Compost Tea has become a very popular topic. The following is a quote from Fine Gardening (ref 2):
Gardeners all know compost is terrific stuff. But there’s something even better than plain old compost, and that’s compost tea. As the name implies, compost tea is made by steeping compost in water. It’s used as either a foliar spray or a soil drench, depending on where your plant has problems.
Why go to the extra trouble of brewing, straining, and spraying a tea rather than just working compost into the soil? There are several reasons. First, compost tea makes the benefits of compost go farther. What’s more, when sprayed on the leaves, compost tea helps suppress foliar diseases, increases the amount of nutrients available to the plant, and speeds the breakdown of toxins. Using compost tea has even been shown to increase the nutritional quality and improve the flavor of vegetables. If you’ve been applying compost to your soil only in the traditional way, you’re missing out on a whole host of benefits.
Let’s look at the facts.
What is Compost Tea?
This seems like a simple question, but it’s not. There is no clear definition of compost. Compost can be made from a large variety of materials, and each compost is different. If you make tea from two different types of compost you will get two different types of tea.
The nutrient content of each type of compost tea will be different.
One of the reported benefits of compost tea are the ‘microbes’. If we assume this to be true then is it not important to know which microbes are in the tea? It certainly is. The problem is that unless you have a fairly sophisticated lab you won’t know this. Home gardeners have no way to know which microbes are in their tea.
The microbe content of each type of tea will be different.
Tea can be made in two very different ways; aerobically and anaerobically. The term aerobic means that the tea is made in the presence of oxygen; you usually bubble air through the tea as it is brewing (see picture above). When tea is made anaerobically, it is made without added oxygen. You simply let the smelly sludge sit in a pail. The method used to make the tea is very important because microbes tend to favor one or other of these living conditions. They either like living with oxygen present or they prefer less oxygen. So the method you use to create the tea is very important to determine the type of microbes in the tea.
Aerobic soil bacteria inhabit soils that contain a lot of air; the light fluffy type of soil we all know to be good for plants. Anaerobic soil bacteria tend to live in wet, compacted clay type soils where there is little oxygen present – not the kind of soils we want. So why is it that many recipes for compost tea use the anaerobic method? That makes no sense and I can’t explain it.
There is also something called manure tea which is the same as compost tea except it is made from manure.
Bokashi composting is something completely different and is described in detail in Bokashi Composting Myths.
What Are the Benefits of Compost Tea?
Proponents of compost tea ascribe a wide range of benefits – see the above quote from Fine Gardening.
One thing is clear to me. If a product or gardening technique does everything under the sun, it is always too good to be true. When it sounds like snake oil, it probably is snake oil! Run for the hills.
There are a few main benefits that would be worth discussing. Compost tea is claimed to provide:
- An increase in nutrients
- A decrease in diseases
- Additional microbes for the soil
A recent study compared AACT compost tea to using just compost and is described in Compost Tea – Does it Work?
Does Compost Tea Increase Nutrients?
To clarify the question it should be stated more clearly as; Does compost tea add more nutrients than compost alone? There is no doubt that compost tea adds nutrients. But does the process of making tea increase the level of nutrients compared to just using compost without brewing? If they both add the same amount of nutrients–why bother making tea?
If you think about it for 2 seconds you will realize that this is a silly notion. Think about what you are doing in making tea. You take a handful of compost and you put it in a bucket of water. Microbes take over and start digesting the compost.
Your original handful of compost had a certain amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. No matter what process you use, you will never increase the amount of these nutrients in a plastic bucket (except for some minor organics falling in an uncovered bucket). The microbes might breed and grow and digest things, but the total amount of nutrients remains the same. In fact it might actually be less since some of the nitrogen might be converted to ammonia which evaporates into the air.
What about the quoted statement above “compost tea makes the benefits of compost go farther “. The nutrient content (NPK fertilizer numbers) of say 500 ml of compost is 2.6 – 0.9 – 2 (average value for composted cattle manure; source Alberta Agriculture Department). If I now add this to a 5 gal pale (about 20 L), I still have the same ratio of nutrients, namely 2.6 – 0.9 – 24, but it is now diluted 40 times (500 ml to 20 L). The nutrient value of the tea is now 0.07 – 0.02 – 0.05. That is an extremely dilute fertilizer. For comparison human urine has a nutrient value of 11 – 1 – 2.5, that’s 160 times as much nitrogen as compost tea. Sure you can probably spread the tea over a larger area than a handful of compost, but if you do that the amount of nutrients added to the soil is negligible – so why bother??
