worm tea

There's a lot going on in the garden these days. I've got flowers and fruits and a whole bunch of containers that are loving this heat wave!

But first, an update on the insecticidification. So far, I have been pleased with Safer's insecticide spray. It smells a little funky; I imagine that's the anti-fungal sulfur doing its thing. All in all, I think it really took care of the aphid problem. I still see some leafhoppers here and there, but I'm not sure I can really prevent that, seeing as their modus operandi is hopping from leaf to leaf (and away from the poison). The only negative I've found with Safer's is that it sometimes leaves a film of dusty whiteness on the leaves. Such a thing is usually indicative of some kind of plant disease, mold, mildew, etc., but I don't see any other indication of sickness, and the spray should be doing something to prevent at least a few of those things. In any event, I have seen no decline in overall plant health.

In other news, the vegetables are coming along nicely, although I have yet to harvest any actual food. The zucchini plants have been blossoming at an incredible rate, and I have been experimenting with blossom fritters (delicious!), but that's all the food we have gotten from the deck as of yet. However, this is about to change. The pepper plant has peppers (they just haven't turned orange yet), the bush beans have baby beans that will be big enough to eat soon, the zucchini is at least trying to get fruit started, and best of all, my tomatoes are coming in! See that photo up there? That, my friend, is a cherry tomato, and I am thrilled!

Given that just about everything is at least blossoming, it's high time I re-fertilized. Fortunately, a friend of mine was looking to get rid of a hefty load of worm tea from her house's worm bin. Worm tea, for the uninitiated, is basically the liquid runoff found at the bottom of a multi-tiered worm bin. Water, steeped in all the delicious nutrients found in vermicompost substrate, makes its way down to the bottom of the bin, where a tap is typically used to dispense it for use. It yields a murky liquid that smells, for lack of a better term, earthy.  Worm tea is a great natural fertilizer that basically takes all the nutrients found in worm castings (a.k.a. plant food) and condenses it into a liquid form.

You may be wondering why I needed to get my tea from a friend. Very simply, my worm bin does not have a standing layer of sludge or liquid. Perhaps because it is still in the establishing phases, I don't have very much substrate. Furthermore, my bin is a one-level set up, meaning that there is no extra reservoir for liquid, or a good way to harvest it even if there were.

This afternoon, I used about 250ml (~1 cup) of tea, diluted in about 2L of water. The Interwebs (here, here, and here) seem to be in some disagreement about how diluted the tea should be, but at a 1:8 ratio, I figured I was in the ballpark. After giving each of my veggie and herb plants a shot of diluted tea, I followed it up with a normal watering, just to make sure that a) the tea wasn't too concentrated, which would result in sadness for the plants, and b) that the nutrients made it deep down into the soil.

My hope is that by fertilizing, I will be giving the garden a boost to keep it going through its producing stage. I still have 3-4 more applications of tea left, but I think I will wait a week or so and see how the plants are doing before applying again. For the rest of the summer, it will be a good idea to continue fertilizing at regular intervals, at least until the plants cease to bear fruit.