Allie’s Answers

My compost isn’t ready to use yet, but yesterday, I harvested my first round of compost tea to feed the plants in my garden.  It’s a great natural plant food, made from kitchen scraps.  Here’s how you “brew” it. 

The composter I made a few weeks ago has holes in the bottom.  I’ve balanced it on some bricks and placed an old plastic tray underneath it to collect the juice that flows out.  As a part of the composting process, I wet down the compost from time to time, so it’s pretty juicy.

The compost tea that collected in the tray looked like coffee that’s been sitting in the pot for a few days and didn’t smell as bad as I thought it would.  I poured it in a watering can, mixed in some water, and used that to water my plants.

There are other methods of collecting compost tea.  Some composters come with a spigot at the bottom for emptying the tea.  And there are even special machines and gadgets for making compost tea.  Check out some other methods here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm and is filed under Tip of the Day. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.