Weed Tea Compost

I saw Weed Tea Compost on TV not long ago. This is a great idea for running weeds (or grasses like buffalo). You don't want to put these into your compost heap in case they take over your compost like they do your garden.

Or perhaps if you aren’t ready to make a compost heap you could start with this method and at least get your weeds to give something back to the garden.

You can make a Weed Tea Compost quite easily.

Put your weeds in a bucket (with a drainage hole) then put this into a larger bucket with a lid. Cover the weeds with water.

After about 6 weeks you will have truly dead weeds and a brown sludge. Take your weed bucket out and drain. You can put these weeds onto your compost heap. With the weed tea you can also put this on the compost heap or water it down 1 part weed tea to 10 parts water and use as a fertilizer in the garden.

Manure Tea/ Manure Compost

Manure (from non meat eating animals such as horses, cows, sheep, chickens) is great for the garden. Don't apply it direct to your garden for a few reasons including: too strong for some plants and can burn them; and pathogens if using on veggies. You can keep manure in a heap on it's own and let it break down (cover from rain as the rain will leach the nitrogen from the manure). You can add it to your compost heap or compost bin or you can make a Manure Tea.

You'll need a few shovelfuls of manure, a Hessian Bag, a garbage bin (with a lid, to keep the flies out and the smell in).

Put the manure into the hessian bag. 3/4 fill your garbage bin with water. Let the hessian bag into the garbage bin and let it steep it like an over-sized teabag for a day or two. The water will turn the colour of weak tea.

You can now use this to water your plants with. Your tea will keep for a week or so, but if too smelly for your liking, add the remainder of the tea and the left over manure from your hessian bag to the compost heap.

Weed Tea Compost and Manure Tea will give your soil and organic vegetable garden a great boost.

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