DIY Compost Tea

Have you ever thought of wanting to give that extra nutrition to your vegetable patch fruit trees or salad garden? But was reluctant to add anything other than organic stuff??

Well me too! Being blessed this season with a nice load of compost including worm compost so it has been pretty easy to make organic Compost Tea.

Now when you read the word Tea, you visualize a cup of tea brewed. Well, this is in a way a kind of brewed tea but it is an extra dose of goodness that will do wonders for your plants. They will get that extra nourishment just like our bodies need that extra boost of vitamins.

Things You Will Need For A Small Quantity Of Compost Tea

If you are growing on a small scale, once you make this compost tea, you will get the hang of it and can increase the quantity accordingly.

Get ready two buckets or pails one for the compost and one that will hold liquid. You can use any size you want depending on your requirement.

A large strainer or you can make one with fine mesh. If you don’t have that you can use a cloth tied over the mouth of the bucket. Anything that will help you to strain.

You can also use an old pillowcase by stuffing it with compost and immersing this in the water. It’s easy and well you will only need gardening rubber gloves to squeeze out the extract submerging it into the water several times.

Related: How You Can Find Out If Your Homestead Water Is Polluted Or Clean

I used buckets for my requirement as shown in the pic. I can’t put too much strain on my lower back after a spinal injury, so I make small quantities that are easy for me to carry around the garden in a jug, feeding my vegetables and fruit trees, especially my salad greens that tend to drink up and thrive.

There are exactly 10 medicinal plants this combo works for best – all of them are the plants that will help you last through this whole winter if you run out of medicine. You can start them indoors then plant them outside in the spring. They take only a couple of weeks to bloom so you’ll have plenty to harvest and make remedies and foods.

If you already have compost then you are good to go. Don’t worry if you don’t. Grab some Kitchen scraps. Not fish and meat as this will give a bad odor. Personally, I avoid meat and dairy leftovers in my compost. I bury them and let nature take its course.

You need water that is not chlorinated. If you do have chlorinated water then fill a pail and leave it for 48 hours so that the chlorine will evaporate.

So Now You Are Ready To DIY Compost Tea

Method

1. Fill the pail or whatever utensil with compost, and if you don’t have compost then extra kitchen scraps will be fine, and here’s a shortcut. Blend all the scraps. That’s what I do.  Now you have a nice thick gooey paste and add this into the compost that you filled the bucket with.

2. Now keep pouring the water into the compost in the bucket. Keep prodding it so that the water gets into the compost at the bottom. I added some leaves and the other half decomposed compost items into this.

3. Now stir this mixture with a large wooden stick or anything that you can move around so the compost gets well mixed.

If you have one of those paint mixing large mixers, then it is easy to break down and liquidizes the contents.

Fortunately for me, I had some painting work going on and was fascinated with the way the guy was mixing the paint and asked him to pulverize my compost in the bucket with that large mixer. It’s a really handy gadget! super useful for this type of thing. Fortunately, the mixer was used for water-based paint!

Related: 39 Items You Can Compost

4. Cover this mixture tightly lidded and let it rest and soak overnight. You can leave this to soak for a few days if needed but check and add more water as it tends to absorb a lot of water.

Make sure that you don’t have too many types of scraps that ferment like grape skins especially left overnight you might have a stink bomb rupture in the middle of the night.

5. The following day you need to give this a good mix once again and then get ready to strain this mixture into another utensil you have made ready. Pulverize the compost contents mixing with more water as required.

6. By now you should be having a dark golden liquid ready to be strained. It looks like well-matured wine.

7. Carefully strain the contents through the sieve or cloth a little at a time or pour over making sure that pieces don’t get into the liquid.

8. The residue that you have strained is also useful as mulch and you can use it for a raised bed or simply add it to soil or around the plants. Although the nutrients are now in the liquid compost tea, there is so much organic value in the strained residue that you can make use of it.

That’s it. You are now the creator of your very own precious liquid. Compost tea is one of the best fertilizers you can use for your vegetable, fruit, and salad greens to stay healthy and give you ample produce. Besides that, it is totally free!!

Final Thought

You can make batches of Compost Tea any time you want to and the great thing is that it is all organic, and homemade, you know what’s gone into it and this is the best you can feed your plants with.

Compost Tea liquid can be stored for over a month.  However, you must make sure that it is stored in an airtight utensil. If left open it may evaporate which would be a waste.

Compost Tea is also great for those of you that have container plants, hanging pots, or plants in grow bags then Compost Tea is the ideal nourishment for these plants. Compost tea does not overpower and slow and steady growth can be expected.

I don’t have a hard and fast rule for quantities for Compost Tea. I just use my initiative for my requirement as it’s for home consumption and it serves my purpose.

You have your own miracle growing liquid and it will help to boost the growth of your plants giving you a bigger yield I sincerely hope it helps you in getting more productive as it has done for me.

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