Compost Tea Puts the ‘Good Guys’ in Charge of Your Soil

Compost Tea Puts the ‘Good Guys’ in Charge of Your Soil

Compost tea is the superfood that gives your landscape a boost – a rich brew that uses the science of Mother Nature to improve soil. And as spring rolls into sultry summer, it’s a good time to plan for how doses of this rejuvenating liquid can help your landscape. Gardens of Babylon’s landscape maintenance team provides a new “recipe” to keep soil alive and healthy.

“I learned about the importance of compost tea at least 20 years ago, and it just made sense to me,” says Gardens of Babylon owner Mark Kerske, who oversees the brewing of compost tea for clients’ landscapes and gardens.

“The soils in Tennessee are not only compacted due to heavy clay, but also depleted by the constant use of toxic fertilizers, Kerske says. “Plants are now dependent on the fertilizers for growth, which have wiped out all the good, beneficial microbes in the soil. Using compost tea is the best way to put the ‘good guys’ back in.”

It’s a mixture teeming with life that nourishes your landscape without the use of toxic fertilizers. The life in the soil allows plants to manage their own nutrient needs. “Without a healthy soil food web, the pesticides and herbicides kill those good guys, and the crawly creatures that are in there working,” Kerske says. “If we don’t have that food web, soil structure deteriorates, and pathogens and disease start to take over.” With synthetic fertilizers, you kill the soil, he says. 

What’s brewing?

By “good guys,” Kerske refers to the micro-organisms that make up the nutrients in compost that improve soil. The tea is a liquid form of compost, but it has the extra boost from a buffet of treats — fish hydrolysates, humic acid, kelp, bacteria, fungi and other ingredients – to encourage those organisms to reproduce at higher levels. 

Gardens of Babylon’s new “recipe” used for the tea application depends on what’s best for your landscape: “If you want to grow a better lawn and annual flowers, you want to use more of a bacterial type of compost tea,” Kerske explains. “A fungal type of compost tea is better for trees, woody plants and perennials.”

It takes about 24 hours to brew a batch of compost tea, Kerske says. It’s an aerobic process: “When we’re brewing the tea, we’re injecting oxygen.” Moreover, the mixture remains oxygenated in the tank on its way to a clients’ landscape. “When you start to decrease the oxygen, the microbes start to die off,” he says. “Our tea is healthy, happy and full of oxygen when it’s sprayed on the yards.”

When? And how?

Spring, summer and fall are good seasons to give your landscape a dose of compost tea, Kerske says. “It’s usually applied once the soil temperature gets above 50 to 60 degrees.” It’s a good idea to first aerate a lawn, pulling out plugs of soil and allowing the tea to go deeper into the ground, “so it’s working a lot faster that way.” Spring is a good time to aerate, as well as fall, especially if you are overseeding the lawn ahead of winter, he says.

Compost tea is applied to established lawns, but is especially good for new lawns started from scratch. If soil is compacted, Kerske recommends three applications a year. “It’s taken years to make your soil bad, so it will take a couple years of applications to improve it.” 

The amount to apply is measured per square foot; usually, a typical residential lawn benefits from 50 to 100 gallons of compost tea, Kerske says. 

The Gardens of Babylon landscape team can provide a total maintenance package with tea applications – “weed and green applications is how we refer to it,” he says. “It’s one of the tools we use throughout the year to keep peoples’ lawns and landscapes healthy.”

Ready to rejuvenate your soil with a dose of compost tea? Book a consultation with the Gardens of Babylon Landscape Maintenance team here

Creating Your Stay-At-Home Oasis

Creating Your Stay-At-Home Oasis

If you’re a gardener, you already know the advantages of spending time outdoors: lower stress levels, less mental fatigue, a boost in creativity and a variety of benefits that can improve health. If you are spending more time working at home, playing with kids or just relaxing, why not make it the best outdoors it can be?

“A backyard oasis can be your own personal escape

says Eric Van Grinsven, a landscape designer with the Gardens of Babylon design team. “It’s the area where you can be when you’re stressed from work or things are getting to you, your little spot you can disappear to or just relax and be surrounded by nature.

Eric offers these tips for turning your outdoor space into a place for retreat, rest and relaxation with well-planned hardscapes, plantings and garden amenities.

A perfect retreat

  • Consider the space: Do you have a large, sweeping yard? A city lot with a moderate amount of space for a garden? Maybe all you have to work with is a deck or balcony.
  • Start by thinking about the sort of feeling you want to generate: Do you prefer a place that’s clean and uncluttered? Or do you see your ideal outdoor sanctuary being lush, full and densely planted?
  • What will it take to maintain your stay-at-home oasis? Can you hire someone to keep an expansive landscape in good order? Do you enjoy doing your own planting, mulching, watering and weeding?

before after nashville landscape

Landscape lights, pavers and plantings turn this plain backyard
in
East Nashville into an attractive retreat.

Find the right balance

In a large landscape, think about the areas where you spend the most time or views that could be visually pleasing, and focus your efforts there, Eric suggests. The same advice goes for smaller areas where it may be more of a challenge to carve out garden space.

“We want to strike a nice balance between planted spaces and open, flex area.” You can maximize the use of space in a small back yard with an equal distribution of hardscape elements, usable area, plantings, and open lawn, for example.

If your retreat is your balcony or deck, consider how much space you have to work with and what the primary goal will be. A collection of potted plants and rail hangers can bring you closer to nature. For a shady balcony, bring on the shade-loving perennials and annuals. Sunny areas can hold containers planted with herbs or a patio tomato or two.

Don’t forget the ‘extras’ for your Stay-at-Home Oasis

  • Lighting: Think about how you want to experience the space after dark, Eric suggests. Landscape lights make a space more usable at night for gatherings with family and friends, and in a new design, accent lights are easier to install as part of the construction process. Lights can also be strategically placed in an existing landscape or patio design.
  • Irrigation: An irrigation system is a big help if you have an extensive lawn of water-hungry fescue, or if your plantings are so extensive it’s difficult to accomplish watering with a hose or sprinklers.
  • Outdoor audio: Music, provided through outdoor speakers via a Bluetooth receiver, can add a soothing layer to your peaceful retreat, or be a lively addition to gatherings of family and friends.
  • The extras: A firepit, custom designed walls, trellises and other hardscape elements, along with containers, statuary, sculpture or other art, specimen trees or shrubs and other amenities make your stay-at-home oasis unique.

You get to experience the world the way it was meant to be, and it’s in your own back yard,” Eric says.

Click here to schedule a free phone consultation or to set up an initial appointment with Gardens of Babylon’s design team (Eric Van Grinsven, Mike Omar, Ryan Fogarty).