If you have heard about the health benefits of green tea on your body, then you will likely appreciate the goodness of compost tea on your plants and garden soil.

Both are prepared the same way, too – steeping in water until the goodness of the hummus or the leaves are extracted into the resulting liquid.

The Goodness of Compost Tea

The emphasis is on ready compost as making tea out of partially decomposed materials will cause harm instead of good for the soil and the plants.

Your efforts in making compost tea are well worth the benefits derived from them, which include:

• Improved plant growth because the compost tea protects the surfaces with good organisms. Thus, pests and diseases are prevented from attacking the plants.
• Improved soil structure due to the increase of nutrients as well as the reduction in the use of chemical fertilizers.
• Improved nutrient absorption from the soil into the plant because of the increased amounts of nutrients in the soil as well as the lack of pests.
• Lesser need for the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides mainly because of the increased nutrient uptake and the decreased presence of pests.
• Lesser water loss as the soil itself is better at holding on to the water. As a result, you also save on your water bills.

As you will observe, the benefits of using these compost gardening tips are interrelated and interconnected. Again, think of drinking your green tea for comparison purposes.

Compost Tea Production

The creation of compost tea is very simple despite its many benefits. That’s the beauty of making your own compost tea instead of buying ready-made products from the garden supply store.

1. You simply take an old bucket with no holes in it but with its tight-fitting lid still in place.
2. Place the ready compost about two-thirds of the way of the bucket’s rim, pour water until the rim and then replace the lid.
3. Just be sure that the lid is neither screwed too tightly as to prevent the gases from escaping nor too loosely as to allow pests to make their way into the mixture.

You will then leave the bucket for 2-3 weeks depending on how well you want the tea to mature.

Plus, the compost tea will ferment by itself, much like fermenting beer.
• The compost bucket will leach into the water, thus, producing an ugly brown liquid.
• It looks ugly but it is definitely one of the most beautiful things in the world for your plants and garden soil.

However, you should never use the compost tea in its pure concentration lest your plants die in the process. Instead, you should dilute it with water in a 10 parts to 1 part of tea ratio.

And the best thing about making compost tea?

You can actually use the compost for more tea brewing albeit the water used should be lesser in quantity with each passing fermentation process. When no more goodness can be extracted from the compost, you can just throw it back into the compost pile or compost bin and the process begins again.