How to Make Compost Tea
for Your Vegetable Garden

Step by step how to make compost tea for your vegetable garden; download graphic by clicking on the image.

Learn how to make compost tea for your vegetable garden using two simple ingredients; compost and aged manure.

Use this simple and fool-proof recipe to grow healthy vegetables in the ground or in container gardens.

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Feeding the plants the proper amounts and learning how to produce compost tea is important for adding organic materials to the soil.

The three main elements, phosphorous, potassium, and nitrogen are used up in large quantities in vegetable gardens.

Due to the effects of close planting, the major elements may be in short supply.

It is often necessary to give the growing vegetables a fertilizer boost.

Compost tea is pure organic liquid fertilizer that has been "watered down" so as not to burn the plants.

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In general, it is safe to say that any soil that is supporting a healthy growth of shrubbery, grass, flowers, and even weeds, for that matter will be suitable for vegetable gardening.

However, the long-seasoned, heavy producers such as squash, tomatoes, eggplant, pepper, and cucumber, will greatly benefit from a compost tea.

Use a watering can for foliar applications of compost tea.

Compost tea is one of the simplest and most effective liquid fertilizers you can make for your vegetable garden soil — and it costs almost nothing if you are already composting.

This page is part of our Soil, Fertilizer and Composting hub, where you will find complete guides to building vegetable garden soil through composting, fertilizing, mulching, and the smart use of manure and organic materials.

Soil, Fertilizer and Composting — complete hub for building rich vegetable garden soil through composting, fertilizing, mulching, and manure

Do Vegetable Plants Have a Preference?

Beets, carrots, an other root vegetables require more potassium.

Lettuce, spinach, and other greens need more nitrogen.

On the other hand, being overfed with nitrogen can cause tomato and bean plants to grow lush foliage but few blooms or produce.

Compost bin in the backyard is source for making compost tea.

Sugar in your tea?

Soil can be alkaline "sweet" or acid "sour".

Limestone is the agent applied to soils to reduce acidity. Over-liming can harm the plants.

Knowing whether your garden soil is too sweet or sour is important in maintaining the right balance of nutrients for plant growth.

Extreme sweetness (alkalinity) or sourness (acidity) can release toxins in the soil which encourages plant diseases.

Most vegetables grow best in only slightly acid soils.

How to Make Compost Tea

Compost bin tumbler as source for making compost tea.

Feed and water your plants at the same time by supplying homemade compost or manure teas.

• This organic fertilizer recipe is made by mixing a small amount of animal manure and/or compost in the bottom of a bucket and filling the bucket with water.

• Let the mixture sit for several days, stir occasionally, and then use the top tea as plant food.

This compost tea recipe is so simple and easy to make, and will help ensure a healthy productive vegetable garden.

Well-aged horse manure makes great compost tea.

If your vegetable garden is mulched, foliar feeding is the easiest way to fertilize the plants.

Mulching with this organic fertilizer recipe is the best way to ensure your plants receive a constant supply of essential nutrients.

• In addition, apply the compost tea through the holes of a black plastic mulch or around the base of a plant with organic mulch.

• Manure teas can also be fed through a single container drip watering system.

"Green" or fresh manure can be added in the autumn or early winter to amend your garden's soil after the growing season is complete.

"Aged" or rotted manure contains a reduced amount of nitrogen due to decomposition.

Using a Compost Tumbler

Step by step how to use a compost tumbler to create compost to use in making compost tea as fertilizer for your vegetable garden. Click image to download.

Fertilizing plants is an ongoing process.

Making compost is an ongoing process also.

Having a simple compost bin, or a compost tumbler at home is a great way to recycle some plant waste, and to create a healthy addition to your gardening endeavors.

Before planting your garden, apply  compost to the soil and work it in thoroughly as you cultivate.

About four weeks after sprouts appear, or soon after nursery plants are transplanted, apply a second feeding of compost or mulch outside the root zone of each vegetable plant.

For each month thereafter, apply more mulch or compost as needed until fruit begins to set on the plants.

Compost tea serves the plants diluted nutrients and takes care of their watering and feeding at the same time!

During the growing season , add well-rotted manure to avoid overdosing the vegetable plants with nitrates.

Nutrient-rich teas are made by soaking well-rotted manure in water, then draining off the liquid.

After you learn how to make compost tea, it can be applied to your vegetable garden as a safe, fast-acting, effective, and easy to use fertilizer in liquid form.

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The University of Missouri Extension has a thorough research-based guide to making and using compost at extension.missouri.edu, covering the composting process from raw materials to finished product, how to speed up decomposition, how to troubleshoot a stalled pile, and how to apply finished compost to improve vegetable garden soil.

University of Missouri Extension — Making and Using Compost — complete research-based guide to composting from raw materials to finished product and vegetable garden soil application