Author Archives: GradySiler

A Cup of Tea for Your Garden: How & Why to Make Compost Tea

by GradySiler Posted on May 13, 2017

Compost tea is an easy, organic way to enhance your soil. It is rich in nutrients and microorganisms vital for plant and soil health. Compost tea is made by soaking composted materials in water, and then using the water in your garden.

There are a few different methods of making compost tea. Each one needs a relatively small amount of organic matter, and only takes a few days, or less, of brewing. Many gardeners find the benefits for their gardens are worth the little extra effort of brewing compost tea.

Benefits of Compost Tea

1. Provides a wide range of nutrients.

Compost tea contains all the water-soluble nutrients from your compost. This means that the richer your compost is, the more nutritious your tea will be.

The nutrients will naturally be more diluted than in straight compost, so there is no danger of harming your plants by over-fertilizing. You can give your plants compost tea regularly for gentle, ongoing nutrition support.

2. Boosts soil microorganisms.

Beneficial fungi, bacteria, nematodes and protozoa all naturally live in a healthy compost pile. Many of these microorganisms will multiply in a compost tea.

Microorganisms are what keep soils, and what grows in them, alive. A small particle of soil can contain thousands of different species of microbes. They break down organic matter, recycle nutrients, maintain soil structure, promote plant growth and control pests.

When you apply the high numbers of microbes typically found in compost tea, it will help the local plants and ecosystem literally from the ground up.

3. Suppresses diseases

Theres increasing evidence that plant diseases can be suppressed by treating plants with compost teas. Teas brewed from all different methods appear to have benefits.

This is most likely due to the enhanced microbial populations. They support plant health, and stronger plants are less disease-prone. Also, the beneficial microorganisms can out-compete and inhibit the harmful species both above and below ground.

What to Put in Your Compost Tea

The most important ingredient is, of course, high-quality compost. Compost made from diverse, healthy organic matter will give you the best compost tea. Well-aged compost is also preferable because the older it is, the more microorganisms it will have. It should have been decomposing for at least a few months.

The particles in your compost should be small and well broken down. This will make the nutrients and microorganisms more easily available to be released into the water.

If you have a worm box, worm castings also make excellent compost tea.

Its best to use well water or rain water if possible. If youre using tap water that contains chlorine, let it sit overnight for the chlorine to dissipate.

Manure isnt ideal for tea because its not as nutritionally well-balanced as a good compost. Research manure tea brewing before attempting it to make sure you dont spread possible manure-borne diseases.

Also, be cautious about adding extra ingredients to your compost tea. Plain compost naturally goes through a period of high temperatures as it decomposes. This will usually kill most pathogens.

But, some compost tea brewers recommend adding ingredients to increase the bacteria diversity in the tea. This is more common in aerated teas, which may add molasses, kelp, humic acid, fish hydrolase or other products.

These additives have not been heat-treated like compost and are shown to potentially increase dangerous bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella in compost teas. If youre using additives in your teas, avoid applying them to food crops.

Brewing Methods

One of the most important factors for a healthy compost tea is air. The beneficial microbes need oxygen in the water to reproduce. If you allow a tea to become stagnant, it promotes anaerobic, potentially harmful microbes to take hold.

You can maintain oxygen in your tea by either hand-stirring or installing an electric bubbler. Both methods are described below.

1. Anaerobic

This is the easiest method. You simply need to put some compost in a bucket, add water and let it steep for up to three weeks. Stirring it a couple times a day will help keep it oxygenated.

Any size of bucket or container will work, depending on how much compost tea you need. A good ratio is around one part compost to 3-10 parts water. If you make a more concentrated batch, you can dilute it more as you apply it.

Leaving your tea to steep longer will give the beneficial microorganisms more time to multiply. But dont leave your tea for much longer than three weeks, because it can start to stagnate and kill the beneficial microbes.

CaliKim has a great video that goes over the basics of anaerobic brewing.

2. Aerobic

Anaerobic teas have been brewed for centuries, but aerobic teas are a modern invention. They involve inserting an aeration device into your brewing compost tea, such as an aquarium pump. This will provide much more oxygen than simply stirring an anaerobic tea.

Instead of mixing compost directly into the water, it is suspended in a porous bag. This makes it easier to run a bubbler through the water. The nutrients and microbes will slowly leach out of the compost and into the water. It is only brewed for up to 24 hours.

A ratio of one part compost to 10-50 parts water is recommended, which is less than an anaerobic tea. This means the nutrients will be more dilute as there is less organic matter in the solution.

Its said this increased oxygen will produce more and better microbe populations. Currently, there is limited research to prove whether or not this is true. In fact, anaerobic compost teas are shown to have somewhat better disease controlling effects.

The only way to find out for sure is by experimenting with it in your own yard. If youd like to make your own aerated compost, Fine Gardening has an excellent description of how to set up a home bubbler system.

Many pre-made systems are available commercially if you dont want to make your own. Ask your local garden center if they can recommend one, or find one online.

You can also buy fresh compost tea at many garden centers. These are a good option if you dont have the time or interest in brewing your own.

