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Plants Need Tea, Too!

By Susan Belsinger and Tina Marie Wilcox

When we make tea for drinking, we are extracting the flavonoids, essential oils, vitamins and minerals from the plant material. We brew the tea, strain out the solids and sediment, and drink the tea. Our bodies take up the nutrients we need, and the excess is flushed out in our elimination processes.

A similar process takes place in the garden with the use of natural fertilizers. Liquid fertilizers are multi-taskers, feeding and watering plants at the same time. Using plant- and animal-based ingredients to fertilize the land is a common practice among organic gardeners and farmers. Brewing your own fertilizer tea can be messy and stinky. Live bacteria and algae will multiply rapidly, which is good for the soil but intense for the senses. Think of these teas as earth medicine — even if they smell a bit brawny.

First Teas — Something Fishy

When each of us began gardening organically more than 30 years ago, the first fertilizer we used was liquid fish emulsion. It came in a brown plastic bottle full of a thick, dark brown concentrate, which smelled as fishy as its name. The directions were to mix it with water and water the plants with the diluted solution. These were our first experiences using a type of tea to feed our plants.

Later, we tried a liquid kelp fertilizer that was also a concentrate with similar instructions, although besides watering the plants with it, the label suggested using it as a foliar spray. Fish emulsion and liquid kelp are excellent fertilizers we still use today, but over the years we’ve added other natural and botanical substances to our arsenal of nutritive garden teas.

Manure Tea Experiences

Living on a biodynamic farm in Italy, Susan learned about the art of manure tea. There was a large old bathtub outside by the garden for this purpose. The farm had chickens, ducks, geese and rabbits, and the manure from these animals was put into piles and aged for six months to one year. A large bucketful of the aged manure was dumped into the bottom of the tub, and the tub was filled with water. This was allowed to sit for at least three or four hours and stirred every now and then with cherry-tree branches that had been tied together loosely to form a broom-like whisk. We filled the watering can or buckets from the tub and carried this smelly water to each of the plants in the garden. The tea was prepared whenever there were new transplants, and also was used throughout the growing season. It was amazing to see how well the plants responded to this manure tea. While gardening at the Ozark Folk Center, Tina made her first manure tea. She would go to visit Bob the mule and gather his manure. After letting the manure age, she’d put a gallon or so of it in a 5-gallon bucket, add water and stir with a hickory stick. Bob’s manure tea fed the herbs and old-time flowers planted around the park.

How to Use Fertilizer Teas

We use these teas when we are planting or transplanting, during the growing season when we water and when the plants appear to need a boost. Teas with high amounts of nitrogen should be used only during periods of active growth. Teas can be used strained or unstrained. If there is a lot of sediment or if there is a slurry left, we add this to the compost pile or dig it into the garden soil.

Another good way to administer botanical teas is by foliar feeding. Foliar sprays must be well-filtered so they do not clog the sprayer. You have to do this in manageable quantities. Pour the mixture through a strainer lined with fine cheesecloth or use a jelly bag. The idea is to get rid of all of the particles because they will stop up the valve of your sprayer.

The teas are best used in the late afternoon and very early morning, and never during periods of temperature extremes. Late afternoon is the best because pores on the underside of the leaves tend to open at night. The pH of the tea should be slightly acid, about 6 to 6.5. Using a pH test kit available at any gardening store, test the tea and add either a bit of baking soda to increase alkalinity or vinegar to increase acidity. All our teas should be safe for foliar feeding as long they are well filtered.

Easy to Make

Add a small coffee can of rabbit pellets (alfalfa) to a 5-gallon plastic bucket and then fill with water and 1 tablespoon of molasses. Molasses speeds up microbial growth. Pour the mixture back and forth to a second empty 5-gallon bucket several times (a process called boxing). Let it age three days, boxing it back and forth at least once a day. What do you get? Alfalfa tea for plants. Water your new plantings with it and you’ll have the earthworms doing circus tricks in your soil. Compost, horse and rabbit manure, bat guano, chamomile flowers, spirulina and culinary and medicinal herbs are other ingredients used to feed plants and soil. Adding humic acid to the formulas increases the growth and vitality of container and garden plants. Liquid humic acid is derived from decayed organic matter called humates. Humates chelate (combine) plant nutrients and release them to plant roots. Soils high in humus have good composition, water retention and aeration. By using plant- and animal-based teas, we feed and increase that aerobic microherd, which makes nutrients available for happier, healthier plants.

The Big Three

Plants use three main elements — nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (known by their chemical symbols, NPK) — for growing green leaves, making seed and fruit, and growing cells. The standard labeling always lists these three essential chemicals in this order, N-P-K.