The fact is that making tea from compost does not increase the amount of nutrients. It does not make the compost ‘go further’. If you want to add nutrients to the garden just add the compost directly.
In the post, Compost Tea NPK Values, I have a closer look at the NPK values and what manufacturers of the tea and kits for making tea have to say about their products.
Will Compost Tea Decrease Diseases?
This topic has been evaluated extensively, in reference #3 (link no longer valid). There are limited studies about disease reduction by compost tea, and the results are inconclusive.
The concept here is that the tea has a high concentration of microbes. When these are sprayed onto leaves they populate the surface of the leaves to such an extent that invading pathogenic microbes can’t take a hold. The good tea microbes out compete the potentially bad ones.
For this to work, the sprayed on microbes would need to colonize the leaves (ie live and breed on the leaves). This requires that the new environment, ie the leaf surface, has enough food for them and the oxygen levels are right for them.
Clearly, the oxygen levels would be high and so you can expect that anaerobic microbes would die out quickly. Anaerobic tea just won’t work.
The native microbes on plant surfaces are not well understood. There are anywhere from 1 to 10 million microbes on each 1 square centimeter of plant. Nobody knows what happens when more microbes are sprayed onto the leaf. I can’t help wondering why the large number of naturally occurring microbes can’t out compete the potentially bad ones and yet the ones sprayed on in the tea will do this??
In summary, there is little scientific evidence to support the idea that compost tea solves disease problems.
Does Compost Tea Add Microbes to the Soil?
There is no doubt this is true. You have a pail full of slimy microbes and if you spread it around the garden you are certainly adding microbes to the garden.
There is a new gardening trend of adding microbes to the soil under the assumption that the soil ‘needs microbes’. I’ve looked at this myth in more detail in the post Soil Microbes. In summary; the soil already has lots of microbes and adding a bit of tea is not going to make much of a difference.
If you are interested in identifying the microbes in tea you should read this before buying a microscope and taking Dr. Ingham’s course: Soil Bacteria – The Myth of Identification and Management.
The scientific study discussed in Compost Tea – Does it Work? clearly shows that adding microbes from AACT tea does not impact plant growth.
Can Compost Tea be Dangerous?
It is important to ask this question. Even if there are some minor benefits for using compost tea, they could be outweighed by risks.
Think about what you are doing when you make the tea. You are creating an incubator for microbes. You are providing the moisture, the food and the right oxygen levels to grow microbes. But which microbes are you growing? You have no idea know.
The reality is that along with the ‘good’ microbes you might also be growing ’harmful’ ones. You could be growing microbes that will make you or your plants sick. Tea that is aerated can contain Salmonella and E. coli both of which can prove to be deadly to humans. Remember the contaminated lettuce? That was E. coli contamination. You could also be growing microbes that are harmful to plants.
This study shows that adding molasses to increase the microbe populations can significantly increase the population of salmonella and E. Coli 0157.
The process for making compost tea is not selective – you grow whatever is in the pot.
I am confident that the risk is low. But why take the risk when the benefits of compost tea are at best, minimal?
Conclusion:
If you want to make some compost tea, go ahead. You will probably not harm anything and you just might have some fun doing it. But understand that there is currently no evidence that compost tea is any better than using just compost. Be a smart gardener and just spread the compost on the soil as a mulch. Nature will do the rest.
Further Comments:
This post now has quite a few comments. Many of them are from people with feelings about this topic but without any scientific evidence that their feelings are correct. If you have some references to discuss – please continue posting comments. If you have no valid references to support your position – don’t bother commenting, because I will not approve the comment.
For more information and explanations about the myths promoted by Dr. Ingham, have a look at these posts:
Teaming With Microbes – In Depth Book Review
Soil Bacteria – The Myth of Identification and Management
Teaming with Microbes – A Close Look, Part 1
Teaming with Microbes – A Close Look, Part 2
References:
1) Application of Two Microbial Teas Did Not Affect Collard or Spinach Yield: http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/44/1/73.full
2) Brewing Compost Tea : http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/brewing-compost-tea.aspx
3) Link no longer valid.