Pre-packaged compost teas are available as well, although their quality is questionable. Alive and active microorganisms are a vital part of compost tea. These would be difficult to package for any length of time.

Using Your Compost Tea

Compost tea can be applied to any plants, either in the ground or in containers. Use it freely on your vegetables, flowering plants, trees, shrubs or lawn.

Most compost tea wont need dilution, unless you only have a small amount and want to make it go farther.

You can use compost tea as a drench by simply watering your plants with it.

Compost tea can also be applied as a foliar spray. Strain your tea through cheese cloth or a fine sieve first to remove any particles that could clog your sprayer. Adding a couple drops of mild dishwashing liquid will help the tea adhere to leaves better.

Foliar feeding with compost tea is shown to boost a plants immediate uptake of nutrients. Although, it doesnt appear to have any benefit on long-term soil fertility.

Make sure you use your tea as soon as its finished brewing to prevent any pathogen growth. If your compost tea smells bad, this likely means it hasnt gotten enough oxygen. Pour any rancid tea into an unused area of your compost and start a new batch of fresh tea.

Related
Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?
25+ Beneficial Plants That Ward Off Pests and Protect Your Garden
9 Beneficial Bugs and Insects to Welcome in the Garden

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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A Cup of Tea for Your Garden: How & Why to Make Compost Tea

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Should Trump Be Investigated?

by GradySiler Posted on December 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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We really should have seen this coming. On Monday, amid a whirlwind of shocking news about Russian interference with America’s election, Donald Trump had some news of his own—or rather, non-news. He canceled a press conference at which he was supposed to explain how he would disentangle the conflicts of interest posed by his far-flung business interests.

It wasn’t the first time Trump had bailed on answering questions: From the time he declared that “we’re working on” releasing his tax returns, to when he vowed to produce evidence that he hadn’t groped a woman on a plane, to the promised press conference to clear up his wife’s immigration history, this is a pattern we’re sure to see again.

But why is it only now, well past the election, that Trump is being pushed to address how he would deal with banks to which he is in debt, or foreign leaders who have a say over his company’s projects? Those questions were there for anyone to see, and investigate, the minute he announced he was running. And yet, they weren’t a focus for media, with a few notable exceptions, until far too late in the game.

Why? Simply put: Math. We’ve gone into the problems with the dominant media business model before—advertising pays fractions of a penny per click, which means that publishers have to pump out buckets of fast, cheap content to make ends meet, and that leaves little opportunity for serious investigation. Trump understands this well, and he plays that dynamic like a violin.

Grim, right? But there is an alternative to this model. Reader support has allowed MoJo reporters to go after essential stories, no matter what it takes.

In normal times, right now we’d be in the middle of the kind of routine end-of-year fundraising drive many nonprofits do in December (“We need to raise $250,000 by December 31!”). But these aren’t normal times; in the weeks since the election, we’ve seen record interest in the journalism we do, because more and more people see this work—digging for the truth and reporting it without fear—as essential for our democracy.

So enough with the tired marketing pitches. We want to make the case for your support based on the journalism itself. We want to show why it’s worth your investment. (And of course, if you already get it, you can make your tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation now!)

Take that Trump conflict-of-interest issue. Back in June, MoJo reporter Russ Choma and our Washington bureau chief, David Corn, broke the story of Trump’s remarkable relationship with Deutsche Bank—a huge German financial institution that has lent Trump a lot of money. About $364 million, to be exact.

That’s some serious leverage over a man who is worth, by one of the more generous estimates, about $3.7 billion. And it gets worse: Deutsche Bank manipulated interest rates before the financial crash, and the federal government wants them to pay a $14 billion settlement. Deutsche Bank doesn’t like that. As president, Russ and David pointed out, Trump “would have a strong disincentive to apply pressure on Deutsche Bank.”

Just consider that for a second: The president’s personal business interests are in direct conflict with those of America’s taxpayers.

When we first published that piece, Trump wasn’t even the nominee yet. Hillary Clinton was still fighting off Bernie Sanders’ challenge. It was, at that point, just a warning sign—a check-engine light, you might say, for democracy.

But that’s not what the rest of the media universe was concerned with at the time. The headlines were dominated by horse race polls, and in the Hollywood Reporter, veteran media writer Michael Wolff recounted chatting with Trump over a pint of vanilla Häagen-Dazs as the candidate gushed about media moguls. On Rupert Murdoch: “Tremendous guy and I think we have a very good relationship.” On former CBS and Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone: “He’d give me anything. Loved me.” On current CBS Chairman Les Moonves (who famously noted that Trump’s bomb-throwing “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”): “Great guy. The greatest. We’re on the same page. We think alike.” And so on.

You’ve got to discount all that for the Trump factor—nothing he says can be assumed to be true. But what we do know is that, as Wolff notes, Trump “has a long, intimate relationship with nearly every significant player in the media…He may know few people in Washington, and care about them less, but he knows his moguls and where they rank on the modern suck-up-to list.”

