Tea Anyone?

Not the type of tea your drink, unless you are a plant or soil microbe!

There are many types of “tea” one can make for your garden.

Today I will cover Earthworm castings tea, Compost tea and Rice Microbial tea. More brews later.

EarthWorm Castings tea is also called ‘worm-castings tea.’ Worm castings is the ‘poop’ of the earthworm. Compost tea is made in the same way but by using compost instead. The “tea” is the resulting liquid that is made by soaking worm-castings or compost or organic white rice. Then placed into in the “tea bag.”  I use a pantyhose; just place your worm castings or compost, or clean white rice, about 1 cup, into the pantyhose and tie into a ball. Use clean filtered 5 gallons of water (I use a GardenGro filter but there are many available. Just Google “garden water filter”) and then either aerated or just allow it to sit overnight with a little stirring every few hours. I recommend aeration for best results.  You can add other materials as well during the ‘brewing’ process to improve the tea, depending on what type of plant you are using it on, how you are monitoring the Brix levels and if you are using it either for pest or disease control. I will cover this later also.

Why we spray “tea” on Plants?

As a kid, I started spraying various teas on my garden plants. I mean spraying tea that my mother would drink. I made a second batch of the tea and just sprayed it on my garden plants and eventually, I would spray it on the fruit trees, the lawn, the roses. You get the idea. By the way, spraying real tea has many benefits such as minerals (like iron), and especially useful if it has caffeine. The caffeine is great on controlling most insects and snails. But this is just one of the many teas you can use. I will cover more next week.

I have learned that some plants prefer teas with dominant fungal population, while others prefer bacterial and that many will do well with both. Think tropical rainforest vs. desert or mountains. The environment determines what the plants need to use to survive.  Compost tea is high in the fungal while worm castings would be high in bacterial. Lawns, flowers, and most vegetable crops prefer bacterially-dominated soils – whereas trees, fruit trees, flowering plants, roses prefer soil with greater fungal dominance. Again they would  do well with both applications. The Fungal tea can include of course compost,  rock dust, enzymes, humic acids, fish emulsion, and various microbial additives such as Mycelium. Bacterial tea will use multiple forms of energy like sugars: molasses (I love Granny Smiths Organic), brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, and the various microbial products on the market today such as soil bacterium, various yeasts, biological inoculants, etc. Other bacterial sources are rice which will make an excellent bacterial tea. I mentioned how to make earlier. You can also bury the rice as well once done with it. I place this into my tree vents.

By spraying the leaves and trunks of plants and trees as well as roses, vegetable, all plants, they will benefit by absorbing the nutrients the microbial liquid provides them. It is the microbial life that provides the nutrition. The earthworm tea provides these bacteria workers. The compost tea provides microbes that attack bad diseases and pests. It also will provide additional minerals if rock dust or other sources of minerals is provided to them to digest..

Microbial life, through recycling nutrients especially minerals and using carbon in the process,  improves the soil structure and the water-holding capacity of the soil. Microbial life also provides for a natural source of slow release minerals over time. I like to tell folks that whatever you do in the soil, especially when it comes to minerals, is not available until the following year!  It is this flow of minerals that the beneficial microbes provide that help the plants to fend off diseases and pests and as the soil gets healthier too over time (sustainable), also helps the plants to become more vigorous with higher Brix levels.

Compost tea or Earthworm castings tea is one of the best and quickest ways to increase the Brix levels of your plants. You should use them both for the soil with soil drench and for the plants with foliar sprays.

Spraying your plants’ leaves with beneficial microbes is a safe and natural way of keeping diseases and pests under control. The best defense is a good offense. By having more diversity of beneficial microbes and bacteria, the bad bacteria (diseases) will have a harder time establishing themselves. The same applies to pests. Foliar spraying also increases trace mineral availability to the plants through this very same microbial mix.

The same applies to using as a soil drench in that it increases microbial populations especially Mycelium around the root zone of plants, where they can then provide the trace minerals and other nutrients needed for healthy plant growth. An organic gardening saying is  “Feed the soil first. I would also add “Healthy Soil equals Healthy Plants.”

What you need to create your “tea.”

Get yourself a 5-gallon pail, air pump, tubing, and air stones (comes as one kit including the bucket, try EBay or Amazon). Get your wife’s or your girl friend’s pantyhose. You can also buy them at the 99 cent store. To get started, just fill your bucket with clean filtered water and add your “tea bag” and aerate the water overnight. I would also get a timer (some kits have it included), to turn it on and off.

When making up your compost tea spraying schedule, remember that you are working with living organisms. So it is essential not to space it out and forget you made it or not keep an eye on it but to spray as soon after making the tea. I would never aerate more than overnight.  If kept too long, best to pour it into a tree vent.

The timing of your tea sprays is essential. You want to spray when things are the most active. This goes for pests, diseases as well as for plants. I have found that spraying at night is the best time to spray the various “teas”  I make. I especially like spraying under the light of a full moon. You will get the most insect activities during that time, so spraying becomes even more useful. Also, the plants and the soil activities will be up, and the sprays will last longer and become more effective. People ask me about spraying compost tea on rainy days and I like to tell them that it is fine because you are adding to the soil as well as the plants are more open to foliar sprays during rainy days especially for nutrition.

any questions?

Please email me andylopez@invisiblegardener.com
or use the comment box below.

andy Lopez

Invisible Gardener