How to Make Compost Tea

Compost tea that you make yourself is more environmentally friendly version of the chemical teas you can buy in stores. All you need to do to make it is take solid compost and soak it in water. Then you filter the water through something like a big window screen to make the compost tea. The result is a mild, organic fertilizer that is chock full of the live organisms that your soil needs to grow big and beautiful healthy plants.

The best thing is that by using compost tea instead of the chemical based fertilizers, fungicides and pesticides you can help protect the environment. In addition you can help suppress infectious plant diseases and add more beneficial organisms to the soil.

By using compost tea to replace chemical-based fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides, you can garden safer and be more protective of the environment.

Usually these types of teas are just made in buckets. You also need a gang valve to divide air into several streams, an aquarium pump, about a gallon of mature compost, unsulfured molasses and three feet of aquarium hose. About three feet of the aquarium hose should be attached to the gang valve so that it is draping into the bucket with another piece of hose connecting it to a pump. You then add enough compost to cover the bottom of the bucket and top it off with enough water so that is full within six inches of the bucket’s top rim. You then run air from the pump through this mixture for at least an hour and top off the mixture with the unsulfured molasses. Let this mixture sit for a few days and then strain it. Voila! You have fresh compost tea.