Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Compost Tea

I’ve had a lot of people asking me lately what the benefit of compost tea is, and how to make it.

So, what’s so great about compost tea, anyway? Well, it’s a very easy way to add nutrients to your garden. It can be used either by spraying it on the leaves of your plants, or watering your plants with it. Personally, I like using it for my houseplants and container garden where I don’t get to use my compost as mulch.

There are a lot of tea brewers out there, and other instruments that claim to help make your tea brewing easier, but you really don’t need these. It’s a very simple process to make effective compost tea.

What you need:
  • Burlap bag

  • Large Bucket

  • 1 part compost

  • 5 parts water
Place your compost into the burlap bag, and let it soak in the bucket of water for a few days – I wouldn’t recommend longer than 5 days. By five days, you’ve already got all of the good nutrients into the water. At this point in time, your compost tea is ready to use! Just put your compost tea in a watering can, or a spray bottle, and go at your plants. Keep in mind that compost tea does not keep for a long time – if you don’t use it up almost immediately, it can become anaerobic.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where do you find burlap bags--not a million--just a dozen or so? Haven't found the kind I'm thinking of yet by googling several different ways. Advice? Please reply to adase@paiarch.com

thx, Amy

Anonymous said...

Hardware stores carry burlap to wrap your plants in over the winter, so they should carry the bags as well.

If not, this website sells them: http://www.preparedness.com/floodprotsan.html