The brewing kit is enough to brew compost tea for raising seedlings. The germination trial at ZHAW Wädenswil ran with a 15-litre batch – recipe, quantities and results in the article Inoculating seed with compost tea.

Your compost breaks down faster when it contains enough of the right microorganisms. That is exactly what we brew with the EdaLife V15 – a compost activator you make yourself: 15 litres of compost tea in 24 hours from EdaBiom or a mature quality compost, poured straight over the heap.

Shop-bought compost accelerators and activators promise the same. They usually contain a few selected bacterial strains, plus nitrogen from horn or feather meal and some lime. That works, but it means a new pack every time, and the microbiology inside is whatever survived the factory.

A mature compost from a good farm has more to offer: bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes – the whole decomposer community that has proven itself during composting. You use this community as a starter. In the brewing system, the compost hangs in a bag in the water, the pump keeps the oxygen above 6.5 mg/l, and the organisms multiply many times over within a day. Around 3% compost relative to the water volume is enough.

Here’s how:

• Put 400 to 500 g of EdaBiom or mature compost in the bag and fill with 15 l of chlorine-free water
• Let it brew for 24 hours
• Apply within 4 hours: pour over each fresh layer and lightly moisten the whole heap

What the tea can’t do: it does not replace air, moisture or the right carbon-to-nitrogen ratio. A heap of pure leaves or pure grass clippings stays slow, even with the best microbes. Mix woody and green material and keep the compost as moist as a wrung-out sponge – then the organisms from the tea have work and food.

And the rest of the tea doesn’t go to waste. Whatever you don’t pour on the compost goes on the vegetable bed or the hedge, where the same organisms do the same job in the soil.

The compost is the key. Use the best you can get: mature, smelling of earth, with no smell of rot. If you don’t have any, use the EdaBiom from the kit or ask one of our service partners.