The Garden Club met on the January 19. Once again the hospitality team of Ruth Levitan, Chris Daley, Carmen Murphy and Lee Sweeny did a great job providing a variety of tasty small bites.
Our guest speakers were Gabriella Guidry and Crysta Dickson. They gave a very informative presentation of organic gardening and its many benefits, both towards the growth of very healthy flowering plants, herbs, vegetables, and fruit trees but, more importantly to our environment.
They showed how one could make compost tea for our personal use. Compost tea is an effective, low strength, all natural fertilizer that can be used for seedlings, garden plants and vegetables. It suppresses fungal plant diseases. The tea brewing process extracts, and in some cases, grows and multiplies nutrients and beneficial bacteria and fungi from the compost and suspends them in water in a form that is quickly available to the plants.
What do you need?
A five-gallon bucket, a stir stick, water and a few shovels full of mature garden green waste. Do not use fibrous agave leaves or palm fronds.
Fill bucket to about one third full with tap water that has been sitting out for few days to eliminate the chlorine.
Use compost from the bottom of your pile, where the organic matter has decayed the most. Fill the bucket to within an inch or two from the top. Stir this mix well and repeat the mixing a few times a day for a week.
Good exercise for the arms!
Continue this process for a week, at the end of which, simply strain the mixture using burlap, a mesh screen or any kind of strainer. What you will be left with is a magical liquid gold fertilizer. See the difference in your garden and feel good about going green!
If you do not want to go through the trouble but would like to explore its use, you can contact Gabriella Guidry of Ella’s Garden at (949) 310-9460 or email her at: gabriella@ellasgardens.com. She can provide you with the necessary supplies that would make it very simple to implement.
Why do cowboys always die with their boots on? So they won’t stub their toes when the kick the bucket!
—Laks Sehgal
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