Understanding the Magic of Compost Teas and Compost Extracts

When I was first introduced to compost teas and compost extracts I was totally confused as to how they could possibly work. The concept didn’t seem to make sense quantitatively but using these liquids provided amazing plant growth results. Questions to people who were supposed to know didn’t help. My concern was how is it possible for a liquid solution to provide the plants with the nutrients needed for their growth and production when it is derived from such a small amount of compost. It was not until I came across the work of Dr. Elaine Ingham that I found the answers that made sense.

Dr. Inghams’s work primarily involves studies of the living biology in the soil. Her studies also involve the living biology than can be extracted from the compost into a liquid. The studies are backed by microscope analyses of the living organisms in the liquid extracts. It is these living organisms that matter most but because we can’t readily see them we don’t understand much about them. We understand the interaction of living forms that we can see. We understand how plants and animals form a balanced ecology and how important it is to maintain that balance. We don’t easily realize that a complex ecology exists in the soil and water that is as complex and fragile as the one we can see.

Dr. Ingham’s work revealed that most soils have adequate nutrients but lack the necessary diverse micro organisms to extract the nutrients for plant use because farming practices such as excessive tillage, compaction, use of inorganic fertilizers and chemical pesticides have damaged or destroyed the biology of the soil. The key word in the previous sentence is diverse. In order for the organisms in the total biological population of the soil to extract the nutrients from the soil and convert them into a form that the plants can use there must be diversity among the microbial life. Just as in our own above ground environment we see different plants and animals do different things. That is how our environmental resources are optimized. For example, animals eat the plants and convert the plant cells into protein and humans eat the animals to get the benefit of the protein. The same scenario exists in the microbial environment. One type of microbe will eat another and convert the cells to another form needed by another microbe or by a plant. If a necessary microbe type is missing the process is damaged.

So how does this answer the question of how a liquid solution can provide the plants with the nutrients needed for their growth and production when it is derived from such a small amount of compost? The answer is that the liquid is not supplying all of the nutrients. It is supplying the biological life that will extract the nutrients that are already there in the soil as well as the nutrients supplied in the liquid. The nutrients and the biological life is extracted from the compost and exist in the liquid. The nutrients provided in the liquid is small compared to the nutrients already available in the soil.

A quality organic fertilizer will add additional nutrients but must also add the necessary diverse biology to make those nutrients available to the plants. The biology is amazingly complex and fragile. The bacteria and fungi do their work and then protozoa, nematodes and micro arthropods take the process a step further. If this biology has been destroyed by use of chemicals or by adverse farming practices the nutrients will remain in an unusable state. A properly prepared liquid extract of that quality fertilizer can restore that biology and produce amazing results in the plants growing in that soil.