Worm Composting part 2

Ready for part 2? I am! This is the best part, I promise.

Let's make worm tea!!!

Take 2 cups (roughly) of your worm juice. It should be the color of coffee, and even has the same earthy, spicy smell of some roasts, but I'll be the first to tell you not to drink it! Also, you will need a 5(ish) gallon bucket with a lid and an aquarium bubbler (optional). Pour your worm juice into the bucket and fill it halfway with water. If you have a bubbler, which you can buy at pet store or on Amazon for less than $10, plop that into the water and turn on. The noise can be a little obnoxious, if you are not used to it, so I have to set it outside or in the garage. Leave the bubbler in the bucket for about 10 minutes, take it out, and close the lid. The bubbler helps to mix all of the juices together and add dissolved oxygen into the water.

Also, lidded buckets can be hard to find or expensive, and I say no! We are here to do this on the cheap, so here's what I did. EarthFare (an organic grocery store near me) has a bakery, and after talking to the baker I found out that some of the cake batter and frosting comes in 4ish gallon buckets. Good enough for me! I left my name and phone number with the bakery manager, and the next day she called me, saying that she had three empty buckets for me!!! Yay! Because they just throw them away, they had no problem just handing them over for free! All I had to do was wash the frosting residue from the insides, and the buckets were good to go.

Getting back to some worm tea, continue to add your worm juice collection from each day to the bucket, and bubbling for 10 minutes. Close and let it sit. Do this until the bucket is close to full, and the color looks like some strongly brewed tea (again, no drinking). Your worm tea is now ready! Water your flowers as you normally would using the tea (for potted, hanging, or vegetable bed plants). If you have a larger area (like perennial beds) to water, put one cupful of straight up worm juice (not tea) into a fertilizer hose attachment. I use an old MiracleGro sprayer.

You can also harvest a bit of dirt from your bin (make sure to pick out all of the worms!) and mix it with your potting soil before planting your potted or handing plants. If you take a look at my Soil Amendments post, your worm bin becomes your own personal source of manure. Yay!