The Moonveses and Redstones of the world don’t issue memos directing their newsrooms to ignore the GOP nominee’s scandalous conflicts of interest. But they don’t need to. The corporations they run are built to maximize advertising revenue, which comes from maximum eyeballs at minimum cost. There are people in all of their news divisions who push back against that gravitational force, but everyone knows what the bottom line is.

Russ, for his part, kept plugging away. On August 15, he published a story headlined, “Trump Has a Huge Conflict of Interest That No One’s Talking About.” The Trump International Hotel in Washington, Russ reported, is a $200 million venture, run by Ivanka Trump, for the hospitality branch of the president-elect’s company. Its building is federal property, and to lease it Trump agreed to pay way more than any other bidder. If the hotel doesn’t turn a profit, it will have to negotiate with the federal government—run by the hotel’s owner—to pay less. If it does turn a profit, it will have to charge rates way above any other Washington hotel.

Right now, the cheapest room in January—inauguration weekend is sold out—goes for about $625 a night, though you can snag the Ivanka Suite for $1,050 and the Postmaster Suite for $4,450. And already, corporate honchos and foreign diplomats are lining up to pay. (“Spending money at Trump’s hotel is an easy, friendly gesture to the new president” for foreign dignitaries, the Washington Post reported a week after Election Day. One diplomat told the paper, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel, so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!'”) As banana-republic palm-greasing goes, it’s an incredible bargain.

Some reporters would have called it a day after that initial story. But Russ, like all great journalists, is a bit of a pit bull. He worked for a newspaper in New Hampshire before joining the watchdog Center for Responsive Politics and then making the jump to MoJo. He’s always been drawn to money and influence reporting, he says, because “if you ask enough questions, that’s where you wind up. You talk about nearly any national policy issue, it almost always leads you to campaign donations and lobbyists. And with Trump, we have this new dimension—that his own personal wealth seems to be an even more consuming passion. There’s so much we don’t know, it’s mind-boggling.”

Russ kept documenting Trump’s conflicts, reporting on his massive debt and (in a story together with our reporter Hannah Levintova) his business in Russia, including his relationship with an oligarch close to Putin—so close that Trump tweeted, “Do you think Putin will become my new best friend?”). He was the first, after the election, to really drill into a term that quickly became part of everyone’s political vocabulary: the emoluments clause, in which the Constitution forbids the president from taking gifts from foreign governments. None other than George W. Bush’s former White House ethics lawyer, Richard Painter, told Russ that an emoluments clause violation would make “Hillary’s emails look like a walk in the park.”

The day Trump announced that he was canceling the press conference focused on his business, Russ tallied up all the debt Trump owes. Take a moment to absorb the enormity of what this chart represents:

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Russ (along with a handful of others) had labored away at this issue for six months when it finally became headline material for the rest of the press. Today, outlets from the New York Times to National Public Radio are digging in, and 17 members of Congress are demanding an investigation.

And here’s the key: Russ was able to keep going because of you. No advertiser or other source of revenue would have made that work possible. With news, you get what you pay for.

Investigative reporting doesn’t always have an immediate, visible impact. Sometimes you see a dramatic event—like when the US Department of Justice announced last summer that it was no longer going to do business with private prison companies shortly after we published a big investigation. Sometimes it’s more opaque and slow-building, as with the conflict-of-interest reporting that has finally broken through. But the results always come—and that, not a stock certificate or a tote bag, is the reward for our readers. (Though if you’re in the market for a tote bag, or a Hellraiser baby onesie, we have those too!)

In the next four years, we’re going to focus on one thing above all others: fighting creeping authoritarianism and the lies that advance it. We’ll fight them with truth, by digging deep and calling a spade a spade, whether anyone else is willing to or not. (Just a couple of weeks ago, CBS—”great guy” Les Moonves’ network—amplified Team Trump’s slur against democracy, that “millions” of people might have voted illegally, without so much as a qualifier.)

And we’re going to need you to join us in that fight. You can make a tax-deductible one-time or monthly donation to support our work.

Make no mistake: Democracy’s fabric is under threat. Not by a coup d’état or an invasion from outside, but because we have allowed its critical institutions—from access to the ballot to the vigor of the press—to fray.

At a time like this, it’s important to remember that trends don’t just go one way.

Here at Mother Jones, we’ve seen that there is an enormous appetite for vigorous, fearless reporting—now more than ever. In October and November, visits to our website were 50 percent higher than usual, approaching 15 million each month. And while we don’t force you to pay to read our stories—because it’s important for this journalism to be accessible as widely as possible—a growing number of you are choosing to subscribe or donate. That is incredibly heartening, because it means you feel the same urgency we do: Right now, none of us needs to be motivated by some arbitrary fundraising goal. Covering Trump, and what he represents, will take everything we’ve got.

We know there’s a lot of competition for your tax-deductible year-end support. We hope that supporting independent journalism makes the cut. Readers, as you know, account for 70 percent of our budget. Without you, our pages would be empty save for advertising and cats.

That might be something Trump would like to see. But you—and we—are not going to let it happen.

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Should Trump Be Investigated?

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