4) Photo source for Aerated Compost Tea: Lily Rhoads
I’m just trying to figure out how to make my grass grow better and to break down my extremely high clay based soil. I don’t want to raise the height of my yard by adding compost and I have around 6,000sq ft of grass. I’m assuming it would take a lot of compost to help. I thought the compost tea would help my situation. Now it seems I’ve wasted money on all the ingredients for the tea?? I feel like I like I just read that one bad review on Amazon that made me decide not to buy something even though there were so many good reviews! Please help!
Grass grows better with more nutrients, and more air. fertilize with either compost or synthetic fertilizer. Aerate at least once a year. Leave clippings on the lawn. The soil will slowly get better.
Compost tea will not work any better than compost. You can’t take a handful of compost, make tea and expect it to condition a big area.
I’m very new to the world of composting, and I’d prefer to keep things simple and cheap (don’t have the time or money to invest beyond that). I use simple plastic tubs with holes. I rotate them from time to time to encourage aeration (though not as often as I probably should, but I’m amazed at how quickly the process is nonetheless). Unless it’s really dry, I let the rain provide the moisture needed, and holes in the bottom to drain the excess moisture. But I realized I’m probably losing nutrients by not collecting that runoff. So I made myself a simple “compost tea” collection system, which collects nothing more fancy than the runoff. I was searching to find if there were any of my plants that should not be the recipients of that “tea” when I came across this article. Informative. Thank you. Surely, I would think, but maybe incorrectly, that there must be some benefit to using my simple “tea,” but now I’m wondering if it’s not enough of a benefit to make it worth my effort (again, I’m usually short inn time as it is). Thanks for any thoughts you might offer in response.
The run off from compost does contain nutrients and is good for plants.
The point of the article is that it is not worth making tea as a separate process – just use the compost. some people are taking your “finished compost” and then making tea out of it. This last step is a waste of time.
This link has a number of links with research from Universities contradicting everything yoy say here. There are real benefits of using aerated compost teas
http://www.casting4growth.com/research.html
The links are all about worm castings and worm casting tea – I never discussed that topic in this post.
No one doubts that worm castings provide nutrients to soil and plants. The important question is – is tea made from them better than using just the castings? Based on the titles of the links – none have looked at this question.
I may have missed it and this might be old but what about indoor container gardening. Would worm casting tea be beneficial to replace microbes that most likely die when soil dries in between waterings?
If the microbes die in the soil in the pot, then any you add will also die. That is one of the fundamental problems with the idea of adding microbes to soil. If the soil environment supports their growth – they are already there and you don’t need to add more. If it does not support them – adding them will not help.
Potted plants have lots of microbes – maybe not as many as garden soil, but they are not all dead.
Thanks for enduring the zealotry of the tea advocates Robert. After several years in the gardening biz, plus growing up gardening with my grandparents I find it amazing how many people are so detached from just plain old composting. Too many people these days didn’t grow up with any experience growing plants and will believe anything they read about quick fixes and miracle products while reading from their screens. Plus the internet offers up plenty of snake oil to anyone wanting to believe on all manner of topics.
I also find it amazing how many people will advocate for doing things the ‘natural way’ and then will go on to tell you how they’re brewing concoctions that are better than what nature does and sprinkling mined minerals (ie. Rock dust) that the plants just simply wouldn’t have if not for their intervention. This just doesn’t make sense to me. Even if your tea was adding huge amounts of microbes, minerals, fungi, this would only makes sense if you know you have an insufficiency of these. If you are constantly adding to soil that is already full of microbes, fungi, minerals, etc it is likely you are actually damaging nature and contributing to runoff just like the ‘green revolution’ of the past. Modern agriculture began with the exact same mentality that humans know better and if we only added these few nutrients in the form of fertilisers we could make nature better and produce more yields faster.
My experience has shown me that plants and their fungal and microbial partners are much more sophisticated than we give them credit for and believing that you can improve them by simply adding water to compost or sprinkling some rock dust on them is oversimplifying, even if it is made to sound complicated or scientific. I have been impressed by how convincing some of these products sound at first but when you look deeper they usually have all the signs of being an easy sell to those already wanting to believe, a marketers dream. You will never convince the zealots, even with clear evidence. Plus as we have seen in this thread there are many variables in nature that make it difficult for the believer to weed out the anecdotal evidence from the repeatable science, making the selling of such easy fixes hard to combat. Plus science as you have mentioned also has its limitations, leaving much to be studied further.
