetative plants prefer a more bacterially dominated brew. 

Food is necessary for the fungi, bacteria and protozoa.  My research suggested that liquid kelp, liquid fish and molasses are all suitable options for food for bacterially dominant teas.  If you're looking for a more fungally dominant tea, try using some whole oats for food.

Oxygen is what keeps the good bacteria and fungi going while keeping the harmful stuff out.  Anerobic bacteria is extremely bad for plants.  Once the tea is no longer being aerated by air pumps, bad bacteria start to take over, the type that cause disease in your plants. 

For your brewer, you'll need some sort of container, preferably with a tapered bottom as it helps for proper aeration.  You end up needing more air movement without a bottle shaped vessel.  We started out using a 3 liter coke bottle, rigged with 2 air pumps, one small and one medium sized.  As our farm expanded it became clear we needed a bigger brewer to keep up.  We had a broken water jug laying around that John rigged up for the brewer we now have.  He mentioned a drawback of using the water jug is that the handle makes it so you need more oxygen to properly agitate the brew.  We now have one small, two medium and one large air pump aerating this brewer.

A good sign that you're getting proper aeration and agitation is when a vortex appears in the middle of your brewer.  It's off of this principle that the expensive Vortex brewer is designed.  When it's filled and running, there's a vortex in the center of the swirling bubbly brew. Good oxygenation ensures that no bad bacteria, fungi, or protozoa form, which can kill your plants.  There are anaerobic products that are beneficial, but when making compost tea, for the most part, you want thing aerobic, lots of oxygen until just before it's applied to your plants. We've got four air pumps and have spent less than 1500 pesos on them, which is less than 70 dollars.  The costliest part of these brewers are the air pumps you need for proper aeration. 

With some research of plans online and a little know how, you can get the fittings and hoses necessary, as well as air pumps, to make your compost tea brewer work effectively.  John managed to find everything he needed to make one of these here in Acapulco, despite not speaking Spanish, down to a source of decent compost.  It just goes to show that you can make a equally good system for a lot less money, if you're willing to tinker around with it to get things right.  No brewer build is perfect the first time, although you can almost always get a functional brewer without a lot of difficulty.  With some fine tuning, you've got your very own bioreactor you can use to brew teas to feed your plants.

You can use these teas one of two ways, either by applying directly to the roots or to the leaves through foliar feeding.  Both are highly beneficial so long as you have a properly actively aerated compost tea to start with.  There are amazing claims that using AACT on your garden has been shown to reverse and prevent plant disease, as well as pest infestation.  A truly happy plant with healthy soil biology does not get pests, as pests are a sign of a weak plant, in one manner or another.  Apparently 5 gallons can treat up to one acre, although I've read that you can use the stuff straight in much higher concentrations with good results.  Its important to experiment and do what's best for you and your plants.  

John's been doing a lot of soil and compost research recently, listening to a lot of talks by a popular soil microbiologist by the name of Elaine Ingham.  She's anti-chemical fertilizer and promotes the use of Actively Aerated Compost tea for gardens as an organic, natural alternative.  She also talks a lot about how to properly compost to kill everything from pathogens in the soil to pesky weed seeds, while promoting good healthy bacteria and fungi growth within the compost. She's all about promoting soil life instead of killing it like modern agriculture is known to do with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides. 

Watching her talks has allowed us to better understand the science behind how the compost tea really works to improve soil and plant health.  This has allowed us to brew the best teas we can, which has led to some refinement in how we do things.  The teas are better than ever and the garden really seems to be noticing. These teas are known to: increase nutrient uptake in plants, prevent and get rid of disease, increase water and nutrient retention in the soil as well as break down toxins in the soil and on the surface of leaves.

In time, we'll share more on the results of these teas.  I've foliar fed as well as soil drenched all of my plants with a good tea at this point.  Anyone who's been reading our garden updates know I'm fighting an uphill battle as I'm dealing with a lot of sickly tomato plants.  It should be interesting to note how properly actively aerated compost teas effect my garden in it's current state.  I've noticed the healthy plants look noticeably different after a feeding, showing the potential these teas have to offer.  The nicest part is, we're using a home made brewer and are spending a fraction of the cost on nutrients, making those funds available to invest elsewhere in our lives. 

Tonight's sunset, taken by John while I was in bed sick with Dengue.  Still sick with Dengue, I'll share my experiences tomorrow!