Delightful – Making Manure Tea
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I feel spring beckoning so have been tidying and getting ready for the busy garden of the future. We garden organically here up to a point. I don’t only buy organic seeds or plants but once anything is growing in our huerto it is treated organically. Today I’ve been brewing some manure tea – not so yum!
We don’t use any bought chemical products or fertilizers at all. I just don’t see the point here. Maybe if your style of gardening is all about perfection and straight lines you’ll feel the need for a little chemical assistance. My gardening style is far more rustic, curvy and focused on producing sweet tasting treats, so I don’t need any bought products. As we are ‘deep-bed’ gardeners we apply regular amounts of rotted compost and manure to all the vegetable beds. This means the plots are humus and nutrient rich and most crops need no regular feeding to supplement the fantastic soil.
That being said there are times when plants need a little ‘pick me up’. This is when the manure tea comes into its own. I keep a bucket of manure water to feed brassicas occasionally as they love nitrogen so much. It is also useful to boost crops as they first start to fruit – tomatoes and aubergines in particular. If anything is struggling I would give that a taste of the tea too. I really recommend manure tea and/or seaweed tea which is made in the same way but will contain a different array of the trace elements.
In the veg patch we’re always trying to get plants to crop heavily, grow quickly and big so it pays to have a little extra nourishment to nudge them along now and again.
Make Manure Tea
- Fill a bucket 1/3 full of manure.
- Top up with water.
- Add a lid that isn’t too tight as the brew will ferment and bubble a little.
- Leave for two weeks for nutrients to dissolve into the water.
- Dilute 1:10 with water so the mixture looks like weak tea and water crops.
- Keep topping up with water as you use it until the colour pales, indicating a new addition of manure is necessary.
ugly but good
The same process can be carried out with seaweed or well rotted compost. This is a particularly good way to help out crops struggling in a new garden which is still in need of more soil enrichment. So for first year growers manure tea is a must!
Part of our outlook in the veg plot is that most of the feeding is done by the soil which we enrich throughout the year. I wouldn’t recommend regular feeding of crops as they’re likely to grow unnaturally lush and become prone to disease and insect infestation. Treat them a little meaner and the crops should be sturdy and healthy. However a weekly watering with manure tea for young peppers (before flowering), fruit forming tomatoes and aubergines plus a monthly feed for brassicas will improve your crops without producing any adverse affects.
It will be equally helpful in the flower garden too. Manure tea can also be used as a foliar feed, sprayed onto leaves but that’s one more for the orchard or shrubbery. When watering crops it is important to make sure you only water the soil and do not splash the tea onto plants.
Beware it is a bit smelly at first!
If you’re wondering – the marigold photo is to prove we have some flowers too and to distract from the nasty looking manure tea pic!
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Oooh, brilliant. I shall remember this.
Now, do I get the pigs to poop directly in the bucket or can I pick it up after them?!
Thanks for all the numerous tips – come on Spring, let’s see what we can do!
Wow – you can make pigs poop in a bucket?
Seriously though it is worth doing, espescially good if you’ve got any crops that aren’t really happy (e.g. have had an insect attack) – a bit of a poop tonic!
This sounds like a good idea – I’ll try it. Our garden is desperately in need of nutrients, but like you I’d prefer to fertilise it naturally and we don’t use any chemicals. We have got a lovely load of goat manure, though. A few more years and the soil should improve!
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Sounds good! I wonder if there’s anything we can mix up in Spain like you can do with stinging nettles in England… I’ll have to Google.
I’d like to try seaweed too. But whenever I’ve thought to collect some have lost my nerve at the prospect of explaining myself if anyone asks! I think a midnight excursion to the coast is in order.
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My wife used to do this when she was still trying to get her roses to grow (the thrips just demolished the blooms every year). Nasty stuff, but highly effective for growing big plants!
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Ah, that’s great advice Catalan Girl! I’m gonna get brewing!
Wow great tips I got try that to get my tomatoes grow a bit bigger. I also read some where that adding worm casting also do great.
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very good article. thanks for sharing. Just subscribed to your feed. Was searching for “garden” when I found “ful – Making Manure Tea | Catalan Garden”. Sorry I’m late adding this.
Ever since I had my house built, my garden has suffered. I tried several different products on the market that were supposed to help, but I did not find anything that was showing a dramatic difference. I am going to keep your tea recipe for my annual spring planting to help treat the soil. I have heard a lot of good results with using natural materials to provide nutrients to the soil as well as the crops. Thank you for sharing!
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[...] in the early stages of growth but stop once plants start to flower. Seaweed, fish emulsion or manure tea are all [...]
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ha ha funny, yeah this is what exactly I do for my garden, I use organic compost which I make of old fruits and vegiies and the green waste