Bring Your Soil to Life.
Because everything starts in the soil.
Red Frog Compost Teas wasn't built from a business plan. It grew from decades of curiosity, experimentation, and one simple belief: healthy soil creates healthier plants, healthier food, and healthier lives.
A Journey Decades in the Making
1970s
Discovered a love for gardening while growing up on California's Central Coast.
1980s
Took over managing the family garden, entered vegetables in local fairs, and learned firsthand that healthy plants begin with healthy soil.
Early 1990s
Began experimenting with compost teas and studying living soil biology, spending countless hours behind a microscope studying the biology that brings soil to life.
2000s
Continued refining recipes, testing ingredients, and working directly with growers to better understand the relationship between soil biology, plant health, and nutrition.
Around 2012
Years of experimentation became Red Frog Compost Teas, founded on one simple question: Could healthier soil produce healthier food?
2012–2023
Worked directly with farmers, ranchers, vineyards, landscape contractors, and commercial growers throughout the United States and around the world. Red Frog products were shipped to Canada, Israel, Russia, and the Philippines.
2023
Life demanded my full attention. Red Frog was placed on hold while I cared for someone I loved.
Today
The knowledge never disappeared. Neither did the passion. Red Frog Compost Teas is back, continuing the mission that began decades ago.
40+ Years Growing. 30+ Years Studying Living Soil Biology.
Our Story
Where It Started
I started gardening as a child on California's Central Coast in the 1970s. By the end of the decade, the family garden had become mine to manage, and I took it seriously. I grew vegetables, entered them in local fairs, and learned a lesson that has stayed with me ever since: what happens below the surface determines everything above it.
In the early 1990s, I heard about growers in Alaska using compost teas to produce results that didn't seem possible. It sparked my curiosity and sent me down a path I've never really left.
The first recipes were simple: alfalfa, kelp, humic acid, fish emulsion, worm castings, and Alaskan forest humus whenever I could find it. Back then, I wasn't trying to build a business. I was simply trying to understand why some soils produced extraordinary plants while others didn't.
Before long, I was spending as much time behind a microscope as I was in the garden, learning that the real power wasn't in the ingredients themselves. It was in the living biology they supported.
The Question That Changed Everything
Around 2012, someone I loved was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Watching her struggle to get real nutrition from food changed the questions I was asking.
What if healthier soil could produce healthier food?
What if rebuilding the biology beneath our feet could improve what ends up on our plates?
Red Frog Compost Teas grew out of that pursuit.
From Paso Robles to Growers Around the World
A friend who owned a local grow shop became one of my first sounding boards. Before long, local farmers, landscape contractors, and commercial growers began trying what I was making. The results spoke for themselves.
Cannabis growers told me deficiencies they had battled for years simply disappeared. Flavor improved. Plants became stronger and more resilient. Ranchers saw healthier pastures with higher protein and better micronutrient profiles. As growers shared their experiences with one another, the cannabis industry became one of our largest markets.
What began in Paso Robles eventually reached far beyond California. We shipped to some of the largest blueberry and hemp growers in the United States, along with customers in Canada, Israel, Russia, and the Philippines.
Whether it stayed in Paso Robles or shipped halfway around the world, the goal never changed: healthier soil, healthier plants, and healthier food.
Throughout those years, we worked directly with growers in different climates around the world, refining every batch and learning from every season. Living soil is never finished, and neither is learning how to work with it.
Why We Stepped Away
In 2023, I made the difficult decision to close Red Frog.
Someone I loved had become seriously ill, and caring for her would require everything I had. I was trying to run multiple companies while also making trips to City of Hope for treatment.
One morning, while we were having breakfast before an appointment in Los Angeles, I was on the phone with the state over paperwork I hadn't filed. She got up to use the restroom, and I realized I couldn't keep trying to do everything at once.
I made my decision before she came back to the table.
Red Frog went dark.
The months that followed brought more change than either of us could have imagined.
She passed away not long afterward.
The knowledge never disappeared. Neither did the reason this work mattered.
Why We're Back
Today we're back, sharing decades of experience, continuing to learn, and helping growers build healthier soil through living biology.
Our mission is the same today as it was when this journey began: helping growers build healthier soil so growers can produce healthier plants, healthier food, and healthier landscapes.