Keep up the questioning Robert, it is very valuable for gardeners to be able to see information from all angles so they can make their own informed decisions. There are many people whose experience has led them to similar conclusions to yours, they just aren’t as vocal as the zealots because they are out in the garden.
I like the statement “plants and their fungal and microbial partners are much more sophisticated than we give them credit for and believing that you can improve them by simply adding water to compost or sprinkling some rock dust on them is oversimplifying. ” so true.
And for the most part we still understand so little of this world.
Hi Robert, I am no great advocate for compost tea, and was genuinely interested by your article. However you ask for evidence of the benefits of compost tea. A simple search of google scholar generated this list: https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=compost+tea&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=&oq=compost+t
I haven’t time to read all 31,000 results but of the first eight peer reviewed articles, one (the oldest) requests more research and seven conclude compost tea has positive benefits, in a diverse range of areas. I also think you miss a crucial point in your ‘Does Compost Tea Increase Nutrients’ section; the locked up nutrients in the soil are almost always way more than the plant needs, the key question is which of those nutrients are actually accessible to the plant. A key argument for compost teas is that making the nutrients available in liquid soluble form makes them much more accessible, both as root and foliar feeds. Overall nutrients don’t increase, but accessible nutients do; that’s the theory anyway.
A lot of the articles found are not peer reviewed, test for very special cases, don’t do field studies etc. I used you search criteria and looked up this one: http://www.aensiweb.net/AENSIWEB/rjabs/rjabs/2010/424-430.pdf
This one has at least two problems.
1) It did not perform statistic analysis on the data. It looks as if there are some positive results, but without the stats we don’t know if the differences are significant. Given this fact, I doubt it was peer reviewed – no reviewer would allow this kind of reporting.
2) It tested compost tea against water. This is not very useful since the test should be comparing compost to compost tea. Nobody doubts that compost tea has more nutrients than water.
So this study, assuming the data is significant, only proves that the nutrients in compost, when applied as a tea benefit plants. It does not show that tea is better than compost alone.
Re:”A key argument for compost teas is that making the nutrients available in liquid soluble form makes them much more accessible”. This is the type of claim made but where is the proof? It is quite possible that as soon as these nutrients hit the top surface of the soil, that they are absorbed by soil particles, which would mean that they never reach the roots. This is in fact what happens to phosphates even when applied by liquid fertilizers so it is quite reasonable to assume the same happens to phosphates in tea.
How locked up are the soil nutrients? We are finding out that the availability of nutrients away from the roots is quite different from near the roots. The roots modify the pH of the soil around them, the rhizosphere, to make the nutrients more soluble.
Sorry Robert I can’t accept these articles are not peer reviewed. Of the eight I looked at, all are in peer reviewed journals, as far as i can make out.
On your point about locked up nutrients, I didn’t make any claims about proof. Rather, my point is that you ask ‘Does Compost Tea Increase Nutrients?’ and then dismiss this possibility. But no-one is really claiming that; the claim, as I understand it, is that tea increases the availability of the nutrients to plants.
I think your last para gets closest to the truth; we are only just beginning to understand the mysterious world of the soil, so should expect new discoveries all the time, and shouldn’t expect conclusive proof. I encourage everyone to look at the articles I cite and make their own minds up.
i did not say that “articles are not peer reviewed”. What I said is “A lot of the articles found are not peer reviewed, test for very special cases, don’t do field studies etc.”
Lots of people claim that compost tea adds more nutrients than compost.
You say “tea increases the availability of the nutrients to plants”. If the tea is not adding more nutrients, how exactly is it doing this? If this were true than a lab should be able to measure this – any reference that shows this increase of nutrients?
You can contol the microbial content of the tea with products containing strains of beneficial microbes and fungi like subculture M and B. This is a generalised article and full of Overly argumentative repsonses from the author. Anecdotal trials and evidence in my own expreiments have taught me that you are totally incorrect. Sometimes soils need help to stay healthy and an idiotic article like this is clearly just designed for the attention
How will adding beneficial bacteria to the bacteria already in the compost ensure that only those in the added bacteria grow? Show me a single reference that has identified the bacteria is such tea.
If you have conducted proper research – I’d love to see the references.
May I add a slightly different perspective? If a person put say 50 # of fish bones and guts into a 55 gal. drum, a shovel of garden soil, maybe some kelp, filled the rest of the drum with water, and allowed the mess to age from 6 months to a year, would this mixture applied as a tea be beneficial to lots of different plants?
