Earthworm Tea

Often referred to as the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of fertilizers, Earthworm Tea is the miracle elixir that will infuse your soil with beneficial microbes, prevent and treat plant diseases, ward off pests, improve soil structure, increase your soil’s water-holding capacity, and promote the health, strength and yields of your plants! If you're a big reader, then click here to download the GreenPula© Guide to Earthworm Tea. BE VERY CAREFUL not to be sold earthworm bin juice or bin wash (leachate) as earthworm tea. They are nowhere near the same thing!

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What are its Benefits?

So What is It?

GreenPula©’s 100% organic worm casting tea, or worm compost tea, is the liquid concentrate of worm compost and a few of our secret organic ingredients. Minerals and microbial elements are extracted from the solid compost by actively brewing in water by means of oxygenation into the liquid.

"A primary reason for producing a compost tea is to transfer microbial biomass, fine particulate organic matter, and soluble chemical components of compost into a solution that can be applied to plant surfaces and soils in ways not possible or economically feasible with solid compost." [USDA Compost Tea Task Force Report, April 2004]

Just bear in mind, this isn’t to be confused with leachate, or the liquid drainage the settles below worm castings during vermicomposting. This is an important distinction because leachate can be a potentially harmful fertilizer that includes bacteria, pathogens, and phytotoxins. Leachate can be used to fertilize some plants, but nothing you plan to eat.

Use worm tea as an inoculant for potting soil. The nutrients in worm tea help seedlings grow strong.

Worm tea also helps recover polluted soil. If you repeat the worm tea applications, the microbes will convert and metabolize organic and inorganic chemicals. The worm tea will help sequester the heavy metals found in chemicals.

Sometimes lawns can become sterile due to chemical treatment. Worm tea will repopulate the soil with microbes, enrich the roots and break down the thatch turning it into food for grass.

During hot summer days, worm tea can help retain water in soil.

If you decide to use worm tea as a foliar spray, it will help your plants produce more foliage and larger stems. This greatly helps plants that are lacking enough sun.

You may also add worm tea to a compost pile to speed-up the break-down process.

As if that wasn’t enough, worm tea also acts as a natural insect repellant. The tea contains microorganisms which produce chitanase, a digestive enzyme that breaks down the exoskeletons of insects such as arthropods. Additionally, the microbes have disease suppressant qualities too, helping to stop problems such as root rot!

Earthworm Tea as a Pesticide

Worm tea is not only directly beneficial for the plants but it’s also an extremely effective non-chemical pesticide that works on two levels:

First, it promotes a healthy plant immune system so it can produce more of the hormones insects finds distasteful. This wards away a number of insects, including aphids, parasitic nematodes, and eelworms.

Second, when sprayed on leaves, the tea stimulates growth of a waxy layer atop the leaves called the cuticle, which both protects the plant from the elements and wards away leaf munching insects.

Coating leaves with worm tea also promotes growth of good microbes that outnumber disease causing ones, preventing harmful fungi and diseases.

Application Rates and Methods

For foliar (leaf) application on most plants (with no pest or disease problems), a dilution rate of up to one part tea to 10 parts of water.

If there are signs of disease or pests, use undiluted until the plant is back in health.

For larger acreage, use 20 liters per acre (diluted at 1:10).

For flower, fruit and vegetable crops, 1:10 diluted application (twice per week during rapid growth and fruit expansion) is a recommended rate.

For container plants, the tea can be diluted to one part of tea to two parts of water and given once every few weeks depending on plant condition.

For trees and shrubs, spray undiluted two weeks before bud break and then every 10-14 days at 1:5 part dilution.

For seedlings, mist or soak seeds prior to planting.

Always use de-chlorinated water, rainwater, borehole or distilled water when diluting worm compost tea.

Immediate Use of Earthworm Tea

The making of worm compost tea is more of an aerobic process, as the aerobic microbes that are present in the tea are actually dependent on oxygen to help them thrive and multiply. In this manner, vermiculture tea should be immediately used after brewing, and while it’s heavily packed with beneficial microbes (bubbling the tea keeps dormant microbes come to life).

Now should the tea start to smell bad, then you know that your worm compost tea has finally reached its anaerobic stage. So make sure to consume the tea while it’s teeming with life.

For best results, the worm tea should be used as quickly as possible (within 48 hours of brewing). Once the oxygen and food are consumed, anaerobic organisms will begin to take over, producing alcohols and phenols toxic to plants.

Final Thoughts on Earthworm Tea

If you’re just getting into worm tea gardening, urine for a wonderful surprise (see what we did there?). The benefits of worm tea are almost endless and we encourage you to continue reading the many ways worm casting tea can benefit your plants and soil. As Simple Grow Soil aptly puts it, worm tea is the “Swiss Army knife of plant food”. It has a little bit of everything and you can always trust it to work.