One of the most frustrating parts about gardening is when you’ve invested so much time and effort into raising your precious plants….only for some nasty pests to come along and undo all your hard work.
Now I know what you're thinking, but before you go and destroy all the bugs in your garden keep this in mind….there's plenty of good bugs out there! Our worms are a great example of that! Pests make up such a tiny percentage of the total bug population ( I believe less than 3%), the best approach is to target the few nasty ones vs trying to take them all out.
The easiest way to prevent pests is by raising healthy happy plants. A strong healthy plant has natural defenses that repel pests and keep disease at bay. A properly watered and adequately fed plant will put up one hell of a fight against all the things that go bump in the night in your garden.
That's where compost tea comes in, aka our “Microbe Mix”, an easy way to water and feed your plants at once. Applying some compost tea will create a smorgasbord of bacteria and fungus diversity on and around your plant. With all these good bacteria and fungus hanging on and around your plant it makes it very hard for the bad bacteria and fungus to move in and take over. These good bacteria and fungus not only protect your plant from all the bad guys, but they also help break down organic matter and make it readily available for your plants! These microbes are like your plants' own personal secret service/chefs.
Plants get their food from the soil they grow in. But they have a hard time absorbing and using that food and nutrients, if there are no microbes around. These microbes break down the organic materials in the soil and make them readily available for our plants to use!
Another huge benefit of compost tea, or our Microbe Mix, is that it's ALL NATURAL! Think about it…if you use chemicals to feed your plants, and you use chemicals to protect your plants…there's a good chance those chemicals end up INSIDE your plants. Now, if you’re growing something not edible like Foxglove, Azaleas, or Lily of the Valley, it may not be the end of the world if the chemicals you use to feed and protect your plants end up inside the plant. But what about those of us that grow edible things? All those chemicals you used to feed and protect your tomatoes…PROBABLY end up in the tomatoes you harvest…which then end up inside of you…throw up noises. Maybe that random migraine you had a couple weeks ago isn’t actually that random…
That’s why we highly recommend our Microbe Mix, a potent concentrated liquid blend of worm castings, compost, and other organic compounds, that really packs a punch as an all natural way to protect and feed your plants. But we 100% get it if you're someone that likes to do things yourself. So we'll break down how you can make your own compost tea at home!
Steps To Make Your Own Compost Tea
1)Find a 5gal bucket. Rinse bucket out and fill with tap water or dechlorinated water, either will work, we’ve had extensive testing done that has shown a minimal difference in compost tea brewed with chlorinated water and dechlorinated water.
2)Find some worm castings, vermicompost or regular compost, we recommend 1 pound of vermicompost per 5 gal bucket of water
3)Add some black strap molasses, soluble kelp or fish hydrolysate to help feed and bolster your microbial army in your compost tea.
4) Add some Air. We recommend a small aquarium pump and cheap tubing you can buy from a local hardware store, but stirring vigorously will work too! Just make sure you stir for about 5 min every 5-7 hours to add ample oxygen for all the microbes. The more oxygen there is in the tea = more microbes.
5)At about 24 hours youre ready to go! Feel free to dilute your mix, or use as is! This compost tea can be applied as a foliar spray, or you can use it around the base of your plant…the plant will love both!
6)Our pro tip! Apply compost tea in the morning or in the evening and if possible apply it before some rain! We want these microbes to get in there nice and deep like, and if you were to apply it in the middle of a very hot day those little guys would fry and die!