A spot of tea…
Steeping compost or manure in water is all it takes to come up with a healthy batch of…compost or manure tea. Here we’ve taken some partially composted cow manure and let it sit in a 55-gallon barrel of water for a couple of days. There are all kinds of fine point details about preparing this stuff, but I’m still in the broad strokes experimental stage: I make it up somewhat differently every time. This time, three barrels are going around the field, strategically placed next to mesclun beds and spinach. Hopefully the small amount of nitrogen, assorted micronutrients, and other possibly unidentified good things will give these late season plantings an extra growing boost! They’re used diluted maybe by half, applied with good ol’ watering cans, then soaked in hours later with a solid hose watering. Veggies don’t get more hand-tended than that! :)
Somewhat related posts: • Compost tea • Manure spreading action! • Burlap method strikes again! • Tangling with hoses • Set to explode
Steve Mudge said,
September 13, 2007 @ 9:14 am
That looks a lot easier than the method I was reading about which, as you say, can be a lot more technical. Is “partially composted” cow manure the same stuff you’d buy at the nursery for planting with or do you have to find something fresher?
Simon Huntley said,
September 13, 2007 @ 2:55 pm
I remember a few mornings of hand tending vegetable plants — it is daunting to look down the row and see another 1000 plants you still have to deal with. That is one of joys, though. You just have to pull that head down and concentrate on each plant until you are done.
-Simon.
Mike (tfb) said,
September 14, 2007 @ 8:48 am
Steve: The by-the-book thing to do is use fully composted manure, stuff that’s been continuously heated for a while so evil PATHOGENS get killed, if they’re there at all. My “partially composted” I could call just “compost”, it’s pretty much what you’d buy at the garden center. It’s just not off my usual compost pile… From what I’ve read, most of the time “manure tea” actually refers to compost tea, but then there are those who recommend dumping a few shovelfuls of raw manure into a bucket (pathogens and all?!). I’m…experimenting. I don’t have my own tried and true methods just yet (and I haven’t tried raw manure, so far, just to be safe)!
Simon: Yeah, if I had to pick one aspect of small farming that’s absolutely different from…city life, it’d be facing a field full of hand work. There’s the incredible satisfaction of gambling with nature and watching things grow, and seeing what an effect your own timely or untimely intervention can have. And then there’s a lot of routine work that could seem incredibly tedious. After the initial year or two of microfarming novelty and “will this work” adrenaline wears off, it’s a steady process of letting the routine settle in along with all of the other new awarenesses. There are definitely tough, daunting days, but you can feel a new, uh, consciousness coming through. When I do stuff with Bob, who’s farmed for decades, the feeling is clear. I’d say it’s maybe what most defines farmers trained from childhood, the kind of attitude toward getting jobs done. It’s not “factory work”, you feel your little efforts are directly part of a Big Picture, like, the whole planet!! There’s deep, quiet, ongoing satisfaction to be had from really “boring” looking repetitive tasks in and round the field…has to be tried, harder to learn late—a cool state of mind! Hope I get all the way there! :)