Nitrogen (N) is necessary for aboveground growth of plants. Nitrate, the compound produced when nitrogen combines with other elements to produce a salt, produces green leaves. Ammonia nitrogen (NH3), the compound produced by nitrogen and hydrogen, is used by plants to produce fruit and seeds. Ammonia nitrogen is a gas and volatilizes into the air. If there is too much nitrogen, plants have rapid growth but tend to be weak, which makes them break easily and be more prone to disease. When there is not enough nitrogen, plants are stunted and foliage is yellow, not healthy green. The best organic sources of nitrogen come from plant and animal by-products such as alfalfa pellets (2.45 percent), blood meal (10 to 14 percent), bone meal (2 to 4 percent), fish (8 percent), ground poultry feathers (15 percent), manure (varies) and soybean meal (7 percent). We choose alfalfa, fish and aged manure for making fertilizer tea. If you feel hesitant about manure-borne bacteria, stick with alfalfa or fish.

Phosphorus (P), or phosphate, helps plants transport and assimilate nutrients. During photosynthesis, it helps the plant produce sugars. Plants cannot grow or fight disease without it. Phosphorus is crucial for plants to develop healthy root systems, set fruit and mature. For the organic gardener, soft rock phosphate (20 percent), bone meal (15 to 25 percent) and fish emulsion (7 percent) provide the highest percentages of naturally occurring phosphorus. We use bat guano (5 to 6 percent), fish emulsion or fishmeal to nourish our plants in phosphorous.

Potassium (K), commonly called potash, enables plants to develop strong, thick stems, healthy roots and large, plentiful fruit. Potassium plays a leading role in plant sugar production. Manufacturing sugar helps a plant protect itself from intense heat and cold, and aids in disease resistance. Compost and manure are good sources for potassium, as are kelp (2.25 to 6.5 percent) and natural minerals like greensand (7 percent) and granite dust (3 to 6 percent). Hardwood ash (10 percent) is rich in potash but dries the soil and may create an overly alkaline soil if used in large quantities. For a nutritive tea rich in potassium, we prefer kelp and aged manure.

Trace Elements

There are a total of 16 nutrients essential for the healthy growth of plants. Besides the big three, plus carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, 10 other chemical elements are necessary in the soil. These nutrients are called trace elements and are needed in much smaller quantities. They are boron, calcium, chlorine, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, sulfur and zinc. Some, such as calcium, are needed in larger quantities. Calcium (Ca) is a major building block for plant tissues and is the major element against which other elements react to release energy. Calcium neutralizes toxins and is needed for all plant growth throughout the life of the plant. Calcium is usually added in the form of dolomite lime to correct soil that is too acidic.

Principal trace elements are needed in such small quantities that compost, ground mineral rocks and agricultural meals such as alfalfa should provide all that are necessary. Alfalfa’s deep roots reach trace elements contained in the sub-soil. Use this and other green plants in your compost. All the trace elements are essential to plant growth and fruiting. Organic matter holds these elements and releases them slowly to plant roots. Treating your plants to a fertilizer tea party will provide them with the nutrients they need in low, naturally occurring amounts. An added bonus is that soil organisms essential for plant health crash the party and are fed at the same time.

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Ms. Belsinger is a culinary herbalist, educator, food writer, and photographer whose articles and photographs have been published in The Herb Companion, Herbs for Health, Natural Home & Garden, Kitchen Gardener, Organic Gardening, The Herb Quarterly, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Woman's Day, The Washington Post, and other publications. She has been featured in the Baltimore Magazine, Better Nutrition, Organic Gardening Magazine, Mid-Atlantic Magazine, Victoria Magazine, and The Washington Times. She has co-authored several best-selling, award-winning cookbooks. Her recently released book not just desserts-sweet herbal recipes is the first in the upcoming series living with herbs. She writes, cooks and gardens from her home in Maryland.

For more information and to contact Susan:

Web Site: http://www.susanbelsinger.com/biography.html

Tina Marie Wilcox has been the head gardener and herbalist at the Ozark Folk Center's Heritage Herb Garden in Mountain View, Arkansas since 1984. She tends the extensive gardens, plans, coordinates annual herbal events and workshops and facilitates the production of sale plants, seeds and herbal products for the park. She has presented countless educational and entertaining herb and gardening programs throughout the United States. Tina serves on the International Herb Association’s Board of Directors. She is also a member of the Herb Society of America, the Arkansas Native Plant Society, and the American Botanical Council. Her weekly column, Yarb Tales, appears in the Stone County Leader and on the premier garden website, www.cherylsgardenparty.com.

For more information and to contact Tina: Ozark Folk Center's Heritage Herb Garden, P.O. Box 500, Mountain View, AR 72560 (870) 269-3851

Web Sites: www.ozarkfolkcenter.com www.iherb.org

This article was originally printed in The Herb Companion, July 2004.

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