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Sir, If you think I'm going to set my alarm clock for 2 am, just to stir my chicken manure tea, then, come back and jump into bed, after it's been splashed on me, well.........
I do take your point, but I'd say, stirring every hour is like baking your eggshells, to make it easier on the chickens.
You need to keep oxygen in that mix or else your aerobic (oxygen breathing) bacteria will die and anerobic (non-oxygen breathing) bacteria will take over. There will be SOME kind of bacteria breeding (aka, "brewing") in that watery mix -- it is up to you whether it is the beneficial aerobic bacteria or else the harmful anerobic bacteria that you breed.
The only important point is to keep enough oxygen in that mix to allow the aerobic bacteria to live and to continue breeding.
It doesn't matter HOW that oxygen gets into the bucket or garbage can.
You could hook a strong aquarium pump to a 5 gallon bucket, and use that to infuse oxygen into the water. The directions for doing this is somewhere on the net -- if I recall, it is on either the Pennyslvania State University website or maybe it was the Pennsylvania Extension Service website. It is on some website out of Pennsylvania, I am sure. I remember running into the directions for how to do this when I was preparing to teach last years organic gardening classes, and it seemed pretty easy and relatively inexpensive to do. Main costs was the pump and some plastic tubing, if I recall correctly.
If you did that, then you would not have to add the oxygen into the water manually at all.
You said that your mix stinks when you use it, then you equated that with fish emulsion.
Those two smells are of completely different origin.
Fish emulsion smells because, well, frankly, fish smell. Even healthy, normal fish smell. So that odor, while mildly offensive, is not indicative of a problem that might harm your garden.
But the same cannot be said of the "swampy" smell associated with stale water. That swampy smell is the smell that anerobic (non-oxygen breathing) bacteria emit, and it is a warning to you that the bacteria in that water will be more harmful than helpful to you if you insist on spraying/watering your garden with it.
Why add something to your garden (like adding harmful bacteria to the garden soil, which you will do if you add compost tea that smells "swampy,") that is going to do more harm than good?
I already said, "Point taken" and have been thinking about how to areate it...The aquarium pump would be a good idea. I could just hook it to my light timer, for about 2 hours, each evening.
I'll be studying on it. In the meantime, I'll be stirring, vigorously, once a day. Thanks.