Yes it would. But nobody doubts that. The question to ask is, would the tea work any better than composting the same material and using the compost. Or would the tea work any better than just laying the material on the ground. The current answer to this is no – the process of making the tea is not adding any value.
Thanks for your response, with which I certainly agree. However, making a solution of this gusty mess enables the nutrients to be spread more evenly among raised beds than plunking the solids on the surface. Additionally, there is far less attraction to destructive pests (e.g., raccoons, possums, cats, etc.)
Do you suppose I will have created any pathogenic organisms that should not be applied to the soil?
Again, thanks for your wise analysis.
Most animals do not go after compost. They do like some of the input ingredients going into compost making.
One of the reported concerns with compost tea is that user never knows if they are brewing pathogens. I don’t know how serious of a problem this is, but it is one argument against using compost tea. Spreading the compost does not have this problem.
Hi Thomas, if you leave that mixture in water for 6 months you are going to need to create a very hazardous foul-smelling poisonous substance. It will be very harmful to plants, humans, and other animals. Please do not try this.
Robert I can’t believe you haven’t said so in your repsonse. It clearly shows that you have very limited understanding in this area.
All of the microbes that usually exist in healthy un-waterlogged soil (I.E the sort of soil that most crop plants are adapted to grow in) will die within weeks. The drum will slowly be colonised by a much more limited selection of anaerobic microbes that float in as spores from nearby dead animals and other places like sewers. These microbes and the toxic substances (alcohols etc…) have no place in cropping environments, but you may find at the bottom of lakes where dead animals have been rotting for years, or in sewers.
E.coli and numerous other dangerous microbes that grow in STAGNANT WATER will most likely be present in the drum.
Your statement ” going to need to create a very hazardous foul-smelling poisonous substance”. You will still get decomposition and that releases nutrients. this is really no different than making compost tea without air. Your “toxic substances like alcohol” will be used as a food source once they are applied to the soil.
It is true that dangerous microbes might grow – but that is also true of compost tea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4564151/ Effect of Aerated Compost Tea on the Growth Promotion of Lettuce, Soybean, and Sweet Corn in Organic Cultivation
“In the study, application of aerated compost tea from organic compost based using MOVR (the mixture of rice straw compost, vermicompost, and Hinoki cypress bark compost) to the root zone increased the plant shoot and root growths and yield of the red leaf lettuce, sweet corn, and soybean. Thus, compost tea could be used as an agent for promoting plant growth in organic cultivation of crops.”
Thank you for posting a reference.
1) the study was done in the greenhouse, not in the field. Any results from it may not translate to the field – you certainly can’t assume they will.
2) the plants were grown in “media based with coconut beat and peat moss”. This is about as far away from real soil as you can get.
3) the application rate was “rate of 50 ml per plant” – that is huge compared to suggested field application rates.
This study shows that compost tea will grow larger plants than plain water, in a soilless mix that has very little nutrients in it. No body doubts that. It proves nothing about what happens in the soil.
It says that seeds were raised in a media based on coconut beat and peat moss, and then transplanted. It then goes on to say “Four treatments at the rate of 50 ml per plant were applied in the early morning every week for four weeks starting three days after transplanting (DAT) each crop seedlings to the root zone and foliage of plants. ” It doesn’t specifically say what they were transplanted into but I presume it was soil since it doesn’t say otherwise.
Hey Robert,
I just wanted to say thanks for a counter argument against ACT, some of what you said I agree with and some of it I do not. I was a little confused with the topic because there are many types of compost teas and I think you are referencing the steeped bag of compost method which is the most basic one. For use in a garden I don’t think you gain much benefit from using compost tea and I agree with you that it is more beneficial to just add the compost to the soil. Top dressing is always optimal if you have bed space. As a foliar spray compost tea can be useful because the bacteria in the compost tea break down the nutrients to a bio available state where the leaves can absorb the nutrients. It is marginal but if you water a lot it can green up the growth. It won’t be like a full blown fertilizer. The area where ACT is useful is in potted plants. In a pot you may not have room to topdress anymore compost so by making a compost tea you can get some of the benefits of compost without increasing planter/pot volume. If you use concentrated fish emulsion and concentrated worm castings then you can get a tea that is viable for all fertilizer needs.
