Tea

For the garden, not to drink.

This is Boogie Brew.

It's like a teabag that's been steeping for twenty-four hours. 

With an aerator for the aquarium.

The brew comes in two parts for longer shelf-life. You use 1/2 cup of each part and soak for a day with air circulating. It imparts living organisms into the soil that work in the root-zone to bring available nutrients into the roots. 

Tea and coffee grounds work in compost, but this is not that.

One time at work an elderly woman recommended tea for indoor plants. She meant opening up used teabags into the soil. 

I tried that and saw no results. 

Then I was visiting a friend with farming background. He had a garden in his front yard right by the front door. You have to walk past the garden to go inside. That how intimate he was with his home garden. 

Early in the season his corn was higher than all other corn in all other gardens.

By a lot.

His were double the regular size. Much more filled out. Already forming ears. While everyone else's corn was pathetically struggling. 

"What are you doing that's different?"

"I added tea."

"Oh come on. That doesn't work. Quit bullshitting me. I tried that already and it failed. I drank tea, then tore open the used bags and dumped it into the soil and ... nothing." 

"Not that kind of tea. When farmers say 'tea" they mean cow shit soaked in water. Come here. I'll show you." 

He took me outside and showed me a 5-gallon bucket filled with water and with a cow patty soaking inside it. 

"That's tea."

     "OooOOOOOOOOOoooh. Now I get it. 'tea' is a farm-euphemism for cow shit." 

"Yes." 

The woman at work is stupid. She doesn't speak farmer." 

This Boogie Brew is the less disgusting version of that. It's doing the same thing but without any cows. 

Now I have a bag of one cup of wet used particles. It's a bit like wet worm castings. The instructions do not say what to do with them, from what I saw anyway. So they're going into the pots to supplement the soil. So each watering will draw out some more.

I'll do this a few times each season. Maybe a couple more times this year. I used hardly any that came in the two bags. 

You have to use de-chlorinated water. Chlorine kills the organisms that you're trying to cultivate.

I have a very good 10-part filter on the sink that does that, but to be certain I let the water sit overnight before starting, then steeped the bag for another full day with the aquarium aerator. 

You can de-chlorinate faster by using the aerator. That reduces the time to just a few hours.