I use compost tea throughout my garden, a near magic potion that adds enzymes and lactic acid loving bacteria to augment growth and foster resilience to disease. Over the years it has proved itself as an invaluable resource for healthier plants with fewer problems, reducing the amount of labour required to produce a bountiful crop.
It’s also cheap and easy to make.
I put a few shovelfuls of compost or about a cubic foot of yard waste into a pillow slip and tie that shut. I place this giant tea bag in a garbage can, fill it with water and clap a lid on, stirring the contents once in a while over a week until it is ready. I dip some out, strain it into a bucket and add enough water to look like weak tea, pour this into a watering can and spray the plants. The technical term is “foliar feeding” and I repeat the process until the compost tea in the garbage can is used up.
The following isn’t a necessary refinement but I add it for more nutrition: a cup of organic fertilizer and a quarter cup of fish fertilizer for the first half of summer because fish fertilizer adds nitrogen that augments leaf growth. In the batch for the second half of summer, I replace fish fertilizer with kelp meal that helps with fruit set.
One can will do two 60 by three foot beds. Once all the tea is used up I refill the can with more water and restart the process for the next beds one week later, and so on. When all my beds have had this treatment it’s time to start a new batch so I empty the contents of the pillow slip into the compost heap, and make a new tea bag, this time substituting kelp meal for the fish fertilizer.
Tomatoes can acquire a late blight if the leaves get wet because blight spores adhere to wet leaves. To keep them dry I fertigate their roots with compost tea instead of foliar feeding by drilling quarter inch holes in the sides of six buckets, next to the bottom. Then I place each bucket next to the first six tomato plants and add a litre of diluted compost tea to each bucket. By the time I fill the sixth bucket, the first one usually has drained so I can start placing them beside the next six tomato plants.
Feeding plants with compost tea gives them an immediate boost in nutrition, but I make sure to foliar feed before the sun beats down on the plants so it doesn’t burn them. Also, don’t make the same mistake I did once when I poured undiluted compost tea on my cabbages, burning the leaves and eventually killing the plants. Compost tea works well with soaker hoses because the tea doesn’t get removed as it would by a sprinkler.
David, being an enthusiast, has suggested I could get more tea by doubling or even tripling the number of cans I use, but two cans produce an amount equal to my needs. Perhaps I should tell him I need some more strawberry cages, to keep him busy until football season starts.
Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.
