I am on acid soil so i keep well away from the likes of mushroom compost. It wouldn't do my camelias or azaleas any good. Our locality is looking lovely at the moment with gardens full of colourful acid loving spring shrubs.
I make the nettle in a bucket covered in water and weighted down, with a tight fitting lid on. I dilute the liquid to the scale of a little bit to a lot of water, not scientific at all. One chap on the allotment puts a bag of cow dung into his water butt and waters with that.
Gardeners have generally agreed that home made compost is good for your plants and that it is useful to use it as a mulch which the worms then take down into the soil. I would have thought that compost tea, being a liquid form of compost, is just a quicker way of getting goodness into your soil, via the roots of your plants. Perhaps just my naivety but it instinctively feels right.
Ah, but the commercially produced, bottled compost tea Braidman highlights are not home-made compost tea! I would think home-made compost, with all its living fungi, microorganisms and insect life would be far superior to those products, but I suspect, better in the raw state than a tea. My point was, they are a totally different beast to a comfrey or nettle tea, which are rich in NPK and N, respectively.
Mountainous Northern Catalunya, Spain. Hot summers, cold winters.
I make up all sorts of concoctions usually comfrey, nettles, horse manure and seaweed I collect off the beach I make these in individual water butts then use alone or mixed together. I add the resulting mash to the compost heap.
"You don't stop gardening because you get old, you get old because you stop gardening." - The Hampshire Hog
My comfrey is a bit rampant next to my veg patch but the bees do love it . I make comfrey tea & use for tomatoes & container plants. I also put leaves in compost bins & seems a good accelerator. I've started to put leaves around tomato plants- seems to work well. Ive got loads of nettles too,so also make nettle tea. I don't do anything fancy-just 2 buckets on top of each other - top one with a hole in, which I fill with leaves, then leave for rain to filter through. Seems to work a treat.
The two bucket idea is a good one. Gives the necessary compression of the leaves whilst separating the liquid from the gunge. I found my cat drinking from my nettle infested bucket one day and was a little alarmed, my mind imagining all sorts of consequences for our mog - nothing happened in the end of course! Although the Hozelock system is a little expensive, it does keep everything nicely contained.
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Compost Tea NPK Value
So what is the NPK of compost tea? Here are some numbers I found.
Ultimate Tea from Southern Organics: 0.1-0-0
Cutting Edge Solutions – HumTea Original – Compost Tea: 0-0-1
Super Compost Tea: 0.02-0.2-0
Compost Tea – Does It Work: 0.2-0-0
Garden Myths - Learn the truth about gardening
I would have thought that compost tea, being a liquid form of compost, is just a quicker way of getting goodness into your soil, via the roots of your plants.
Perhaps just my naivety but it instinctively feels right.
I add the resulting mash to the compost heap.
"You don't stop gardening because you get old, you get old because you stop gardening." - The Hampshire Hog
Ive got loads of nettles too,so also make nettle tea.
I don't do anything fancy-just 2 buckets on top of each other - top one with a hole in, which I fill with leaves, then leave for rain to filter through. Seems to work a treat.
I found my cat drinking from my nettle infested bucket one day and was a little alarmed, my mind imagining all sorts of consequences for our mog - nothing happened in the end of course!
Although the Hozelock system is a little expensive, it does keep everything nicely contained.