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A Cup of Tea for Your Garden: How & Why to Make Compost Tea

Compost tea is an easy, organic way to enhance your soil. It is rich in nutrients and microorganisms vital for plant and soil health. Compost tea is made by soaking composted materials in water, and then using the water in your garden.

There are a few different methods of making compost tea. Each one needs a relatively small amount of organic matter, and only takes a few days, or less, of brewing. Many gardeners find the benefits for their gardens are worth the little extra effort of brewing compost tea.

Benefits of Compost Tea

1. Provides a wide range of nutrients.

Compost tea contains all the water-soluble nutrients from your compost. This means that the richer your compost is, the more nutritious your tea will be.

The nutrients will naturally be more diluted than in straight compost, so there is no danger of harming your plants by over-fertilizing. You can give your plants compost tea regularly for gentle, ongoing nutrition support.

2. Boosts soil microorganisms.

Beneficial fungi, bacteria, nematodes and protozoa all naturally live in a healthy compost pile. Many of these microorganisms will multiply in a compost tea.

Microorganisms are what keep soils, and what grows in them, alive. A small particle of soil can contain thousands of different species of microbes. They break down organic matter, recycle nutrients, maintain soil structure, promote plant growth and control pests.

When you apply the high numbers of microbes typically found in compost tea, it will help the local plants and ecosystem literally from the ground up.

3. Suppresses diseases

Theres increasing evidence that plant diseases can be suppressed by treating plants with compost teas. Teas brewed from all different methods appear to have benefits.

This is most likely due to the enhanced microbial populations. They support plant health, and stronger plants are less disease-prone. Also, the beneficial microorganisms can out-compete and inhibit the harmful species both above and below ground.

What to Put in Your Compost Tea

The most important ingredient is, of course, high-quality compost. Compost made from diverse, healthy organic matter will give you the best compost tea. Well-aged compost is also preferable because the older it is, the more microorganisms it will have. It should have been decomposing for at least a few months.

The particles in your compost should be small and well broken down. This will make the nutrients and microorganisms more easily available to be released into the water.

If you have a worm box, worm castings also make excellent compost tea.

Its best to use well water or rain water if possible. If youre using tap water that contains chlorine, let it sit overnight for the chlorine to dissipate.

Manure isnt ideal for tea because its not as nutritionally well-balanced as a good compost. Research manure tea brewing before attempting it to make sure you dont spread possible manure-borne diseases.

Also, be cautious about adding extra ingredients to your compost tea. Plain compost naturally goes through a period of high temperatures as it decomposes. This will usually kill most pathogens.

But, some compost tea brewers recommend adding ingredients to increase the bacteria diversity in the tea. This is more common in aerated teas, which may add molasses, kelp, humic acid, fish hydrolase or other products.

These additives have not been heat-treated like compost and are shown to potentially increase dangerous bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella in compost teas. If youre using additives in your teas, avoid applying them to food crops.

Brewing Methods

One of the most important factors for a healthy compost tea is air. The beneficial microbes need oxygen in the water to reproduce. If you allow a tea to become stagnant, it promotes anaerobic, potentially harmful microbes to take hold.

You can maintain oxygen in your tea by either hand-stirring or installing an electric bubbler. Both methods are described below.

1. Anaerobic

This is the easiest method. You simply need to put some compost in a bucket, add water and let it steep for up to three weeks. Stirring it a couple times a day will help keep it oxygenated.

Any size of bucket or container will work, depending on how much compost tea you need. A good ratio is around one part compost to 3-10 parts water. If you make a more concentrated batch, you can dilute it more as you apply it.

Leaving your tea to steep longer will give the beneficial microorganisms more time to multiply. But dont leave your tea for much longer than three weeks, because it can start to stagnate and kill the beneficial microbes.

CaliKim has a great video that goes over the basics of anaerobic brewing.

2. Aerobic

Anaerobic teas have been brewed for centuries, but aerobic teas are a modern invention. They involve inserting an aeration device into your brewing compost tea, such as an aquarium pump. This will provide much more oxygen than simply stirring an anaerobic tea.

Instead of mixing compost directly into the water, it is suspended in a porous bag. This makes it easier to run a bubbler through the water. The nutrients and microbes will slowly leach out of the compost and into the water. It is only brewed for up to 24 hours.

