Teas to nourish your plants

Worm tea. Manure tea. Herbal extract tea. Compost tea.

Just what are all these homemade “teas”? Do they actually fertilize plants? Which one is best? How much do I apply? Do I dilute them? Can I make them myself?

If you are feeling confused, I understand! In this series, I’ll help you compare and prepare these liquid fertilizers.

Overall, these teas definitely deliver benefit to your vegetables, herbs, flowers, lawn, trees, shrubs, trees and houseplants. How? The teas feed both your plants and your soil food web. They provide necessary nutrients and soil biology.

These teas are not highly concentrated fertilizers. They nourish gently, so I recommend that you administer a few doses over the growing season. I call this the “many small meals program,” rather than one big meal in the spring.

As summer progresses, your crops are bulking up and need extra food, just like a hungry teenage boy. Give those growing crops another meal in the form of tea. Since these teas are liquid, you can simply pour them on. Teas can provide some or all of your garden’s fertilizer needs.

No. 1: Worm Tea:

Worm tea is the leachate that drains from a worm bin. In a typical bin, red wiggler worms digest and decompose kitchen waste, damp newspaper strips, and other organic matter. They produce vermicompost, which is a crumbly, sweet-smelling organic material much like you produce outdoors in your compost heap. Vermicompost is rich with nutrients. The excess liquid is worm tea or vermi-tea.

To gather a quantity, you either catch the excess liquid from this compost as it drains, or pour water through the worm bin and collect the liquid.

Dilute this worm tea concentrate by mixing about 1 part leachate to 5 parts water. Apply to your plants directly as a drench or a foliar feed, or both at once.

“Drench” means soak the soil around the root zone. Use a watering can or pour from a container.

“Foliar feed” means apply to the leaves or foliage. Plants can feed through their leaves as well as their roots. If you use a sprayer to apply as foliar feed, you’ll probably need to strain the tea first.

So enjoy nourishing your plants with worm tea’s variety of soluble nutrients and microbes. While vermi-tea contains a small amount of beneficial microbes, compared with actively aerated compost tea, it is an excellent homemade fertilizer or fertilizer supplement.

Next time: Manure tea

Thanks to reference from Tad Hussey, “Gardening with Microbes,” bit.ly/1eQ5auc.

Ellen Vande Visse operates Good Earth Garden School and offers educational workshops through goodearthgardenschool.com.