Dear CMD,
Yes indeed, back by popular demand, we’ll be brewing a delicate and rich blend of Actinomycetes, Pseudomonads, yeasts, molds, nitrogen-fixing bacteria and other delicious, beneficial soil microbes to meet the refined tastes of your lawn, garden and flowers. Compost tea, a.k.a. “Microbe Brew,” will be available TODAY (hard to believe it’s already the first day of Farmers’ Market!) and every Saturday at the Boulder Farmers’ Market and on Wednesdays between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. at the Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM) at 5030 “old” Pearl Street.
In case you’re a Microbe Brew novice, Microbe Brew is a living liquid full of diverse beneficial soil microbes. It is made from worm castings (that’s “worm poop” to the less scientific, or perhaps the less polite). That may sound gross, but it’s actually the most balanced compost in the world and what all the most discerning plants will be drinking this year.
Our region’s soils suffer from extremely low levels of microbial activity, making it more “dirt” than “soil.” Compost tea gives your lawn and garden a better chance in this arid climate. When sprinkled on to your planting area and then watered in, the microbes can go to work consuming organic matter and minerals in the soil and turning them into humus, the only plant food found in nature.
Not only are the microbes making food for your plants, they’re giving them moisture by binding water particles to the soil so the particles can’t evaporate. That means, even when the Colorado sun starts beating down, there’s still water just sitting there waiting for a plant’s root hair to find it. You don’t have to water as often, and your plants don’t dry up.
The tea is beneficial throughout the season, but the most effective times for use are in the early spring as your soil is just waking from the winter, during periods of heavy soil feeding such as the vigorous vegetative growth stage of early summer and the flowering/fruiting stage, and during stressful times such as hot spells or after mowing the lawn. If you start your season by watering the entire growing space with tea, you’ll allow for the microbial critters to get good and settled so when the heat stress kicks in later on, they’ll be ready to fend it off.
Last year we performed some trials on several plant varieties to compare compost tea with traditional watering, and we got some very definitive results showing stress and disease resistance, more flowering and fruiting, and an improved ability to bounce back from extreme heat trauma. You can see those trials online. This year’s trials will be on display at the CHaRM.
Because of the tea’s ability to hold water in the soil and reduce evaporation, the city of Boulder Water Conservation Office is once again encouraging its use by offering a 50% rebate to city of Boulder residents. (Please bring a utility bill as proof of residency.) Not to shun the soils or plant palettes outside of Boulder, we’re offering a printable coupon to non-Boulder residents on the Eco-Cycle website at www.ecocycle.org.
