Compost Tea: A Recipe for a Healthier Lawn and Garden
For inexpensive, environmentally-friendly and highly effective fertilizer, it’s tough to beat compost. But there is one contender: compost tea fertilizer. It is what it sounds like – compost steeped in water. And it is one of the best ways to quench your lawn and garden’s thirst for nutrition. By using compost tea, you can:
Best of all, compost tea making is easy.
Compost Tea Recipe
Here’s all you need to make your compost tea brewer:
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A five-gallon bucket – this is where you’ll mix your landscape fix
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A quart of compost – from your own compost pile or bin or from a purchased bag of already made compost from your lawn and garden store
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An aquarium pump – recommended to add oxygen to the mix, but you can achieve a similar effect with regular stirring
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A touch of molasses – an optional ingredient, but its ingredients can kick up the nutritional value of your compost tea, especially for feeding your lawn
Now what? Simply mix your compost (and molasses, if you choose) in your bucket with water, filled about six inches from the top. If you’re using an aquarium pump, just place it in the bucket and let it do its thing. Allow at least 24 hours for your compost tea mixture to aerate before applying it to your plants or lawn. For best results, though, you should use your finished compost tea within 4 hours, when the nutritional content is at full strength.
Serving Up Your Compost Tea
There are two ways to use compost tea: 1) As a spray to use on and around garden plants for fertilization and disease control, and 2) As a “soil drench” to create a more nutritional muddy mix that helps improve root systems.
When using compost tea as a spray, you’ll want to collect the liquid in a separate container, using cheesecloth as a strainer to keep out solid matter. Then just simply use a spray bottle or watering can to wet your plant leaves and surrounding soil.
If you’re using your compost tea as a soil drench, it’s even easier: Just dump it all on and work it into your soil. And you don’t have to worry about overdoing it with compost tea. Typically, an average application of about once per month will get you great results, but if you use more, there’s no harm done, as can be the case with chemical fertilizers. Added benefit: If you have left over compost tea fertilizer or solid compost, just toss it back into your compost pile or bin for next time. No waste!
Ready to get brewing? With all the benefits of compost tea, try to add some tea time to this season’s yard care activities. You’ll toast to it in the end.
