Life’s Giving You Weeds? Make Weed Tea (for your garden)

Weeds, known by garden sages as “Dynamic Accumulators” are often the bane of gardeners and lawn keepers alike.  Instead of looking upon them as nuisances, use their strengths to strengthen your garden.  Yes, you’ll still have to pull them up, but you can make an herbal (weedal? werbal? weedball??) tea that your garden will love.  

 

The Hack: gather the weeds as usual, then put 1/2 gallon of weeds in a cloth sack, old pantyhose, etc. and place it in a 5 gallon bucket almost full of water.  Agitate every day (saying the magic incantation DIE WEEDS! DIE!!!  er, skip the incantation) for about three weeks (set up one bucket a week and use in rotation).

You’ll be getting a lot of minerals out of those lowly (rhymes with holy?) weeds: 

 

  • Dandelion = silicon, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iron,copper
  • Comfrey = silicon, nitrogen, magnesium, calcium, potassium, iron, copper
  • Peppermint = magnesium, potassium
  • Plantains = Silicon, sulfur, magnesium, calcium, manganese, iron

the list goes on, though on a small .gif, so you may have to save the picture and open it in a paint program.  Also many other types of “garden teas”.

 

Compost Tea Organic Farming and Homemade Liquid Fertilizer in Organic Gardening .

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