Question
Can I BUY compost tea? Where? If not, pls tell me how to make it. I am planning to go organic!

Can I compost using "Peat Humus" available at Lowes? Will that contain the beneficial fungi?

Will that take care of the chlorosis too? I bought the home 10 days ago and the seller said they fertilized it. He probably used some chemicals which caused all this!!


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Followup To

Question -
I have read so much about all this but it is all theory. What is a simple way to differentiate between all this.

If the patch is irregular, does that RULE out brown patch? Does brown patch HAVE to look circular?

If it starts near the curb is it chinch bugs?

I know so many criteria but I am not able to tell for sure what my lawn has.

Can you give me some tips on how to tell:

- brown patch
-drought stress
-chinch bugs
-grubs
-take all
- anything else that looks similar (like iron chlorosis)

Pls help!!!

Answer -
Chinch bugs?  Grubs?  Brown Patch?  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

You know what's the matter with your lawn, Girish?  Your lawn has Chemicals Disease.

Because Organic Lawns never get these things.

And Chemically treated lawns always get these things.

Scott's likes it that way.  It's good for business.

Healthy soil does not grow chlorotic grass.  But if you have Chemically treated your lawn, and created moon dust there in front of your house, you have destroyed all the microbes that make great soil for great grass.

The best way to handle this is ALWAYS to build up your soil.  You want to returned the microbes that were destroyed while you were making the Scotts Family stockholders rich.

Fungi are ALWAYS present in soil everywhere.  They keep each other in check.  Birds eat bugs.  Unless you kill the birds and/or destroy enough bugs that the birds get tired of foraging for food and head someplace more bird-friendly.  That's the deal, plain and simple, Girish.

The solution is Compost Tea.  Sounds like a hocus pocus answer, doesn't it?  It's not.  It is a highly saturated liquid teeming with microorganisms that are good for your soil, and therefore, good for your grass.

If you want a recipe, let me know.

Here's how it works.  You pour the Compost Tea on your grass and wait while the microorganisms multiply and make themselves at home.  They attack any unwanted Fungus and your Fungus problems, if you ever had them, are gone.

Grubs are not a problem unless you don't have birds and/or you have destroyed the predatory fungi and good bacteria and protozoa in the soil.

For Chinch Bugs, I refer you to Dirt Doctor (www.dirtdoctor.com/view_question.php?id=14), who addresses this very problem with the following advice: "When weather turns cool in the fall, a beneficial fungi called Beauveria spp. moves in and kills these pests. It appears as a grayish cottony mass of fungal hyphae. Keep lawns moist and don't over fertilize. Bigeyed bugs are a natural enemy."

Think over your options.  Let me know what you decide, my friend.

Answer
Great to hear from you again, Girish.

The best Compost Tea is the one you make yourself.  Ingredients are simple: Get some Great Compost, and just add water.  And for the record, this is not something you want to drink.

Start with Compost.  I recommend the "Alaskan Magic Organic Humus" from Earth Fortification (www.earthfort.com/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=4&cat=Compost).  For $8.99 plus s/h, you get "thousands of species of beneficial bacteria and fungi necessary for soil biology and chemistry".  

My concern here is that we don't want to pour these microbes over soil with too many chemicals - residual herbicides and pesticides might be too strong.

So to be safe, I would wait until spring.  

Since the Alaska Humus is a living product, it would be best to order it when you are ready to go back outside and start cooking.

Here's one recipe:

1. Put 1 shovel of Alaska Humus in a 5-gallon bucket of
Water, preferably rainwater.

2. Let Humus + Water mixture sit outdoors for a week.  Stir daily.  

3. Optional: Add 2-3 tablespoons of sugar: Molasses, Brown Sugar, Corn Syrup or another simple sugar.

4. To this you can add a few cups of:

1. fresh fruit,
2. corn meal,
3. Epsom salts,
4. green weeds,
5. a can of fish,
6. garden or woods soil,
7. apple cider vinegar (1-2 Tablespoons only),
8. alfalfa meal.

Stirring occasionally adds Oxygen.

The Sugar in step 3 is optional, but for the record, sugar products are mostly Carbon, which is what the micropopulation devours.  Molasses also contains sulfur which is a mild natural fungicide.

The tea is ready when a foamy layer appears on the surface.

Apply straight or diluted.  

This formula is the best possible fertilizer you can put on your lawn -- or your garden.

And if you want to get an idea of what these microscopic things look like, Girish, the SoilFoodweb posts full color photos of these microbes on the internet at their website (www.soilfoodweb.com/03_about_us/microscope_pics.html).

As for the scientific community's opinion of Compost Tea, Cornell professor Dr. Eric B. Nelson gives it his blessing:  "Whereas the short-term magnitude of turfgrass disease control using compost-amended topdressings may not match that typically achieved with fungicide applications,
the longer-term level of control often equals or exceeds that attainable with fungicide applications.?br>
Let抯 read that again: 揈QUALS OR EXCEEDS THAT ATTAINABLE WITH FUNGICIDE APPLICATIONS.?br>
See what I mean?

Here抯 more:  "This is, in part, related to the ability of composted topdressing amendments to gradually reduce populations of some pathogens in turfgrass soils, an effect not realized with fungicide applications.?

Did you see that?  慉N EFFECT NOT REALIZED WITH FUNGICIDE...?br>
Pretty incredible, don't you think, Girish?

Because if everybody did things this way, the Scotts Companies would either go out of business, or start selling Alaska Humus.  Which would be a very good thing!

The Cornell Phd. also says: "The level of turfgrass quality is also greatly enhanced over what one would typically achieve with fungicide applications."

For now, it would not hurt to apply a few bags of ordinary Humus over your soil for the winter.  The earthworms will love you for it.  So will your grass.

Keep in touch and we'll talk again later.  Peace,