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
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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
Berkana’s comment is correct. If you add water to any compost and let it sit in a bucket unaided by the need for aeration, what you are making is a septic bucket of dangerous anaerobic bacteria. What you will end up with is a plethora of anaerobic bacteria, some of which very easily could be E-Coli, depending on the constituents of the compost used. NEVER use manure to make compost tea, especially if you don’t aerate it.
If you use that anaerobic tea to spray your fruit trees and those trees have fruit on them, and some child pulls off a ‘fresh treat’ from that tree, he/she could get very sick.
ALWAYS aerate your tea, and you will be rewarded for it.
Here’s my tried and true recipe:
In a clean 5 gallon bucket add:
3 gallons of (de-) or non-chlorinated water, R/O water, rain water, or water from a stream you know to be pure water. Do not use distilled water as it is missing the necessary minerals.
1 – 2 cups worm organic castings. Can be bought at almost any gardening supply shop.
2 fluid ounces fish emulsion
2 fluid ounces unsulphured molasses
2 fluid ounces kelp extract
Use an aquarium pump with a couple good size aeration stones. I use air stones that are 4″ long and 2″ in diameter. You want good movement of the water while injecting plenty of oxygen.
Depending on the temperature of the tea, you will have to aerate for 24 to 48 hours. Temps below 65 degrees – 48 hours, above 65 degrees – 24 hours.
You can add other nutrients to the tea depending on what you are growing.:
Add a bat guano high in phosphorus (1 tablespoon per gallon of tea) when flowering or fruiting plants. Additions can be added in the last 12 hours of the tea process.
Have fun!
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