A ratio of one part compost to 10-50 parts water is recommended, which is less than an anaerobic tea. This means the nutrients will be more dilute as there is less organic matter in the solution.

Its said this increased oxygen will produce more and better microbe populations. Currently, there is limited research to prove whether or not this is true. In fact, anaerobic compost teas are shown to have somewhat better disease controlling effects.

The only way to find out for sure is by experimenting with it in your own yard. If youd like to make your own aerated compost, Fine Gardening has an excellent description of how to set up a home bubbler system.

Many pre-made systems are available commercially if you dont want to make your own. Ask your local garden center if they can recommend one, or find one online.

You can also buy fresh compost tea at many garden centers. These are a good option if you dont have the time or interest in brewing your own.

Pre-packaged compost teas are available as well, although their quality is questionable. Alive and active microorganisms are a vital part of compost tea. These would be difficult to package for any length of time.

Using Your Compost Tea

Compost tea can be applied to any plants, either in the ground or in containers. Use it freely on your vegetables, flowering plants, trees, shrubs or lawn.

Most compost tea wont need dilution, unless you only have a small amount and want to make it go farther.

You can use compost tea as a drench by simply watering your plants with it.

Compost tea can also be applied as a foliar spray. Strain your tea through cheese cloth or a fine sieve first to remove any particles that could clog your sprayer. Adding a couple drops of mild dishwashing liquid will help the tea adhere to leaves better.

Foliar feeding with compost tea is shown to boost a plants immediate uptake of nutrients. Although, it doesnt appear to have any benefit on long-term soil fertility.

Make sure you use your tea as soon as its finished brewing to prevent any pathogen growth. If your compost tea smells bad, this likely means it hasnt gotten enough oxygen. Pour any rancid tea into an unused area of your compost and start a new batch of fresh tea.

Related
Which Type of Mulch is Best for Your Garden?
25+ Beneficial Plants That Ward Off Pests and Protect Your Garden
9 Beneficial Bugs and Insects to Welcome in the Garden

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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A Cup of Tea for Your Garden: How & Why to Make Compost Tea

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The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

By on Aug 1, 2016Share

The Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 50 groups including Black Lives Matter, released a detailed platform today to address the challenges that disproportionately affect black people — like environmental injustice.

A Vision for Black Lives identifies the public policies hemorrhaging the black community, and then provides possible solutions in the form of model legislation and policies.

The agenda comes in six parts, with sections that explicitly address the influence of the oil industry and environmental racism:

As part of the broader call to divest from criminalization and incarceration, the platform also calls for a divestment from fossil fuels. “Black people are amongst the most affected by climate change,” reads the agenda. Solutions include a strategy to invest in black cooperatives instead.
The call for economic justice also acknowledges environmental racism — including the way black communities have been built in close proximity to sources of pollution, like landfills and incinerators (and vice versa). Instead, the group calls for shuttering incinerators and financing renewable energy projects instead.
Black farmers face unique challenges, including flagrant racial discrimination. The platform suggests putting an end to black farm foreclosures and forgiving black farmer debt.

The platform focuses on policy as a tactic to address the myriad injustices black people face, including in the environment. Its release on the heels of the GOP and Democratic party conventions provides context for local, state, and federal campaigns aimed to meet the platform’s demands.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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The Movement for Black Lives calls for fossil fuel divestment

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Clinton Emphasizes Racial Justice, But Some Black Activists Are Unconvinced

Mother Jones

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As she accepted the Democratic nomination on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton asked her audience to “put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.” Coming one week after the harsh “law and order” tone struck by her opponent, Clinton’s statement was a powerful acknowledgement by a presidential candidate of the unfairness of the justice system for some minorities.

For the racial justice activists outside the Wells Fargo Arena, the feeling was different. On Tuesday, as the Black DNC Resistance March worked its way through Philadelphia, protesters chanted, “Stop killing black people,” and carried signs that said, “Hillary, Delete Yourself” and “Hillary, you’re not welcome here.” Hawk Newsome, an activist participating in the march, told USA Today, “Hillary Clinton has had a perfect opportunity in the last two or three weeks to say, ‘Hey, black lives matter to me, and here is my platform.’ She’s done nothing more than make some vague statements and tweets.”

