By Josh Thomas, Director of digital media and communication
This month in my home garden I dug up a crop of sweet potatoes. They volunteered in our home beds all on their own.
They’re Tainung 64s, which are supposed to be wildly productive. For whatever reason, mine always come out long and skinny instead of nice and plump. I’m not sure why. Beauregard has done a lot better for me.
We also have Puerto Rican Black cowpeas ready to pick, and those were volunteers too! I planted some last year and got a little lazy about picking every pod. A few seeds dropped into the soil, and this summer they came right back up.
These are a really easy, fun cowpea for our summer months. I got the seeds from Cody Cove Farms. They tested over 20 cowpea varieties and found this one resists the cowpea curculio. That’s the tiny beetle that drills into your pods and lays its eggs inside. If it has wrecked your cowpeas before, give Puerto Rican Blacks a shot.
The timing on clearing those beds couldn’t be better. Last month we started a big batch of brassicas and greens, and they’re ready to go in the ground: kale, kohlrabi, Bibb and Freckles lettuce, and some mizuna.
Our Everglades tomatoes were struggling last month. I started a second round, and those are looking much happier. I may have been a tad late, but I’m not worried. Everglades tomatoes are tough as nails.
In the Apollo Beach Community Garden, we’ve turned one bed into a trial bed. The idea is simple. Grow a bunch of varieties of the same veggie side by side and see which one actually does best here. We’re starting with beets and radishes because they grow fast and we’ll get answers quickly. That’s 7 beets and 7 radishes going head to head. I’ll report back next month!
Compost Tea Class Recap
I mentioned last month that I was teaching a compost tea class at the garden, and we had a blast! The garden has a microscope, so we put drops of our fresh brew under it and looked at everything swimming around in there. It’s wild how much is moving in one tiny drop.
We spent most of the class on Actively Aerated Compost Tea (AACT). Here are the big takeaways:
- What it is: AACT multiplies the good microbes from your compost by feeding them and giving them a steady supply of oxygen. Think of it as a living soil treatment. It’s not really a plant fertilizer.
- Oxygen is everything: Keep dissolved oxygen above 6 ppm so the brew doesn’t go anaerobic and start making nasty byproducts. A little aquarium pump won’t cut it. For a 5-gallon batch, you want a pump that pushes at least 25–30 liters per minute (LPM).
- DIY diffuser: Instead of aquarium air stones, we drilled holes in an old garden hose and used that. We ran 8-gauge copper wire through it to help it keep its shape. Then someone pointed out that copper kills microbes. Not exactly what you want in a microbe brew! Next time I’ll probably go with aluminum wire. Anything that won’t rust should work.
- Your water matters: Most tap water has chlorine or chloramine in it. That’s great for clean drinking water and bad for growing life. Chlorine is a gas and will evaporate if you let the water sit. Chloramine won’t. The cheapest fix is vitamin C (ascorbic acid). About ⅛ teaspoon handles a 5-gallon brew.
- The brew bag: A 400-micron mesh bag seems to be the sweet spot. It lets the microbes out but keeps the chunks in, so your sprayer doesn’t clog.
- Bacterial vs. fungal: What you feed the tea decides what it turns into. Bacterial teas run on simple sugars like blackstrap molasses and are best for annuals and veggie beds. Go easy on the sugar, though. Too much can set off a bacterial bloom that burns through all your oxygen. Fungal teas are best for trees, shrubs, perennials, and tired soil. Skip the molasses for those and feed slower stuff like liquid humic acids, kelp, and cold-processed fish hydrolysate. Fungi grow slowly, and those foods let them eat without getting crowded out.
- Brew time & application: Brew for 18–24 hours. It should smell earthy, not sour. Use it within 4 hours.
Compost tea is a fun way to bring more life into your soil. It’s not for everybody, though, and some folks have real horror stories. My take? Most bad batches went anaerobic. That usually comes from a weak pump, too much food, brewing too long, or saving it for later.
Compost tea doesn’t keep. Use it right away.
How you spray it matters too, and a lot of people miss this. Spray it too fine and you can crush all the little critters you just spent a day growing! Keep it gentle: under 40 PSI with a coarse nozzle. If you’re using a pump-up sprayer, pull the nozzle off and check for a fine-mesh filter inside. If there’s one in there, take it out.