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My mum used to throw tea leaves and teabags on her garden beds. She told me that the worms liked them and helped the plants. I thought they looked ugly.
My dad was a keen composter. So when I got a garden, I started a heap, and tea leaves and bags went there. But a few years ago my resident Champion Tea Drinker got fed up with the slimy garden waste bin in the kitchen, for which tea leaves were the prime suspect. So I switched to mum's method. The bin stayed slimy, but next season some tired old day lilies bloomed magnificently, having had quite a lot of tea. Was mum right all along?
More recently still, I discovered bokashi, which takes all the kitchen waste. The more I discover, the better it seems; we have no more slime (or stink, or flies, etc.). But the tea leaves filled quite a proportion of it, and I worried about the beds they used to go on. I decided to experiment.
I devised a home-made mini bokashi bin. I filled it with well-drained tea leaves and 2 tsp bokashi bran. In another mini bin I put some normal kitchen scraps with bran. After a few days the scraps produced the classic white mould and a drop of juice, and went into the main bin. The tea leaves showed nothing; this went on for weeks.
I�d found something that wouldn�t bokashi, and yet which seems to do the garden good. This mystery made me investigate bokashi further, as you can read here, followed by Jay-ell�s challenge and my response.
It could be that my experiment was badly executed. However, my current hypothesis is that tea leaves are already fermented in production, so there�s nothing left for bokashi to ferment. If tea does indeed improve the soil, it does so in the same way as bokashi, which is to feed soil organisms, especially worms. I am a bit doubtful of this because surely tea brewing would extract whatever food value is in them, wouldn�t it?
I've reverted to mum's method. I�d be grateful for other observations of adding tea to soil.
My dad was a keen composter. So when I got a garden, I started a heap, and tea leaves and bags went there. But a few years ago my resident Champion Tea Drinker got fed up with the slimy garden waste bin in the kitchen, for which tea leaves were the prime suspect. So I switched to mum's method. The bin stayed slimy, but next season some tired old day lilies bloomed magnificently, having had quite a lot of tea. Was mum right all along?
More recently still, I discovered bokashi, which takes all the kitchen waste. The more I discover, the better it seems; we have no more slime (or stink, or flies, etc.). But the tea leaves filled quite a proportion of it, and I worried about the beds they used to go on. I decided to experiment.
I devised a home-made mini bokashi bin. I filled it with well-drained tea leaves and 2 tsp bokashi bran. In another mini bin I put some normal kitchen scraps with bran. After a few days the scraps produced the classic white mould and a drop of juice, and went into the main bin. The tea leaves showed nothing; this went on for weeks.
I�d found something that wouldn�t bokashi, and yet which seems to do the garden good. This mystery made me investigate bokashi further, as you can read here, followed by Jay-ell�s challenge and my response.
It could be that my experiment was badly executed. However, my current hypothesis is that tea leaves are already fermented in production, so there�s nothing left for bokashi to ferment. If tea does indeed improve the soil, it does so in the same way as bokashi, which is to feed soil organisms, especially worms. I am a bit doubtful of this because surely tea brewing would extract whatever food value is in them, wouldn�t it?
I've reverted to mum's method. I�d be grateful for other observations of adding tea to soil.
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