Why would a tea kill plants?

I had a healthy crop of fourteen plants coming up, but on the application of the first tea half of them flourished and half of them wilted and died.


WTF

Any thoughts on why would be awesome. I've got no clue. At all

your going to need to provide significantly more details to get any meaningful answers, and I would say without pictures to go with the information there will be little to no help. gardeners and farmers alike has been using teas for a very long time so somewhere along the lines you made a horrible mistake.

If the dissolved oxygen (DO) in your "tea" got too low, you likely grew some anaerobic bacteria. Anaerobes produce a variety of plant-toxic compounds like alcohols, hydrogen sulfide, etc, etc.. Also, when the DO is too low, pathogenic (anaerobic) bacteria and fungi start multiplying instead of the beneficial (aerobic) ones. Some of those anaerobes cause root rot, which has symptoms kindof like you describe...

SpicySativa said:

If the dissolved oxygen (DO) in your "tea" got too low, you likely grew some anaerobic bacteria. Anaerobes produce a variety of plant-toxic compounds like alcohols, hydrogen sulfide, etc, etc.. Also, when the DO is too low, pathogenic (anaerobic) bacteria and fungi start multiplying instead of the beneficial (aerobic) ones. Some of those anaerobes cause root rot, which has symptoms kindof like you describe...

Click to expand...

I don't reckon DO got too low as I've got an air pump bubbling through it constantly. And I don't know what other details to provide. I grow organically with a homemade supersoil, I made tea from home worm castings, alfalfa meal, and brown sugar like always and after a few days when it was nice and foamy and smelling good I fed my babies with it. Half flourished, half had the foliage wilt off ~ I mean in the course of a day all the leaves lost at least some turgidity and color and it only got worse ~ and it doesn't make any sense.

Why would half be ok and half not?

Maybe it was the brown sugar or you brewed the tea for too long and it became rancid or produced too much nitrogen (cyclers). I brew mine for no more than 2 days. Most of the time i brew for only for 20 hours.

Poe Kerbuddons said:

I don't reckon DO got too low as I've got an air pump bubbling through it constantly. And I don't know what other details to provide. I grow organically with a homemade supersoil, I made tea from home worm castings, alfalfa meal, and brown sugar like always and after a few days when it was nice and foamy and smelling good I fed my babies with it. Half flourished, half had the foliage wilt off ~ I mean in the course of a day all the leaves lost at least some turgidity and color and it only got worse ~ and it doesn't make any sense.

Why would half be ok and half not?

Click to expand...

Actively aerated compost tea should only be brewed for about 24 hours. Also, you'd be surprised how much oxygen those microbes can consume. I ran some tests in a 5-gal bucket using an EcoPlus Air 1 commercial air pump, homemade castings, and molasses. Within about 8 hours, the DO had dropped from about 9 mg/L to about 0.5 mg/L.

As as for why only half were effected, we can only speculate... If you grew some anaerobic bacteria, it's possible they only established themselves in half your pots, while the others fended them off.

One way or another, your symptoms sound like serious root issues (like rot).