My grandmother did up until mid1950's -- a 500-gallon tank half filled with horse manure in the spring and filled with water. We kids would bucket it out to water potatoes, cukes and the like. We would top off the tanks at the end of chores.

In the mid-1950s she discovered Vigaro salt fertilizer and abandoned the tank of manure tea. The tank was still their in 2003, rusting among 40-ft tall trees.

She had the fields manured in the Fall with cow manure from a local dairy but would not use on food crops. I never did know why, me not speaking or understanding her.

Having made and much appreciated tea brewed from composted steer manure, I can understand in part. Without active aeration the manure tea become much ranker than that made from horse manure.

I grew wonderful brassicas using manure teas for my own consumption. I applied it directly as a sidedressing soil drench to well established seedlings. I wouldn't use it on any veggies anywhere close to harvest nor on lettuce and other low leafy greens.

I buried a 32-gallon plastic trash can three quarters the way down, added 1.5 cu.ft. bag of composted steer manure and added water to near the rim and set the lid tightly. For a month or month and a half I stirred the soup as often as I could until fermentation pretty much stopped. Then I used a ratio of 1 to 4 of tea to water. By this time all sediments had settled out.

As an organic small farmer I'm not allowed (with good reasons) to use raw manures in such a way.

Occasionally I purchase vermicompost tea made by high-aeration process and spray on non-bearing crops. The business is owned by a friend and the material is tested from time to time, so I trust the tea.

My grandmother did up until mid1950's -- a 500-gallon tank half filled with horse manure in the spring and filled with water. We kids would bucket it out to water potatoes, cukes and the like. We would top off the tanks at the end of chores.

In the mid-1950s she discovered Vigaro salt fertilizer and abandoned the tank of manure tea. The tank was still their in 2003, rusting among 40-ft tall trees.

She had the fields manured in the Fall with cow manure from a local dairy but would not use on food crops. I never did know why, me not speaking or understanding her.

Having made and much appreciated tea brewed from composted steer manure, I can understand in part. Without active aeration the manure tea become much ranker than that made from horse manure.

I grew wonderful brassicas using manure teas for my own consumption. I applied it directly as a sidedressing soil drench to well established seedlings. I wouldn't use it on any veggies anywhere close to harvest nor on lettuce and other low leafy greens.

I buried a 32-gallon plastic trash can three quarters the way down, added 1.5 cu.ft. bag of composted steer manure and added water to near the rim and set the lid tightly. For a month or month and a half I stirred the soup as often as I could until fermentation pretty much stopped. Then I used a ratio of 1 to 4 of tea to water. By this time all sediments had settled out.

As an organic small farmer I'm not allowed (with good reasons) to use raw manures in such a way.

Occasionally I purchase vermicompost tea made by high-aeration process and spray on non-bearing crops. The business is owned by a friend and the material is tested from time to time, so I trust the tea.

Since that manure tea is all water the nutrients it holds will simply flow out of the soil unless there are sufficient levels of organic matter in the soil. If there is little organic matter in your soil to hold the nutrients from that manure tea will just flow out into the ground water polluting that and will not build up in the soil. If there is a sufficient level of organic matter in the soil to hold those nutrients from the manure tea there is a possibility that you could add too much.

Marshall, did you grow those wonderful brassicas in NH? It's curious about the fresh-manure tea on potatoes, because I always heard that they won't tolerate even a hint of remotely fresh manure. Maybe as a side-drench it a different situation?

Thanks for the replies. I forgot to mention this is just on pasture, grass and ornimental plants. I don't have a food garden and won't for a few years. It will take quite a fence to keep the wild hogs out of a garden.

The brassicas were in California about 25 years ago in fine sandy soil trucked in to make a terraced garden for a customer. I started using on ornamentals as a quick tonic and trialed the tea on the stuggling edibles. Very prompt response. I also used the stuff to foliar feed fescue-dominated and bermuda-dominated lawns with good results.

So, an easy source of quick nutrients and perhaps as a source of microorganisms. My only concern with prolonged use would be build up of salts that are concentrated in steer manure. Adequate rainfall or irrigation would move these minerals out of the soil zone.

I doubt that the amount applied and lost from the root zones would be enough to contaminate regional groundwater. This is not a lagoon system for a animal containment facility.

Pat, composted manure tea is not fresh manure. My grandmother grew an acre of Kennebec type potatoes for a family restaurant and market using only manure products. She ruined her system quickly using Vigaro, first using too much (couldn't read English) and then burning up the organic material too fast. The farm was on the glacial fluvial terrace comprised of almost pure sand. Great for potatoes.

"composted manure tea" meaning that the tea is aged, not necessarily that it is made from composted manure, right? I would think that the manure being fresh would help the tea to burble and ferment......

No, I used Bandini steer manure that was a dewatered and semicomposted and uniform produce. I ran a composting test on 25 cu.ft of bagged stuff (a bit less than one cubic yard). At the end of the very hot composting process I was left with about 60% of original volume. So, I guessed that it was about half composted when I bought the material.

Fermentation went pretty fast as I would expect. Fermentation is supposed to retain more of the nitrogen. I never tested this through a lab.

could I use fresh manure to make a tea, to pour in my soil, a few weeks before I plant my veggies(or fruit)?

Are you using Ivermec monthly for parasites? Or ever? If not then I would leave the manure in the pastures. If you are using a parasiticide then consider that your tea is also an insecticide. You may not want to kill the insects in your soil.

How often do you rotate the animals from pasture to pasture? How many animals and how big are the pastures? If you can get the manure concentrated enough, and you are not using Ivermec, you will be visited continually by dung beetles which will dispose of all your manure in 24 hours from the time it hits the ground. You won't have any dung to make tea from but you will have the richest pastures in the area. I've seen fence line pictures of this method in action, but I don't have them to post. On one side of the fence was a full pasture of grass about 4-5 feet high and on the other side was typical of what you see around Texas, scrubby brush and bare soil. The good side had not had seed, fertilizer, herbicide, irrigation, insecticide, hormones, or Ivermec for 15 years. Cattle were concentrated at 300 animal units (brangus cow/calf pairs) on 50 acres for 2 weeks at a time. So his stocking density per pasture was 6 per acre while his neighbors were running 1.6. Normal stocking rate for the county was 1.6 AUM per acre and this guy was easily getting 4.8 AUM per acre over 15 pastures. All he did was not medicate, move them a lot, and let Nature take her course.

So I'm saying save your good manure for the pastures.