Clinton’s racial justice platform has been a source of frustration for Black Lives Matter activists. During the Democratic primary, protesters called for the candidate to explain how she would help black communities. Clinton responded that activists needed to clearly define what they were asking for. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate,” she told a group of Black Lives Matter activists during a meeting last August. In October, Clinton met with activists from Campaign Zero, which had created a list of proposals for police reform, and she said her platform would take their concerns into account. The resulting platform did include some items on the activists’ wish list, such as the creation of a national standard for officers’ use of force and support for alternatives to incarceration, but it did not endorse Campaign Zero’s request to empower communities to hold officers accountable.

“One of the things Hillary said to us is she talked about the importance of communities being involved,” DeRay McKesson, a prominent activist and one of the Campaign Zero members at the meeting with Clinton, told BuzzFeed. “And we said, ‘Well, we don’t see that in your platform.’ Where are you giving communities any oversight or any authority?”

McKesson joined other leading figures in the Black Lives Matter movement in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention, but the activists have resisted openly supporting the party’s nominee. In June, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told Elle magazine that although she would probably cast her vote for Clinton in November, she would “absolutely not” endorse her publicly, citing the former first lady’s public support of the 1994 crime bill and the tough-on-crime policies it instituted.

Garza’s lack of enthusiasm for Clinton is not uncommon among younger black voters. When Clinton campaigned during the South Carolina primary, she relied heavily on the Mothers of the Movement, a group of black mothers who have lost their children to gun and police violence, in an effort to shore up her support in black communities. But Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died at the hands of New York police in July 2014, became a prominent surrogate for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Other activists, including Garza, said they had voted for Sanders during the Democratic primary. During the convention week, Sanders supporters and racial justice activists collaborated on protests. “She’s not performing where Obama was in 2012 with African American voters primarily because of younger blacks,” one pollster told BuzzFeed. “There is no progressive majority without this key component of the Obama coalition.”

Clinton has struggled to win over black activists, but she has also faced criticism when she embraces their message. When the list of speakers for the Democratic National Convention was first announced, police unions complained that widows of officers killed in recent police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had been left off the program, arguing that they should have been included alongside mothers of black victims of police and gun violence. On Thursday, family members of slain police officers addressed the convention, in a segment that had not been listed on the convention schedule until the day of their appearance.

As the campaign has progressed, Clinton has increasingly invoked the message of Black Lives Matter, most notably in her acceptance speech on Thursday. So far, however, her words of support haven’t been enough to win over many of the movement’s activists.

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Clinton Emphasizes Racial Justice, But Some Black Activists Are Unconvinced

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Chris Christie Really Wants You to Know He Doesn’t Like Black Lives Matter

Mother Jones

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At Tuesdays kids-table presidential debate in Milwaukee, Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.) tried to remind Republicans why they ever liked him in the first place—by getting really angry at everyone. Here are some of the targets of Christie’s attacks:

China: A former US attorney, Christie appeared to take the Chinese government’s hack of a massive database of federal employees personally. “If the Chinese commit cyber warfare against us, they are gonna see cyber warfare like they’ve never seen before,” he promised. Christie explained that his administration would then leak embarrassing details from its counter-hack of the Chinese government. “They’ll have some real fun in Beijing when we start showing them how they’re spending money in China.” In case there was any remaining ambiguity about his position on China, he unloaded on the Obama administration for not challenging China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. As president, he promised that his first move on China (even before he launched a cyber war, evidently) would be to fly Air Force One over China’s artificial islands. “That’ll show them I mean business,” he said.

Black Lives Matter: Christie has won praise for his campaign-trail compassion on substance abuse. That empathy doesn’t apply to victims of police violence. He ripped into Democratic politicians for, he alleged, turning their backs on police officers. “They’re not standing behind our police officers across the country, they’re allowing lawlessness to rein across this country,” Christie said. He promised things would be different if he’s elected: “When president Christie’s in the Oval Office, I’ll have your back.” Christie returned the subject unprompted later, even connecting support for Black Lives Matter to overseas engagements with ISIS. “When the president doesn’t support law enforcement officers in uniform, he loses the moral authority to command anyone in uniform,” he said.

