Have I poisoned my plants?

Question

I heard about making "compost tea" and because we're trying to be more "organic," I thought I'd try it out. I figured rot happens naturally, so I just dumped a bunch of mushroom compost in a bucket, poured in some water, and left it outside for a while (2-3 weeks maybe). Later, I filtered it into jugs (it smelled like pond mud). I also spread what was left in my bucket (the solids, after filtering) around the garden here and there, thinking, rotten stuff = good stuff for plants. Today I looked on the 'net for info on how to use the "tea." Now, having read in several places that I pretty much got it wrong from the beginning, I'm worried that, at best, all I really have is stinky water, and at worst, I may be killing the plants where I put the wet, rotten stuff. I haven't used the tea itself. So--- what do you think? Did I s***w up as bad as I think I did? Is that stinky mud going to kill my plants? What would you do-- can anything be saved if I basically poisoned the ground?

Answer 1

you need to do a root flush NOW!! if ur plant is small enough up root it carefully with a dirt clod and run clean water through untill the water becomes clear again after passing through the soil clod

Answer 2

How do your plants look?  If they start to look unhappy, just remove the solids, and if you think they caused an acid situation, add a little garden lime.

Answer 3

What's bad for plants

///////// salt

Hardly any land living plant tolerates salt. This is because land plants use a number of clever techniques to pump water from the ground up through their roots, stems and leaves. If the soil is salty, the salt draws fresh water out of the plant through its roots and the plant will suffer dehydration, even though the soil is moist. Only mangroves and a few species of sea grasses can tolerate salt.  Reguarding home made fertilizers, salt should not be a problem unless the starting material was salty to begin with.  Some animal forage has salt added for the benefit of livestock, like "salt hay".

/////// Lime

This is Calcium carbonate dissolved from limestone and is what makes water "hard". Most plants tolerate some amount of lime in the soil. Some can in fact grow in almost pure limestone and of course there are certain species which can't tolerate lime at all. The majority of these sorts are bog plants which live in acid soils rich in peatmoss. High precipitation washes all the minerals from these sorts of soils and the plants tend to be lime intolerant. Heather is the best example. It comes from the florist covered in pretty little bell shaped flowers and is dead within a month if watered with hard water. Blueberries, Azaleas, Rhododendrons, Holly and many conifers prefer acid soil low in lime. Most compost mixtures are already highly acidic due to the decomposition of organic materials, so lime will not be a problem. Lime is washed out of the soil by any acidic solution.

/////////////// anaerobic bacteria

Bacteria were the first forms of life on earth, and at the time the earth did not have any oxygen in the atmosphere. Green plants hadn't evolved, and all life fermented organic material anaerobically. When plants did evolve, the sudden increase in Oxygen killed nearly everything non-green. The earth came very close to being a planet populated only by plants. Of course some bacteria learned to tolerate oxygen and these were of course the ancestors of everything non-green. However, the surviving anaerobes managed to survive by living in oxygen poor environments, such as deep at the bottom of mud pools. Ordinarily, plant's roots live in a balanced association with anaerobic and aerobic bacteria. However, if the balance is upset, anaerobes can flourish. They work to lower the oxygen content around the roots. Like animals, plants actually need oxygen too, especially the roots. Many plants will suffer root loss and even death if the soil becomes soggy and polluted with decaying organic material. This is perhaps the main concern for anyone attempting to use decaying organic material as fertilizer. As always, there are plants more and less adapted to oxygen poor soil. Bald cyprus  trees in the swamps of Louisiana have special structures on their roots which grow above the waterline and act as snorkels. This allows the roots to get oxygen even though they are submerged in mud. Epiphytes living attached to trees generally need lots of oxygen around their roots. Orchids easily loose roots if the medium is too moist. Then there are those sorts of plants which have such high nutrient demands rotting material is no problem for them. The plants absorb the decaying material so quickly they outcompete the anaerobes. Corn is a good example. Native americans in fact planted each kernel over a buried fish. Tomatoes also have huge appetites. The brugmansia I grow (a floral relative of the tomato and petunia) needs water and fertilizer nearly constantly to grow well. Its roots are nearly constantly wet with moderalely high levels of fertilizers.