Manure Tea
Interesting Facts About Manure Tea
Gardeners that enjoy making their own fertilizer get to fully appreciate the benefits of manure tea. It is an ideal fertilizer due to its intense richness and it will do absolutely wonderful things for your garden.
Simply put, manure tea is water that manure has been sitting in. Preparation is similar to seeping a tea bag, the quality nutrients in the manure are leaked into the water. However, this takes a couple of weeks as opposed to a couple of minutes. The liquid that the manure has been sitting in is highly potent and what is known as manure tea is an amazing fertilizer and a treat for any plant.
Pig, horse poultry or cattle manure can be used to create manure tea. It is said that zoo poo is ideal but that's not quite as easy to get your hands on. Elements such as nitrogen, phosphorous and potash are found in abundance in animal dung. Different animals will produce different balances of manure nutrients but each one is equally as good as the other.
Creating manure tea is much more practical than digging manure directly into your garden, especially if you, your family or your neighbors have working noses. Additionally, getting a large enough quantity of animal manure transported to your house and ready to apply directly to your garden is not necessarily the easiest thing to do. Mixing up a cocktail of manure tea allows you to treat needy plants much easier. You can even keep some in a spray bottle to give them a bit of spritz to the foliage.
Tomatoes flourish if they are fed a dose of manure tea weekly. They will be larger, more abundant and healthier. Healthy plants combat disease. Peppers and chilies also respond appreciatively like the tomato plants.
Manure tea is also great for plants that need a little added nutrition too. If you have plants that have had health problems due to any pests, this fertilizer will do great things to nurse them back to their strong selves. For example, many people have problems with caterpillars or club root occurring in cabbage. Manure tea can really help to save your plants.
Roses will flourish after being fed manure tea, especially if they've been attacked with any kind of fungal disease. Any plant whether it produces food, flower or simply foliage will benefit from the rich nutrients found in the fertilizer. It is great for house plants too.
If you are concerned about what kind of veterinary compounds could be in the manure then you can allow it to sit for a few months before you use it. This will assure that any commercial animal products are gone. Regardless if you allow the manure to sit or not, your manure tea is going to be more pure and environmentally sound then store bought products that you could buy. This also gives you the reward of recycling and avoiding plastic bag use.
A small amount of manure can go a long way. Keep the manure in a large bucket and simply add fresh water to replace whatever you use. You can continue to do this until your water stops turning brown and then you know you need a new supply of manure.
Making your own batch of manure tea is less expensive than store bought fertilizers. It contains more nutrients without chemicals and it is ecologically sound too. Even reading the bag sometimes of store bought fertilizers can be so confusing. Do you really want those chemicals going in the ground feeding food bearing plants? Making a large batch of manure tea is just a smart choice for any great gardener, your plants and the environment.