Compost tea ideas

I have enjoyed the compost tea journey on the asymmetry podcast, even though the end result may not have been what was hoped for. The episode with James Agent is also fascinating.
I am reminded of a question I once asked of a very talented bonsai practitioner- “Where is the best place to find moss, that will grow on a bonsai pot?” His answer was “On a bonsai pot.” Which got me to wondering, would not the best place to find compost to make compost tea for a bonsai, be form the old soil of a healthy bonsai tree? One problem I would anticipate is that most of us grow a verity of different species, so you would probably want to go pine to pine, maple to maple and so on. I haven’t tried this out on my trees yet, but I also grow alpine plants (200 pots of the same type) and have been doing this for the past 2 years with some positive signs (although not obviously statistically significant).
Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts?

I watched a video with Peter Warren that was very interesting and they spoke about compost tea. One of the things mentioned actually clicked in my mind in that when we make compost tea we are not controlling the organism’s we’re growing and they grow at different rates. So you get inconsistent results due to this and also because growing the tea in these conditions is not sterile in the beginning. I’m not saying it won’t work and I would love to try this myself. It just seems we may need to actually be trying to control it somehow a bit better.

1 Like

I wonder if some of the oldest Bonsai alive ever had a compost tea? Seems to me many trees are doing very well without it for a lot of years. I think sometimes chasing rainbows can just be in vain.

1 Like

I’m really interested in a more organic way of growing the tree’s. I really think that long term it is a healthier way to do it. The issue is with all the noise and stories about how to do it. So I guess it will be down to experimenting locally and seeing what works best on your tree’s.

1 Like