It’s tea time—for your garden, that is!
Compost tea is one of the best fertilizers for your garden and so easy to make. It is chock full of nutrients and is able to be quickly absorbed by plants, contributing to a healthier garden and a bigger bounty of beauty and produce.
At Stoney Creek Farm, I use comfrey to make an herb compost tea that I use to water my garden in the spring and summer months. My plants absolutely LOVE it, and I can tell a huge difference in their growth!
I’m sharing with you two easy recipes for comfrey tea and compost tea below.
How to Make Herb Compost Tea Using Comfrey
Comfrey is an herb that I grow at the farm. It has several excellent uses (including medicinal benefits)—my favorite being the organic matter for my herb compost tea!
To begin, collect a basket-full of comfrey leaves. I use the outliers of my comfrey. This is a double win, since it keeps it from choking out the garlic planted next to it.
Fill a bucket with ⅔ water and add in the cut comfrey leaves, making sure to fully submerge all leaves into the water.
Let this comfrey and water mix marinate in the bucket for 1 – 2 weeks, stirring the mix every few days. Keep your bucket out of the sun as you let your comfrey break down. I keep mine on my side porch where I won’t be able to smell it.
After a week or so, the comfrey will begin to break down. The decomposition time frame depends on heat and other weather factions, but trust me, you’ll be able to smell it when the comfrey is ready for use.
Once ready for use, remove the leaves from your new comfrey tea. In a watering can, combine your tea with fresh water at a ratio of 10% tea to 90% fresh water. Your plants are now ready for tea time!
I only water my plants with my comfrey tea right after seeds germinate or when the seedlings are transplanted, and then once again mid-production season to boost fruit.
If you’re local to Tennessee, you can get your own comfrey plants here at Stoney Creek Farm while they last.
Just email us at stoneycreekfarmtennessee@gmail.com.
Check out our video below to watch the comfrey tea process:
How to Make Traditional Compost Tea
You can also make a nutrient-rich compost tea using your traditional compost.
To create compost tea, you’ll need organic compost that is highly-broken down—it should be coarse and crumbly, not chunky with matter that has yet to completely decompose.
Home Composting Made Easy offers an easy compost recipe that only takes a few days to create using materials you likely already have on hand:
- 2 Buckets
- Shovel
- Unchlorinated or well water
- Cheese cloth or burlap fabric
Read the full compost tea recipe here. There are only 6 easy steps to your own homemade compost tea!
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We’ve been busy these last few weeks prepping for our annual U-Pick Gardens.
In March, we did a soil test and then added compost amendments before tilling the ground so that the organic material would get mixed in.
We’ll soon be planting white clover in the walkways between row crops in an effort to choke our weeds (and save us the effort of having to till them during the season). The less you have to till the soil, the better it is for keeping the nutrients in!
We know these times are unusual, but we hope you’ve been able to find some normalcy in spending time outside preparing for your garden!
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