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New organic weapon: Menehune Magic, compost tea By Hawaiian Earth Products March 2003

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The agricultural and landscaping community has a new organic weapon to add to its arsenal for their war on plant disease: COMPOST TEA! There is now scientific research backing the positive attributes of this liquid magic. Compost tea is a brewed water extract of compost. During the brewing cycle all the soluble inorganic and organic nutrients and a large percentage of the organisms in the compost are extracted into the tea. The organisms grow, increasing in number during the brewing cycle depending on what soluble nutrients were extracted from the compost and what foods were added to the tea. It’s crucial to start with high quality compost such as Menehune MAGIC. Hawaiian Earth Products, Ltd has been working with leading microbiologist Elaine Ingham and her lab Soil Foodweb, Inc. on producing a high quality compost to make a high quality tea and has gotten the excellent mark from Elaine on just that. Hawaiian Earth Products purchased their first tea maker in 2000 to extract the beneficial microorganisms from their Menehune MAGIC compost and inoculate them back into processing compost windrows to speed up the process. They now brew compost tea for use commercially as well as your own backyard. Finally a safe, low cost, effective way to prevent plant disease and increase soil fertility. Application of tea-to soil to foliar surfaces or to compost- means the organisms and soluble foods remaining in the tea are placed on those surfaces and/or materials. A good diversity of active, growing, aerobic organisms typically results in disease suppression, retention of nutrients, increased availability of nutrients to the roots and foliage of the plants, detoxification of many residues, and improvement in soil structure. Compost can result in the same benefits but is more difficult and costly to spread than tea. However, compost has longer-lasting food resources for the organisms, so a good, aerobic compost or cover crop that selects for organisms that benefit your next crop are better choices as a soil application. There are many examples where tea has worked extremely well to suppress diseases (reduce use of pesticides), to build soil structure (plant roots grow deeper), and to improve nutrient cycling, thus, reducing the use of inorganic fertilizers. Hawaiian Earth Products sell their compost tea for $7.00 per gallon, you can use it full strength or dilute it up to 5 parts. Compost tea must be ordered in advance. High quality tea brewing compost is available for those of you that wish to brew your own compost tea for $.60 per pound. Lab analysis are available for your review, call Lorra for more information at 682-5895. General Manager/Compost Tea Brewmaster, Lorra Naholowa’a with new Growing Solutions Microbe Brewer tea maker. Top of Page | Back to Articles