How to make Home Garden Compost Extract Using the Soil Food Web (Small)

I’m K TheGuy Soil Food Web Consultant. In this episode I talk about the method to making small batches of compost extract for your home garden. This is full of beneficial microbes supporting plant health and ultimately human health in our foods.
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[@wayneholmes4207]

On your small 5 gallon bucket system, have you tried dumping the compost directly into the water and just mix up the water or use your bubbler.
Then jut poor the mixture through your strainer into another bucket. I think it yields more biology into the water.

[@KTheGuy]

With the compost freely floating in the water the ability to compress and massage against the walls of the micron bag would be lost. Massaging the materials is a very important step in the process. Without any way to filter the microbes in that physical process would lead to lower numbers overall. The methods are meant to detach the microbes from the organic materials they are clinging to which requires a degree of physical force. This was all taught by Dr Elaine Ingham who has been developing these methods over the last 4 decades.

[@brianseybert192]

I get why you do not want hot water from a hose, but why cold?
I have been using sun warmed rain water when I make extracts, is there a reason why I should stop doing that?
A couple off subject question.
Been using a lot of chop and drop of comfrey and other materials on my raised beds. How much of the nutrients are actually returned to the soil? I can not get a definitive answer.
Will hot composting kill beneficial fungal spores? I never let my hot compost get beyond 160F, try to flip at around 145F. Experimenting with adding mostly finished leaf mold to my resting hot compost to increase the fungal component.
Second year using no external imports for my garden. I check my soil amendments, extracts and teas with a microscope, opened a whole new world.
One thing that bothers me with a lot of UA-cam videos is people are recommending using teas and extracts but not using a microscope, they have no clue what they are producing.
Stay Well!!!

[@KTheGuy]

Cold water will have a higher amount of dissolved oxygen. The higher the oxygen amounts we start when making our extracts the longer the period that our beneficial microbes will stay in suspension without any of the “bad guys” coming out of dormancy as oxygen levels start to drop. This is especially crucial when making teas as the temperatures will affect the beneficial microbe growth along a data curve. The amount of nutrients returned to the soil will depend on the health and uptake of the plants cut down. Typically nitrogen levels are higher in spring than fall. If you want more fungal biomass you will need a higher carbon component to your compost, plus the maturation phase which takes time and proper moisture levels to achieve. Microscopy is the only true and verifiable method for determining microbes.