Re: “As a foliar spray compost tea can be useful because the bacteria in the compost tea break down the nutrients to a bio available state where the leaves can absorb the nutrients.”
Foliar feeding is not an effective way to feed plants. Most of the nutrients just fall to the ground, and if absorbed, some of the nutrients, like calcium, stay in the leaves and are not transported around the plant.
Since brewing is only done for a few days, most of the organic matter has not been converted to nutrients. This takes years once the organic matter is in the soil.
The leaves are already covered with bacteria that would decompose any tea sprayed on them. I have seen no evidence that spraying bacteria on leaves add any benefits.
ACT, which promotes microbial or fungal activities is best for soil, that is, for root development. You measure the efficiency of compost teas by measuring the root growth in details, nothing else.
Fair enough on the foliar feeding. I honestly don’t know much about foliar feeding I am just regurgitating what I have been told in that regard. I have been told foliar feeding can help with some critical nutrient deficiencies because the leaves will absorb select nutrients faster than a root zone feeding but I do not have a source for that or first hand experience. What I do know is that bacteria and other beneficials are important in living soils. If you have a healthy soil then it will naturally balance the bad bacteria. The idea behind compost tea (at least what I have been taught and practice to great effect) is that if you formulate it correctly you are feeding the bacteria already in the soil and reinforcing their populations. The compost tea will not have a high level of available nutrients but the boost in biological activity will boost nutrient levels in the soil. It does take years for organic material to be broken down naturally but if you create an environment that is perfect for the decomposers then it can happen much quicker. This is why hot composting works quicker than cold composting. I want to clarify though that my compost tea is made from bottled compost extracts and is not made in the traditional way with bags of compost being steeping and aerated. I know there are some purists that would probably consider my method more of a fertilizer application then a compost tea. As for the traditional methods I don’t think they have much benefit for the reasons you already outlined I.e. There is simply not enough nutrient potential to make a difference. It may boost biological decomposition if organic material is already in the soil but if you have poor soil to begin with compost tea will do nothing. Also if you are using soil that is inert and relies on synthetics amendments then compost tea will do nothing. The only exception to this is if you make a compost tea with very specific bacteria in it then it can be used to flush salts from inert mediums but this requires a specific inoculant and cannot be achieved with just plain compost tea. If you think of compost tea in terms of feeding the plant then you will run into contradictions because it doesn’t make sense from that point of view. But if you think of compost tea as feeding the soil which in turn feeds the plant then it makes more sense. That is how I have been taught at least and I could be completely wrong about all of it.
“that if you formulate it correctly” – that is what people say but since nobody knows what is in their compost tea I see no way to do this.
“reinforcing their populations” – soil already has all the microbes it can handle. If it is low, the microbes there just multiply.
“boost in biological activity ” – people say this, but there is no evidence that there is any biological boost.
All of these kinds of statements sound good, but where is the proof? Where is the scientific research to show it actually works?
One other study more likely to be of interest for gardens, concerning strawberries:
Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems (Plos one, september 2010)
“Our findings show that the organic strawberry farms produced higher quality fruit and that their higher quality soils may have greater microbial functional capability and resilience to stress. These findings justify additional investigations aimed at detecting and quantifying such effects and their interactions.”
When you make any kind of compost tea it should be to increase the microbe and fungi population and activity in the soil which ultimately provides essential nutrients for the plants.
Making tea does not seem to increase fungi population – only bacterial, in the tea. Where is the evidence that adding tea to soil has any effect on the microbe population in soil?
The Bokashi composting method allows to easily produce at home with simple kitchen wastes fresh organic matters as fertilizers for the soil, in situ.
This may be unpleasant to the whole fertilizer industry (chemical and organic) but it is true. We all know that chemical, industrial fertilizers are nefast to the soil and so for the plants and the human beings (inducing the use of pesticides, fongicides and so on), but organic fertilizers are nothing but fermented organic matters in liquids or dried organic matters.
Those organic supplements can at very low cost be created at home through one’s kitchen wastes with the help of the bokashi method. And the best they are if one’s own food is organic and diverse, encouraging one to a healthy diet too, in order to give to the plants that one cultivates a healthy diet too as a consequence.
Thanks for listening
Not quite sure what you are saying here, but the comment “We all know that chemical, industrial fertilizers are nefast to the soil and so for the plants and the human beings”, assuming ‘nefast’ means wicked, is not true. I have discussed this in many posts.