Soil Amendment & Top Dressing

I use castings to amend the soil when planting a start into the garden.  After digging the hole, I add a handful of castings & other amendments, & dig it into the surrounding soil.  When making up potting soil for a houseplant, I make castings to be a third or less, of the mix.  Also, when sowing seeds in a flat, I cover the seeds with sifted worm castings.

I also occasionally top dress house plants by adding a small amount to the top of the pot.  You could top dress your garden plants also, but it’s not utilized as efficiently as getting it down in the root zone when first transplanted.

Actively Aerated Compost Tea (AACT)

Last summer I learned about actively aerated compost tea from reading Teaming With Microbes by Lowenfels & Lewis.  To make AACT, you put castings (or regular compost) in a porous bag, which goes into a 5 gallon bucket of de-chlorinated water, & aerate it for 12 hours using an air blower.  I have the 5-gallon setup sold by KIS.  The purpose is to exponentially increase the population of beneficial, aerobic microbes; and apply this tea to the soil & leaf surfaces.  These authors state that the bacterial population grows from 1 billion in a teaspoon of compost to 4 billion in a teaspoon of AACT.  That’s 1 teaspoon out of 5 gallons!  As a practical matter, AACT apparently supports plant health by increasing nutrient cycling, suppressing disease (by outcompeting pathogens for space and food), and improving soil structure.

Here’s a good article on the subject.

http://www.soilfoodweb.com/03_about_us/approach_pgs/c_03a_aerated_tea.html