Many landscape problems can be solved with natural options, such as a natural fertilizer like compost tea. At Alternative EarthCare we can provide for all of your landscape needs.
We can apply compost tea to any property and plants, from Nassau to Suffolk’s East End, we’re here to make your landscape healthy and beautiful!
Compost Tea Treatments Contribute to a Balanced Soil-Food Web
- Suppress harmful microbes and organisms
- Improve the nutritional quality of plants
- Improve soil structure
- Improve water infiltration and water-holding capacity.
- Improve oxygen diffusion
- Retain nitrogen and other nutrients such as calcium, iron, potassium, and phosphorus, etc
- Make nutrients available for plant growth at the times and rates plants require.
- Decompose plant residues
- Rapidly reduce worker exposure to potentially harmful chemicals
- Beneficial microbes displace pathogens on plant surfaces
What is Compost Tea?
Compost tea is a liquid extract that used by agriculture companies for many year to promote plant and soil health. Our compost tea is aerated, which is a more recent improvement upon the classic ‘compost tea,’ in which aeration technology is used to create higher levels of oxygen within the tea. The increase of oxygen allows the “tea” more growth and the reproduction of beneficial microorganisms.
How is Compost Tea Made?
Compost tea is a highly concentrated microbial solution produced by extracting beneficial microbes from vermicompost or compost. The compost and or vermicompost is then placed in a “tea bag” which is a basket and suspended in solution and the extraction process begins. Using the proper equipment, a good quality compost tea can be brewed in as little as 24 hours.
What are the Application Benefits of Compost Tea?
Compost tea provides organic nutrients that have been extracted from nutrient rich compost. Some of the nutrients provided include: foliar and soil nutrients, chelated micronutrients, and microbes.
Nutrients provided by the compost tea are more easily absorbed by the treated plants than from other fertilizers, due to the biological nature of the tea. Since it comes directly from nature and not a synthetic substance, the nutrients are more biologically available for the plant through the process of mineralizing nutrients, which allows for immediate microbial uptake.
The organic nature of compost tea provides beneficial microbes to displace pathogens on plant surfaces, like a natural antibiotic for plants. It also helps a plant naturally defend itself by competing with harmful microbes.
Compost tea is also a healing elixir for the soil and plants as it naturalizes what it is applied to. For instance, application of compost tea helps to fix the soil’s nitrogen levels. It also encourages the plant to produce its own hormones for healthy growth. It can even degrade toxic pesticides!
Of all the fertilizers, additives, and solutions for plants and soil, compost tea is perhaps the most complex in its components and yet simple. It is simple because you cannot do it wrong: you cannot apply too much, like lime or fertilizer, and you or your pets cannot be harmed by it in any way. After an application of compost tea the microbes will actually continue to live and reproduce and further enrich your soil and plant’s health.