Our Brewer Works

Two years ago my brother showed me a compost tea brewer. I asked him how it worked; he told me that it turns compost into foliar. My father got so excited, he bought one. I was not convinced with my brother’s explanation so I made my own research. Then several days after my father bought the brewer, there was chaos. Everyone within 5 meter distance from the brewer could smell rotten egg or even worse. There was something wrong with this brewer. I can’t believe the commercially sold brewer could win an award with so many faults. I decided to intensify my research and eventually make my own brewer. The first compost tea brewer I made was so big for our farm. It was so big; it can brew up to 100 gallons of compost tea. I made a smaller one, good for 5 to 30 gallons. The brewer was intended for our farm, when visitors ask where we get our organic foliar fertilizer, we just point them to the brewer. Since then, people started asking us to make one for them. I named it the R.E.A.C.T.O.R. which stands for Reliable, Effective, Aerated Compost Tea Of Raymond. We now custom build compost tea brewers, from the small 5 gallon brewers to the biggest 250 gallon models. I also teach the principles of compost tea brewing so everyone can make their own brewers. It is very important to understand how it works before building one, rather than building one and discovering it doesn’t work. Our brewer works, we have the farm to prove it!

Fast Forward

First I would like to apologize for not posting updates about our farm. We’ve been so busy preparing for agri-link. Here’s what happened in the farm for the past several weeks. First, the mung beans grew to almost a meter high. We then incorporated them in the soil. While waiting for the mung beans to decompose, we started sowing lettuce seeds and other vegetable seeds in our greenhouse. With regular watering of compost tea (more about compost teas later) the leaves of the green manure decomposed faster than expected. We then planted our first set of vegetables on their respective plots. By-the-way, we also built trellises for our creepy crawling veggies. A little background about our trellises; it’s made of good lumber coated with wax. Why wax? Because we can’t use chemical wood preservatives since we practice organic farming. We even used beeswax on six of our eight sets of trellises. Here’s a short list of vegetables and fruits we’ve planted so far: twelve kinds lettuce, bitter gourd (ampalaya), cucumber, upland or Chinese kangkong, water gourd (upo), papaya, okra, coriander, Chinese parsley (kinchai), Chinese kale, arugula, spinach, eggplant, tomato, three kinds of pepper, beet, turnip, radish, carrots, two kinds of onion, soy beans, pole beans (sitao), snap beans, corn, French marigolds and stevia. WOW! I never realized we had this much variety in our farm until now. And we still have so many seeds waiting to be sowed.

Manure that’s not yucky – you can actually eat them

Most of us especially non-farmers would react violently to the word “manure”. But we’re not talking about dung, muck, crap and most of all we’re not talking shit. We’re talking about green manure. Green manures are plants grown to temporarily cover the soil and then later incorporated in the soil to improve soil fertility and structure (Ooops! Too much soil there). Legumes are the favorite plants to use as green manure because of their nitrogen fixing capabilities. These plants fix nitrogen from the air, water and soil and deposit them in their roots for future use. Usually, these plants are helped by nitrogen fixing bacteria called rhizobia (it almost sound like my surname). The fixed nitrogen is visible in their roots and can be seen by the naked eye as pinkish nodules. Too bad for these plants because they don’t get the chance to produce flowers and fruits. They are incorporated into the soil before they start to flower. That's why they are usually called sacrificial crops. It is before their flowering stage that their stored nitrogen is at its maximum. After most of the plants are decomposed, we then plant the crops we intend to grow. The next set of plants will be the ones using the stored nitrogen. Poor green manure.

The Plot

Everything’s set, the pump, the greenhouse, the tool shed, now it’s time to stretch some muscles (believe me, I have some, hidden under a thick layer of fat). The vegetable plots are probably the most labor intensive task we’ve done in the farm. Even though my father owned a small hand tractor, we decided not to use it. We chose not to disturb majority of the soil food web. We didn’t even put into practice double digging. Kilometers of worm tunnels made the soil naturally loose.

With the use of a cultivation fork, a spade and a rake we started to build 1 meter by 5 meter elevated plots. We opted for smaller plots so we can easily diversify and manage our crop rotation. At the end of each day we plant mung beans on each plot. The beans will serve as our green manure (more in this on the next post). After more then two weeks we ended up with almost 60 plots, most of them already have grown mung beans.

To give you a brighter idea on how loose our soil is; it would only take two men less than 30 minutes to bury (vertically, of course) a 20 foot pipe.

Diversity in Tools

The roof for the tool shed was finally installed and is now ready to house our tools. It is important to have the right tools and knowing the proper way to use it. A two person job can easily be done by a person with the right tool – assuming he or she knows how to use the tool of course.

Let us give you some tips on buying a good tool. First, buy the best brand you can afford but make sure you’re paying for quality and not the packaging or brand name. Buying a cheap tool would only cost you more. Second, ask a fellow gardener or farmer who actually use the tool. I’m sure you’ll get a good, if not the best, recommendation. Third, if you’re buying a tool make sure you try handling it before bringing it to the counter. Some handles are so rough or so small that we cannot handle it in actual situations. And also, make sure to leave some handle-space in case you’re planning to use gloves while working with the tool. Fourth, learn about materials. Example, stainless steel is better than iron or metal but definitely more expensive and hard to come by. Stainless are harder to sharpen but stays sharper longer than metal. When buying metal tools always look for the words tempered and forged.

A greenhouse that’s white and yellow

While we were cleaning up, we were already planning where to put the greenhouse. The original plan was to put up a small greenhouse, about 30 square meters. Since building a 60 square meter would cost almost the same, we decided to construct a bigger one. This would probably be the most expensive tool in our farm but, for me, the most essential. The greenhouse will serve as our nursery, seed bank and will house our small vermicomposting facility (more on vermicomposting soon).

Time to gather the materials to build the greenhouse. We purchased more than 50 pipes of different sizes. What’s amazing was all of the pipes you see in the picture were loaded on a single tricycle and traveled 10 kilometers all in one go! We then asked for help from our friends to build the frame and install the plastics and nets. After 10 days the work is done.

While we were building the greenhouse, our tool shed was starting to take shape…

Hoe hoe hoe!

Weed – any plant that grew out of place. Right now all plants that are growing in the farm are considered weeds. Sad to say, we have to get rid of them. But none of these plants will go to waste. Most, if not all of them, will become compost. We have an average sized pond beside the future site of Daily DOSE Farm. Since it’s a dried up pond, we decided to turn it into a big compost bin. It has more than enough space to fit all of the leaves and trunks of the plants we’re going to gather. Weeds that are growing outside of the area were spared since it will serve as the buffer zone for our farm. Initially the area intended Daily DOSE Farm is around 1000 square meters, no need to hoe beyond that range.

It is important to have a plan before starting any venture. So please, DO NOT remove any weed in your farm or property if you have no plan on developing the site yet. Doing so will destroy the soil food web. Weeds will probably grow back anyway if you do nothing. Better plant a nitrogen fixing plant or cover crops to preserve and develop the soil and at the same time suppressing weed population.