How to Brew Compost Tea 🌿 Create a Bug Hotel 🌿 the Practice of Deadheading 🌿

NURSERY NOTES: support the Green Corn Project tomorrow (May 31) as it prepares to move to its new home. To volunteer, you must be able to lift up to at least 10 pounds. G.C.P. ❦

Composting is the focus of Andie Marsh's talk at Barton Springs Nursery on June 7. The event kicks off with a happy hour at 7 p.m. Andie is a soil biologist with Rhizos. Tickets: $15. Event details ❦

HOW TO BUILD A BUG HOTEL: writer Stephanie Simmons offers a range of designs and ideas to help gardeners and their children create 5 star resorts for local insects. Wildbloom Families ❦

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DEADHEADING: Every summer there’s a peak season, when all the flowers in my garden decide to bloom in concert, writes Michelle Slatalla. "This grand collusion lasts for… a day? Maybe two. The rest of the year I spend coaxing everybody into re-blooming. The best encouragement: deadheading." Gardenista ❦

THE AUSTIN GARDEN relies on readers for support. Whether annual or monthly, all donations are welcome. At present 6% of readers fund this newsletter. Many thanks in advance. PayPal link ❦

by Chris Winslow

With the heat of the summer months arriving, it's about time to give a tall glass of iced tea to our gardeners . . . and a watering can full of compost tea to our plants.

This tea contains millions of beneficial organisms, and plants love it. All you have to do is fill an old pillowcase with some compost and a few other ingredients, use some simple aquarium pumps to keep everything moving… and let it steep overnight.

Compost tea is truly amazing. It is highly nutritious, adding beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi to the soils. It has fungicidal properties as well.

These beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi increase the surface absorbing area of roots. This, in turn, increases a plant’s ability to absorb nutrients.

The recipe we used to brew at the nursery (see below) is on a fairly large scale. It yields 55 gallons of tea, and has to be used almost immediately.

If this seems like it is too much, you can halve the ingredients, or get your neighbors and community garden friends involved.

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Ingredients:

1. A barrel to hold water. We used a 55 gallon rain barrel.

2. Water. Rainwater would be the best. If you have chlorinated water, let it sit a day or two before starting your project.

3. A giant tea bag, such as an old pillowcase, a tea towel, or a stocking.

4. Two small pumps, available in aquarium shops. One will re-circulate the water, the other will run an air stone.

5. Compost: we use 2 or 3 pounds of store-bought earth worm castings.

6. A cup of Bio-Start by Espoma (beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungus).

7. Half a cup of either dry or liquid molasses to feed the beneficial bacteria.

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Place the earthworm castings, molasses, Bio-Start, and the air stone into the tea bag and secure the open end with string or rubber bands.

Place the tea bag into the barrel with water and plug in the re-circulating pump and air stone.

Allow the system to run overnight. By next morning it will be ready to use. Compost tea should be used within a day. Its shelf life can be extended for a day or two with the addition of more molasses and continued aeration.

You now have 55 gallons of compost tea that can be sprayed on plant foliage and drenched at the root zone and added to the garden soil.

I can’t think of anything better for the enrichment of your garden and stress relief during the upcoming dog days of summer days. Happy gardening everyone! ❦