I've heard of compost tea from John Kohler, and have an excess of swamp water at home, but can't exactly transport much of it well to the community garden, so I was wondering if I could make "bog coffee" from table scraps, coffee, and water I've let sit for at least a day to evaporate chemicals.
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1What’s *swamp* or *bog coffee*? – dakab May 18 '16 at 04:34
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1the purported benefits of compost tea come from the bacteria and fungi in compost. You're not starting with compost. – Graham Chiu May 18 '16 at 04:35
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aren't kitchen scraps and coffee grounds by default what you start compost with? – black thumb May 18 '16 at 05:56
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Biological matter + composting bacteria + temperature + oxygen + dirt + weeks=> compost – Graham Chiu May 18 '16 at 09:43
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1@blackthumb By the same logic, you could try making a sandwich out of a flour-water paste. – Stephie May 18 '16 at 09:43
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The idea of compost or manure "tea" is to extract the nutritients from the compost into the water.
Those nutritients were made available in the compost by various life forms from worms to bacteria and fungi digesting the scraps and "pooping out" the broken down materials. That's the definition of "composting".
If you steep kitchen scraps in water, you will get some kind of "soup", but not the nutrition-rich compost tea you are looking for - simply because you didn't compost them.
Stephie
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1And as it anaerobically rots, you'll get a terrible stench, attracting all sorts of unsavory insect life. – Graham Chiu May 18 '16 at 09:40
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If you don't want a compost pile, you can do sheet composting which just means digging the coffee grounds, and other vegetable matter directly into the ground. – Graham Chiu May 18 '16 at 20:28