-Gabrial House-
With spring approaching, it’s time to start thinking about your garden, and the best way to help your plants fight off heat, high humidity, and the dry soil that’s sure to come. For me, the best route to take is treating my garden to a fresh batch of compost tea. As the name implies, compost tea is made by steeping compost in water, and using the resulting liquid gold on or around your plants.
Most of us know the benefits that compost provides to our garden soil, but compost tea provides added benefits, because you can use it for both foliar application and as an addition to the soil around your plants. Used this way, compost tea works to suppress foliar diseases AND feed your plants.
To brew up a batch of compost tea, you can use the compost that you create in your compost bin or compost pile, but I use a super-charged recipe that is teeming with nutrients and beneficial bacteria that are sure to give your plants the boost they need to perform at their peak all summer long!
You will need the fallowing supplies to make 5 gallons of compost tea.
- 5 gallon bucket
- Air pump
- Air stone
- De-chlorinated water (rain water, spring water, well water, or you can de-chlorinate municipal tap water yourself through aeration or adding vitamin C)
- Mesh straining bag
- 2 cups earth worm castings
- 1 cup alfalfa meal1 tbsp. Azomite
- 4 tbsp. Kelp Meal
- 6 tbsp. Hi Brix Molasses
- 5 oz Fifth Season Gardening Co. Fulvic Acid
Fill your 5 gallon bucket up with your clean, de-chlorinated water. Connect your air stone to your air pump, plug in your air pump, and drop the air stone into the bucket.
Take a straining bag and place the solid ingredients into the bag and place that into the water like a tea bag. Stir in the Hi Brix Molasses and Fulvic Acid, and allow the tea to brew for 24 hours.
Once your tea has brewed, use it to water around the base of each plant. This will allow all the nutrients to be up taken by the plant as well as coating the roots with these beneficial bacteria and enzymes. You will almost immediately see your plants perk up as they drink in that composty goodness. This is a practice that’s best done weekly or bi-weekly to truly allow your plants to have all the wonderful benefits of compost tea. You can also put some tea into a spray bottle and spray plant foliage to help keep down foliar diseases.
Happy almost spring!
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