How to Make Compost Tea

Today I'll show you how to make tea. For plants, not people. Compost tea to be exact. The batch I'll show you here is small, it's for my grow light seedlings (tomatoes and peppers mostly). You could do this same thing on a larger scale for the garden outside.

The word compost probably means a lot of different things depending on who you ask. You could definitely go out to your compost pile and use this method with that type of compost. What I used this time, was actually an organic pre-made fertilizer which contains ingredients like blood meal, fish meal, and seaweed. It smells lovely. Anyway, the plants like it.

I started by putting some of the fertilizer in a square of cheese cloth. I wrapped it up and secured a rubber band around the top. I then put that in a container with some water and let it soak for 24 hours.

As far as how much compost and water to add, you might need to experiment depending on what type of compost you are using. Since I bought a pre-made fertilizer, it actually had instructions on bag that states the ratio to use. This is the kind I bought:

It's Dr. Earth brand. I actually used this fertilizer last year in the garden and really liked it. You can buy this kind on Amazon HERE. I bought it last year because of the awesome reviews it got.

Here are the instructions for the compost tea on the bag. Since I mixed this compost tea up to fertilize seedlings. I made the tea at half strength (1/2 cup fertilizer to a half a gallon of water).

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Since I put the fertilizer in the cheesecloth, I didn't need to strain it out before adding it to the plants. you could easily strain it instead of using cheesecloth, but this way is less messy.

Hope this post helps! Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.

Happy Gardening!