A Cuppa for Your Plants

A great way to fertilize plants, whether indoors or out, it is with compost tea. To make it, fill a cloth bag with mature compost. This could be commercial compost, composted manure, or, even better, compost from your home composter. Now immerse it in a bucket or barrel of water, about one part compost to five parts water. Let it infuse for a week, stirring and kneading the bag occasionally. Then remove the bag, wringing it to get the maximum amount of liquid. Use the resulting compost as a foliar fertilizer or simply water it in at the base of plants. And the compost in the bag is not lost: you can use it as mulch or apply it to the soil like you would any other compost.

Do wear waterproof gloves or wash your hands thoroughly after handling compost tea. It may be great for plants, but it could contain some microbes that are harmful to people.