It depends on how you use it. As a root drench you can use it undiluted if you wish or diluted 1/2 and 1/2. But if using it as a foliar spray then heavy dilution is recommended - common recommendation is "dilute to the color of weak iced tea".

Since compost teas can vary greatly due to components and method used to make there is no "set-in-stone" guidelines for use, dilutions, or frequency of applications. You have to go by the individual plant's response.

Saving it once made can be difficult as nutrients deplete out of to the air in open storage or it can turn anaerobic if stored covered for any length of time. Common recommendation - use as made.

You can find much more info on it in the FAQs and discussions over on the Compost Forum and the Organic Gardening forum here.

Dave

http://www.gardenweb.com/gardenweb/query/Compost-tea/topic=organic

Compost doesn't have a lot of readily available nutrients, so leachate from it won't result in a lot of readily available nutrients either. In fact, I often wonder if compost tea is the hard way to leach nutrients from compost. Seems like just digging it into the soil would do it automatically. That is, unless you wanted to do a foliar spray.

I had a "discussion" like this in the Compost Forum recently, and was met with what can only be described as meanness by tea lovers who, I guess, felt threatened. There are some real characters who hang out there.

One benefit of compost tea is that you can use just a little compost to benefit many plants. That's the main reason why I use it occasionally. Alfalfa tea is the same way. If you have enough compost to spread even just a half inch around plants then you can just let nature work and "brew" your tea for you when it rains or when you water.

I have read claims that there are also some disease suppressing and antifungal properties to compost tea when using it as a foliar spray but I haven't actually done much reading on that aspect. I would imagine how well it works would depend on the quality of the compost.

Rodney

Using a compost infusion should have benefits if you are trying to colonize your soil with beneficial microbes that it has under receptive conditions, or in foliar spray which might exclude bad bugs to the extent whatever is applied out competes it, like Serenade, a bacterial based pesticide that works on this principle.

Diluting it for fertilizing not so much but helpful anyway, but for inoculating good bugs, why not!

Cheers

PC

Spreading compost as mulch is certainly the easiest way to get whatever leachate benefits you can get from compost. Nutrients, microbes, whatever. But dumping compost in sacks and squeezing water through those sacks is, I guess, for those who like their tea brewed in the classic way and are willing to work to make it happen. One lump or two?