How To Make Compost Tea
To make compost tea you will need a few items. Molasses, an airstone that comes with a hose, worm castings, and dechlorinated water. I would recommend using a cheesecloth in this process but it isn’t entirely necessary.
To start you will need to dechlorinate the water by letting the water sit for 24 hours. After this 24 hours window passes you can add the molasses to the water. This will act as a food source for your microorganisms. Connect the host to the air stone and leave the house into the water.
The next step would be adding the worm castings to the solution. You can also add a few other components like guano, kelp, and a few other ingredients if you are looking to create compost tea specific to the growth stage your plants are in. This is where the cheesecloth comes in handy especially when working with hydroponic systems. All that debris would be in the water and can clog your pipeline.
The cheese cloth will allow all the liquid out while keeping the solids in exactly how a tea bag would. Cover the mixture and let it sit and bubble for at least 24 hours. The standard brew time is between 24-72 hours.
Shorter brew times will lead to high fungal microbes while longer brew periods will lead to bacterial based. Out of context of cannabis fungal microbes are typically more beneficial for fruit trees while vegetables will prefer using a bacterial based tea.
The airstone is there to provide oxygen for the microbes because otherwise it will become an anaerobic compost. This provides less energy because the microbes involved have to work off of very little resources. This also will create a foul smell and if not done properly can actually be toxic for your plants.
The molasses are what the microbes use as food and powers the entire process. One final point I need to make is that if you don’t dechlorinate your water it will kill the good microorganisms that you are trying to use.