How To Make Organic Compost Tea
Subscribe to www.GardenMandy.com by Email
Email this post to a friend.
Compost tea, mmmm…yum. Doesn’t that sound delicious?
Well, it may not sound appetizing to you, but it’s great for your plants and vegetable garden. I have found this easy concoction to be a life saver, literally. It is packed full of nutrients that make for happy vegetable growing.
If your plants are looking a little under the weather follow this recipe and watch the results. Now that you have your own organic compost, let’s put it to good use. Luckily making compost tea is easy.
Here’s how you can whip up your own batch:
- Mix 5 parts water to 2 parts compost in a container, and let it sit for 3-5 days.
- Use a sieve to strain your compost tea
- Fill up at squirt bottle with this rich looking liquid and spray directly on plant leaves that have bacteria or fungus growing on them or plants that have a disease.
- Thats it. Easy and effective right?
QUICK TIP: Add a little bat guano to your compost tea for fantastic results!
So the next time your plants are looking sad, make them happy! Feed them some compost tea. Take it from me, your vegetable garden will thank you.
Stay tuned to GardenMandy.com for more helpful hints for the growing garden
Related Posts:
Accademic studies have been done on the topic of compost tea; it is not enough to brew it with water; it needs to be aerated with some food for the aerobic bacteria for several days. Compost tea fights plant diseases by propagating beneficial bacteria that repel disease bacteria, but all of the beneficial bacteria are aerobic. Any old compost won’t make a good tea if it has a significant anaerobic component.
Fine Gardening magazine’s DIY technique was to make the compost and water brew (5 gallons), add an ounce of molasses to fuel the bacteria, and to use a couple of aquarium air stones and an air pump to aerate the brew for a couple of days before straining out the liquid for immediate use. All other compost tea brewing kits and machines do likewise. Spraying non-aerated compost tea can harm a plant by infecting it with disease rather than defending it with aerobic bacteria. See this:
http://www.taunton.com/finegardening/how-to/articles/brewing-compost-tea.aspx
just wondering best why keep bugs off of tomatoes