Hillary Clinton. More than anything else, Christie wanted to talk about the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “She is the real adversary tonight, and we better stay focused as Republicans on her,” Christie said right off the bat. And he lived up to his word, responding to every question as if he were her likely opponent rather than an also-ran. He came prepared with a series of one-liners. (“The bottom line is this: Hillary Clinton’s coming for your wallet everybody”) and promised to “prosecute” her on the debate stage next fall. Clinton’s quip at the first Democratic debate that the enemies she’s proudest of in her career were Republicans also struck a nerve. Christie called it “the most disgraceful thing I’ve seen in this entire campaign.”

The only people Christie didn’t beef with were his fellow also-ran candidates on stage. The New Jersey governor explicitly refused to respond to a challenge from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. And in that respect, he won by default, as the only candidate who seemed to remember that the point of the smaller stage was to get off it.

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Chris Christie Really Wants You to Know He Doesn’t Like Black Lives Matter

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

Mother Jones

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German Lopez notes the reaction in some quarters to the recent shooting of a Texas deputy sheriff:

Despite any solid leads and facts about the motives in the shooting of 10-year deputy veteran Darren Goforth, some conservative media outlets and local law enforcement officials have already settled on the real culprit: Black Lives Matter.

….Fox News’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck later wondered aloud on air why Black Lives Matter isn’t considered a “hate group.” Bill O’Reilly was more blunt, concluding the movement was indeed a “hate group.”

….It’s not just Fox News — other reports painted narratives that put Black Lives Matter and police as inherently in conflict. A CNN report, for instance, described Black Lives Matter’s advocacy as “anti-police rhetoric.” What does it say about American society that advocating for black lives and ending racial disparities in the criminal justice system would qualify not as pro-equality but as anti-police?

This is hardly a surprise. Nor is it limited to conservatives. Liberals frequently fault anti-abortion rhetoric when someone kills an abortion clinic worker or anti-government rhetoric when someone shoots up an IRS office.

That won’t stop, but it should. People and groups have to be free to condemn abortion or police misconduct or anything else—sometimes soberly, sometimes not. And it’s inevitable that this will occasionally inspire a maniac somewhere to resort to violence. There’s really no way around this. It’s obviously something for any decent person to keep in mind, but it doesn’t make passionate politics culpable for the ills of the world. We can’t allow the limits of our political spirit to be routinely dictated by the worst imaginable consequences.

This is no apology for obviously incendiary speech. If you get on your soapbox and tell your followers to kill the pigs or murder the child murderers, then you bear a share of blame for what happens next. That’s both common sense and legal reality.

But we also need common sense toward speech that’s less immediately incendiary but still fiery or angry—or both. This is where change, liberal and conservative alike, comes from. It’s sadly inevitable that in a country of 300 million, even the minuscule fraction that fears change enough to go on a killing rampage amounts to a lot of people. But it’s neither a good reason to rein in our political vigor nor a good reason to blame passionate engagement in politics for every related tragedy. That way lies atrophy and rot.

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Let Us Now Praise Passionate Politics

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Trump Blasts O’Malley: "Disgusting, Little, Weak, Pathetic Baby"

Mother Jones

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Back in July, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley apologized for saying “all lives matter” to a group of Black Lives Matter activists who had interrupted one of his speeches.

“That was a mistake on my part, and I meant no disrespect,” the Democratic presidential hopeful said. “I did not mean to be insensitive in any way or communicate that I did not understand the tremendous passion, commitment, and feeling and depth of feeling that all of us should be attaching to this issue.”

Great, a well-spoken, sincere apology from a white guy who, if given the benefit of the doubt, probably just didn’t know any better. Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

In an interview on Fox News that is set to air Saturday night, Donald Trump blasted O’Malley’s apology.

“And then he apologized like a little baby, like a disgusting, little, weak, pathetic baby,” Trump said. “And that’s the problem with our country.”

Though many will groan at an adult hurling insults at another adult for realizing he made a mistake and attempting to correct himself, O’Malley may be loving the Trump exposure, considering he has been known to participate in some good old-fashioned trolling of the real estate tycoon himself.

