Compost Tea

It doesn't sound all that appetizing to us, but compost tea is one of the best things to feed your plants. Compost tea is exactly what it sounds like: compost that has been steeped or brewed in water. When you steep or brew compost, all of the nutrients and microorganisms from the compost leach out into the water, providing you with a liquid fertilizer that you can either use directly on the soil around your plants or as a foliar feed by spraying it on the leaves.

Benefits Of Compost Tea

Compost tea provides plants with a supply of nutrients and beneficial microbes that help plants grow stronger and assist them in fighting off less-desirable organisms. When you use it to water the plant at soil level, all of the nutrients and microbes go directly to the root zone where the plants can start using them as a gentle, slow-release fertilizer. When you use the compost tea as a foliar feed with a sprayer, the plant takes nutrients in through its leaves. This gives it an instant boost of fertilizer, resulting in rapid greening and stronger growth. A combination of both root-level and foliar feeding is ideal, because then the plant has both slow-release and quick-release nutrients available to use.

How To Make Compost Tea: Two Methods

The Simple Method: Compost Leachate

This is the easy way to make compost tea, though purists insist on calling it 'leachate.' Either way, this simple version of compost tea will provide your plants with plenty of organic nutrients, and is a perfect water-soluble fertilizer or foliar feed. To make it, simply scoop some compost into a piece of cheesecloth, a sock, or an old nylon stocking. This is your 'tea bag.' Tie the bag shut, and drop it into a five-gallon plastic bucket. Fill the bucket with water, stir it, and let it steep. It should steep for two to three days, and you will have better results if you can remember to stir the contents of the bucket at least once per day. This will introduce oxygen into the compost leachate, and help prevent the bad odors that will happen if the tea isn't aerated enough. After the two to three days are up, you will have a dark brown liquid. Remove the bag of compost (which you can empty out onto your compost pile or directly in the garden) and dilute the leachate with more water. You should end up with a brew that is the same light brown color as the regular tea you drink. Use it to water any of the plants in your garden, or as a foliar feed. If you do this every two weeks, you will be giving your plants a constant source of nutrients.

The More Complex Method: Brewing Compost Tea

If you really want to get into your compost tea, you'll want to make a compost tea brewer. You can purchase these items, but they're fairly expensive. To make your own, all you need is a plastic five gallon bucket and an aquarium pump and hoses. Of course, you'll need to brew your tea in an area where you have access to electricity. Set up your pump and hoses so that the hose end reaches the bottom of the bucket. If you can get a splitter so that you have several hoses going into the brewer from your air pump, that is even better. What you want are bubbles. Lots and lots of bubbles, delivering oxygen to the compost tea and keeping all of those beneficial microbes alive, happy, and multiplying. Scoop some compost into the bucket, add water, turn on your air pump, and let the whole thing brew for up to a week. This kind of compost tea works best when you use it to water the soil around the plants. By keeping the tea oxygenated, you increase the number of microbes in the brew, and those microbes, when added to the soil, help your plants grow much stronger by battling troublesome microbes and helping your plants absorb nutrients from the soil.

Whichever method you use, you will see happier, healthier, more robust plants.