Shoutout to switching from bagged soil to compost tea this season

I used to just dump bags of organic soil mix into my raised beds every spring, but after my tomatoes got hit with blight two years in a row I switched to brewing compost tea. Now I water with it once a week and my pepper plants in June are already twice as tall as last year. Anyone else ditch the bagged stuff for a liquid feed?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_bailey1mo ago

Bagged soil has actual structure and organic matter that breaks down slowly over the whole season. Compost tea is mostly water with a little bacteria swimming in it, you're basically just watering your plants with fancy soup. I tried compost tea for a season and my plants looked pale and skinny compared to when I use straight compost mixed into the dirt. You're putting all your faith in those microbes living long enough to do anything useful before they dry up or get eaten by something else. Plus brewing that stuff takes time and equipment, while a bag of soil is ready to go in two minutes. What happens when you miss a week of watering with tea, do your plants just starve?

jade_lane191mo ago

Saw a garden researcher online say that the soluble nutrients in compost tea get leeched out after two or three waterings, so you're basically back to square one. Kevin Bailey makes a solid point about that whole reliance on microbes staying alive thing, I read somewhere that most of them die within hours of hitting dry soil. Straight compost mixed in at the start gives you structure and a slow release that actually sticks around. Brewing tea felt like a whole part time job for me too, and my tomatoes didn't look any better for it.