Compost Tea for Growing Flowers

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Feeding our flowers with home-brewed compost tea is one of the most important ways that we fertilize our plants and soil in a healthy, sustainable way. Making compost tea is fairly simple once you find the right ingredients and measurements. I am sharing what we do here at Flourish – nothing we use is fancy, but it works great!

Compost tea is made from steeping compost to add microbes and nutrients into the soil and plants. The nutrients and beneficial microbes in the compost diffuse into the water making liquid fertilizer for your plants. There are two ways to make compost tea with compost: the basic, simple steeping method or by aerating with a bubbler. We make our compost tea the second way, with a bubbler, because it wakes up and aerates the microorganisms in the compost.

While you can use compost, it is important to make certain that the ingredients of the compost are “organic” materials (food scraps, grass clippings without pesticides or chemicals, etc.) and that the compost is finished or aged properly. Because we do not have a good source of compost in our area, we use local worm castings. Worm castings or vermicompost is extremely nutrient rich. We combine the worm castings with a few other ingredients to make the tea more balanced for our flowers.

Here are the supplies needed for making aerated compost tea:

  • 5 gallon bucket with spout

  • Fish tank bubbler

  • Mesh bag

  • Fine mesh strainer

  • Measuring cups

Most of these products and supplies (and many more favorites) are linked on our Amazon page to give you a better idea of what we use and help you find your own supplies.

Here is our recipe for making 5 gallons of compost tea:

1 cup worm castings

6 teaspoons kelp

6 teaspoons alfalfa

1/2 teaspoon rock phosphate

Fill the 5 gallon bucket with water (not chlorinated because it can kill the microbes), combine all the ingredients into the mesh bag and place in the water. Put the bubbler stones in the bucket and turn on. Let the tea brew for 12-24 hours. Always use the compost tea within 4 hours of brewing because that’s when the compost tea most fresh and the microbes are most active.

Pour the compost tea from the 5 gallon bucket into a backpack sprayer (or watering can) through the spout and a fine mesh strainer. The strainer ensures that no particles from the tea clog the backpack sprayer.

We foliar spray the compost tea directly onto plant leaves and towards the base of the plant (where it meets the soil). A 5-gallon sprayer of compost tea will cover about 2 beds of plants that are 4’ wide x 95’ long. While I wish that we could feed our entire farm with worm compost tea, we prioritize crops that produce abundantly over many weeks and are higher revenue-producing. Ranunculus and dahlias are fed with compost tea at least 2-3 times during our growing season. Compost tea can be sprayed once a week and liquid fish emulsion can also be added to the compost tea in the sprayer for an extra boost.

I hope you’ll give compost tea for cut flowers a try and experience it’s wonderful benefits too!

xo Niki