Compost Tea for Your Thirsty Plants

Compost tea goes a step further than simple compost and is an excellent foliar feed as well as a nutritious soil drench. Compost tea has several important advantages that are worth knowing about. Compost teas has the ability to repress foliar diseases, faster capacity to combat harmful toxins, and an increased capacity for delivering nutrients. These are more than enough reasons to persuade you to add compost tea to your conventional compost and fertilizer arsenals.

Compost Tea Ingredients

Making of good compost tea requires that you first have a usable amount of well matured compost. Matured compost has undergone proper turning and heat exposure so that no pathogens and weed seeds can foster when it is applied to the soil. You can choose to use either worm compost or vermicompost in brewing the compost tea. Worm compost regulates its own temperature as well as turning the compost over. Vermicompost, on the other hand, boasts a higher quantity of humic acid thanks to its wood and paper components. The humic acid works great on potted shrubs and house plants.

Fungi or Bacteria Domination?

A helpful note before you start brewing the compost tea is that you can adjust the composition in terms of letting it be dominated by either fungi or bacteria. This is very much dependent on the type of plants you want to enrich, as well as the type of soil that it grows. Gardening experience has shown that compost tea dominated by bacteria is most helpful in preparing the soil in which herbs and vegetables are to be planted. The fungi-dominated alternative has been shown to be extremely beneficial when it comes to mulching. Of the two, the bacteria dominated compost tea is the one brewed most since this has a greater ability to ward of foliar diseases.

Spray Frequency

In using compost tea the frequency with which the plants are sprayed is ideally dependent on their health. Some of the healthiest gardens have been known to remain in trim condition with just a single spraying per season. Apparently, having beneficial insects around your house plants is effective in amongst other things spreading the benefits of the compost tea around. In fact, house plants that aren’t frequented by these insects need much more compost tea, either biweekly or monthly.

Proper spraying of compost tea starts immediately after house plants have produced true leaves. Shrubs and trees require spraying before bud break.