I've had my reservations about Elaine Ingham in the past. After reading more of her work though, I've come to respect her perspective.
But as she strongly implies in manual above, the AACT she's teaching how to make is really meant for commercial and market growers and farmers. It's not always practical for even a small grower with just several acres of plants to incorporate compost into their soil, or mulch heavily with organic matter. So good compost tea, applied to the soil, is highly beneficial.
But for the average suburban/backyard gardener, the much better option is to aggressively amend with organic material. Adding compost tea on top of that (into the ground) doesn't make much sense to me. My raised beds, for example, contain no purposely added inorganic "soil". It's all compost and mulch. There's hundreds of feet of clay below that for plants to sink their roots into, so there's no reason for me to add more. To say that the "soil" of my raised beds is teeming with life is a understatement. I suspect the same can be said of most backyard gardeners that are trying to implement organic practices.
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