Boost Your Soil Composting Results with Compost Tea
Boost Your Soil Composting Garden Efforts with Compost Tea
Avid practitioners of compost gardening know that there is no better all-in-one fertilizer and pesticide than plain old compost and it is called tea. No, not the tea that you drink but the tea made from the mature compost mixed in with water and then steeped for a number of days before applying to the plants.
Reasons for Using Compost Tea Catchers
You might be asking about the valid reasons to go to the trouble of brewing and straining compost tea when you can just apply the plain compost on the plants. Well, there are many but ultimately it is that well-brewed compost tea contains more beneficial microorganisms that can almost double plant growth rate.
In particular, compost tea helps in preventing foliar diseases that affects many plants, it increases the quantity of nutrients made available for the plants, and it speeds up the breakdown of harmful toxins that delay plant growth. Many gardeners even report enhanced flavors of the vegetables upon which compost tea is applied.
Indeed, if you are not yet using compost tea in your garden, you are missing out on a many benefits. So, starting today, get your hands dirty and make tea.
Composting Supplies You Will Need
You will need supplies for making well-brewed compost tea. Of course, you can probably skip on some of the equipment but we suggest purchasing all of them since it will be an investment that can benefit you and your garden for many more years to come.
With that being said, you should have an aquarium pump sufficiently large run three bubblers, several feet of plastic tubing, a gang valve, three bubblers, a study stick for mixing, organic unsulfured molasses, strainer like an old pillowcase and a big bucket for decanting the tea.
- It is important to have the aeration equipment since tea that uses up oxygen too quickly will stink to high heavens and become anaerobic. Keep in mind that anaerobic tea is counterproductive to plant growth.
Process of Making the Compost Tea
To start making the tea, you can follow these simple and easy steps;
- Connect the pump and the gang valve using the tubing. The tubing should go into the 3 ports of the gang valve with the bubblers at the other end.
- Place the bubblers into the bottom of the compost bucket and then fill it halfway with mature compost.
- Add in tap water, which has been aerated for an hour to remove any traces of chlorine, to about an inch or two of the bucket’s rim.
- Feed the resulting mixture with the organic unsulfured molasses and then stir.
You should vigorously stir the mixture a few times each day. This will introduce oxygen to the mix as well as shake the mixture of as many harmful organisms as possible. Also, you must reposition the bubblers at the bottom to ensure that these gadgets are still evenly positioned.
Your compost tea should be ready in 2-3 days.
- If it is, you have to strain it into another bucket using the old pillowcase and then use the tea immediately.
