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.

Terra Composter Revealed

GardenSuperMart.com has released images of the Terra composter that they are going to be carrying next year. Compared to other composters, I think it looks like a nice, stylish change from the big black one I’ve currently got in my backyard. That said, I'm going to have to wait to see the price before I decide whether or not to purchase it.


What I really like about this, as I said above, is that it LOOKS nice. A lot nicer than what I currently have hidden in the back corner of my yard. I bought one of the rain barrels that GardenSuperMart.com carries (the smaller one), and this looks like it's made of the same plastic. If it is, then I know that it's not going to be too heavy, and that it will stand up to a lot of abuse that I may put it through.

The back door is apparently designed in a way to make it hard for rodents to get into, which is definitely a plus for it. I've had problems with raccoons in the past, so anything that will detract from the raccoons getting into my composter is appealing to me.

I've never bothered to make compost tea before – I know, it's supposed to be great for container gardening, and for house plants, but it just always seemed like much too much work for me to bother. It looks like this new composter, however, has an area to collect compost tea, and a spout to drain it from the composter. I can definitely see how this would benefit someone who is as lazy as I can get. ;)

The one part I’m not sure whether I like about this composter is that it looks like it would be a little difficult to turn the compost, as it looks a lot thinner than it is tall. It might be hard to get all of the compost mixed together properly.

What do you think about this compost bin? Is there anything in particular that you like or dislike about it?