6/11/2021 Pro and Cons of Composting Tea

Pro and Cons of Composting Tea

Home Guides | Garden | Garden Care
By Renee Miller

Compost tea is a landscape product made using a simple process in which the compost is diluted
with water and left to ferment for a certain period of time. Compost tea offers similar benefits for
your garden as regular or dry compost, with a few additional perks. However, before using
compost tea in your garden, you should weigh the pros and the cons.

What it Is and What it Isn't

Compost tea is sometimes mistaken for leachate, which is the dark fluid that leaks from the
bottom of your compost pile. This liquid does contain nutrients, but it also contains organisms
that may cause illness, making it unsuitable for use, particularly in vegetable gardens. Compost
tea is made by diluting finished or cured compost with water and allowing the solution to ferment
for a period of time that ranges from 24 hours to two weeks depending on the method of brewing
you use. The solution is then strained to remove any remaining solid material, and the liquid that
remains is applied to the soil or to plant foliage.

Pros
The nutrients in compost tea are more readily available to plants than those found in dry compost.
The beneficial organisms -- which include bacteria, yeasts and fungi -- that compost tea provides
your plants helps suppress diseases by either creating a physical barrier against disease-causing
pathogens or by competing with or attacking them. Adding compost tea to your soil also reduces

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the need to use synthetic fertilizers, and it helps improve plant growth and vigor. This improved
health reduces the risk of plant death due to pests or diseases.

Cons
The main disadvantage to compost tea is that its benefits are reliant upon the quality of the
compost used to make the tea. This makes its effectiveness very difficult to predict because no two
batches are exactly the same, even if you use compost from the same pile. Because of this
variability, one compost tea might be extremely effective in suppressing soil-borne diseases, while
another may not. For example, compost made from animal manures is highly effective in disease
suppression, while composts with high levels of salt, or those that contain anaerobic
microorganisms or pathogens resulting from inadequate decomposition will produce a tea that
does little for your soil. Once it is brewed, the compost tea must be used immediately. Compost
teas cannot be stored for later use because when the available oxygen is used up, the tea turns
anaerobic and kills the beneficial bacteria it contains.

Tips for Brewing Quality Tea

Compost teas are brewed using either an aerated or a non-aerated process. Aerating means that
you inject air into the tea as it ferments. Non-aerated teas are left to ferment without disturbance.
Both of these methods require that the compost you use for your tea be fully decomposed, but no
more than one year old. If using a non-aerated method to make the compost tea, it will need to
ferment for about five to eight days. Aerated teas require only about 24 to 48 hours to ferment.
Use clean, non-chlorinated water and sterilize all equipment used to make the tea.

REFERENCES WRITER BIO

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Good Compost Tea Recipe for Fruit Trees

By Susan Peterson

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6/11/2021 Pro and Cons of Composting Tea

Compost tea is an infusion of compost in water. When compost is soaked in water, beneficial
nutrients and microorganisms seep out of the compost into the water. Though numerous
gardening articles claim that compost tea suppresses bacterial plant diseases, according to Linda
Chalker-Scott, extension horticulturist at the University of Oregon, experiments don't support
that use. Compost tea does, however, provide fertilizer to both the leaves and roots of fruit trees.

How it's Made

The easiest way to make compost tea is to shovel a scoop of compost into a bucket, cover it with
water, and let the steep for a few days. You can pour the tea underneath the tree to feed the roots,
or you can use a sprayer to spray it onto the leaves. A more complex way of making compost tea
requires that you aerate the tea using an automatic air pump, an aquarium pump for example,
while the tea is steeping. Doing so adds oxygen to the mixture. The oxygen speeds up the brewing
process and minimizes smell. It may also have benefits for the plant it is applied to.

Plant Ingredients
Any compost you use in your garden can be infused to make compost tea. You can, however, tailor
your compost to the needs of your trees. Compost made from plants with long root systems like
comfrey and nettles tends to be rich in minerals. Compost made from nitrogen-fixing plants like
clover and alfalfa supplies nitrogen to the leaves of fruit trees. Comfrey tea, which is made from
either fresh or partially composted comfrey plants, is rich in calcium. Spraying the leaves of fruit
trees with calcium-rich infusions helps minimize calcium deficiency disease like cork spot.

Worm Castings
Some gardeners make compost tea from worm castings. Castings are excrement of worm-bin
worms. Worm castings are not only very rich in nutrients, they are also loaded with beneficial
microorganisms. You can make compost tea from just worm castings or add the castings to plant-
based compost before brewing.
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Cautions
Use only potable water to brew the tea. Contaminated water can contaminate your fruit. Manure
can also contaminate fruit. The act of brewing compost tea causes microorganisms to flourish. If
you had e coli or salmonella in the manure you used to make your compost, and if you made your
compost using a cool pile method, those harmful organisms will remain in the compost and will
contaminate your compost tea. Be careful, also, to use compost made from organically grown
plants. If you get aminopyralid-laced manure or plants in your compost pile, your compost tea can
damage or even kill your trees.

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