Make Your Own Compost Tea

Compost tea is a great way to introduce nutrients to your plants. In an urban gardening project, this is a great natural alternative to using plant food. Of course, the first and most important ingredient is compost. You can either purchase the compost or create your own using these simple steps for an indoor set-up. Making compost tea can be as involved or as simple as you'd like, depending on your gardening needs. The goal of making compost tea is to put the benefits of compost into liquid form.  Here, I will share the simplest technique I have used for making compost tea for use with various indoor plants.

The basic equipment is the cut off leg of nylon stocking, compost, water, and a container. Here, I used a 64 oz container.

Insert the nylon stocking into the empty container, wrapping it around the top to create a lip. Carefully fill the stocking with the compost.

Once halfway full, tie the stocking off and around the top of the container. Fill the container with water and let sit for 4-6 hours.

What you will end up with is water that looks pretty dirty, but is actually full of nutrients for your plants. Of course, the better the compost, the better the tea, so I recommend either using your own or researching where to purchase good compost to ensure a balanced nutrient content. After 4-6 hours, you can either water plants directly, or fill a spray bottle for light use.

Celebrating Earth Day: Indoor Composting

This used to be garbage. Newspaper, cardboard, paper (including mail, magazines and paper towels), and some fruits and vegetables took a detour into an indoor compost bin. All this potential garbage is now nutrient-rich compost.

Although it is most popular to do composting outside, urban living doesn't always make it possible. A few years ago, I decided to start composting some of our garbage indoors. You can try this yourself at home. Start with a 10-gallon bucket and drill holes all around the middle for aeration. Home Dept sells buckets with lids that are ideal for this project. Rip up an entire newspaper and place that along the bottom of the bucket, wetting it thoroughly in order to provide humid conditions for the worms to thrive in. Next, provide a layer of goodies: unwanted sections of fruit and vegetables (no citrus!). Add the worms next with some more ripped up newspaper to cover the top. I suggest starting with a pound of red wiggler worms. Place the cover on the bucket and keep it away from direct sunlight and in an area where air circulates well (not in a pantry, closet, or hallway).

Once a week, check in or your worms. Lift the top later of newspaper and make sure the habitat is wet, while avoiding creating puddles. Add food (paper, fruits, and vegetables) as needed. You will be able to harvest your compost about once a month, with a rough output of approximately 3 pounds of compost.

When done properly, indoor composting does not attract bugs or vermin and produces no odor whatsoever. The biggest setback to indoor composting is that you will be limited with what you can place in the bucket. For example, meat, fish, and citrus products cannot be placed in an indoor compost bin.

The information I used to get started can be found here:
The New York City Compost Project
Organic Consumers Association
HowToCompost.org