Mother Jones has reached out to the O’Malley campaign, and we will update if it responds.

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Trump Blasts O’Malley: "Disgusting, Little, Weak, Pathetic Baby"

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Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, the Intercept released documents revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had been monitoring the Black Lives Matter movement since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, last August. Emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act showed that the department had tracked the movements of people at a Freddie Gray-related protest in Washington, DC, and had also monitored cultural events like DC’s Annual Funk Parade and prayer vigils in predominately black neighborhoods nationwide. DHS also tracked hashtags and other social media associated with Black Lives Matter.

Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Racial Justice Program, says that while this type of surveillance may not be illegal, it may have significant chilling effects that do infringe on people’s rights. “There’s no question at all that the kind of mapping identified by the documents provided to Intercept chills people’s First Amendment-protected activities,” she says. “Of course it makes people feel afraid to go to these kinds of protests because of the impact it might have in terms of law enforcement’s ability to gather intelligence about them.” It may difficult to tell if this has happened, but, Choudhury says, “The line is drawn when that effect takes place.”

Federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to monitor people and activities in public places. This includes attending, observing, and taking notes on protest activities. However, collecting and storing personally identifiable information on specific individuals is not allowed, with the exception of people suspected of criminal activity. Monitoring tweets and other social media posts, including any geolocation information associated with those posts, is also legal.

Asked for comment, DHS spokesperson S. Y. Lee told Mother Jones that the department’s National Operating Center did monitor Black Lives Matter for “situational awareness purposes” to “ensure that critical information reaches appropriate decision-makers in federal, state, local, tribal and territorial governments.” According to DHS documents, the NOC’s Social Media Monitoring and Situational Awareness program does not collect any personally identifiable information, and surveillance is conducted by searching certain hashtags and keywords on social media sites, not by watching particular personal user accounts.

The ACLU is also concerned that the surveillance of Black Lives Matter could amount to racial profiling. “Because of the predominance of people of color in the Black Lives movement, and the evidence that some of these documents show government surveillance of innocuous cultural events, including music events as well as peaceful protests that take place in historically black neighborhoods, there’s a serious concern that surveillance of Black Lives Matter and cultural events will lead to racial profiling,” Choudhury says. The Department of Justice bans racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies.

The federal government’s history of surveillance of black civil rights activists in the 1960s and 1970s also adds cause for concern, according to Choudhury. “We have these long-standing concerns that government has engaged in surveillance of people not because there’s evidence of wrongdoing, but because of what they think, what they believe, and what their ideology is, as well as the color of their skin.”

Determining whether the DHS’s monitoring of Black Lives Matter has had a chilling effect on individuals’ First Amendment rights or a disparate impact on African-Americans would require identifying people whose social media posts were monitored and who attended protests that were watched, and ascertaining the effect of the surveillance on them. “But based on the kinds of things that people interviewed by Intercept were saying, there is real concern that the impact is there,” Choudhury says.

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Homeland Security Is Tracking Black Lives Matter. Is That Legal?

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No Matter How You Slice It, Obamacare Reduces the Federal Deficit

Mother Jones

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We now live in the blessed era of dynamic scoring, something that Republicans have lusted over for decades. When the Congressional Budget Office makes economic projections, it can no longer just look at spending and taxes and subtract one from the other to get deficits. No siree. First they have to pay homage to the Laffer Curve and acknowledge that lower taxes will supercharge the economy and higher taxes will tank the economy. Then they recompute how much tax revenue they’re really going to get.

Anyway, CBO is now required to do this, so here’s their projection about how Obamacare will affect the federal deficit. Under the old-fashioned method, it will lower the deficit by $118 billion in 2025. But using the sleek new dynamic scoring system insisted on by Republicans, the truth becomes evident and Democratic evasions are exposed for all the world to see. Obamacare will, um, still reduce the deficit. But only by $98 billion.

In truth, this stuff is so open to interpretation and assumptions (and future congressional action) that neither number means much. Still, if you want to know if Obamacare pays for itself using our best estimates, it does. Even using dynamic scoring, it pays for itself. That’s more than Republicans ever do with their programs.

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No Matter How You Slice It, Obamacare Reduces the Federal Deficit

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Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (a John Hope Franklin Center Book)

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