Some Yummy Worm Tea Trivia

“Worm teas are all about microbiology and they are measured and evaluated under a microscope. Compost, worm castings, EM, and other inoculants all work and are evaluated by this means also. It is the wide diversity and numbers of microbiology that define a good tea. Please refer to our April 2006 newsletter for a discussion of why this is important to healthy soil, which, in turn, creates healthy and vibrant plant life.

Worm teas suppress disease on plant material and activate and add to the biology of the soil. Perhaps the most widely used and known use of teas is to suppress/eliminate black spot and powdery mildew on roses. By spraying a worm tea on the surface of leaves, you are doing two things. First, you coat the leaf with millions if not billions of microbes all competing for a food source. Some, for instance protozoa, eat bacteria which may be eating decaying plant material. Others eat other microbes and their wastes. In the end, there are not enough resources for the harmful molds and fungi to flourish. In addition, you are also coating the leaf with a protective surface that protects the leaf cells from attack by foreign spores or airborne microbes. Finally, by inoculating the soil, microbes break down nutrients for uptake into plants thereby increasing plant health and the plant’s own disease resistance/suppression.

Worm teas are superior to simple compost teas in the diversity of microbes, the additional substances that worms create, and the reduction or lack of harmful microorganisms. Although a traditional compost pile is a great environmental aid, and its final compost is a great aid to your garden, it typically does not have the microbe species diversity and numbers of worm casts …”

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Ahhh yes...like making my teas....cheap fertilizer

There’re two different ways to prepare worm tea from a farm, anaerobic and aerobic. The anaerobic way simply pours water over the bedding material to flush out the good stuff. This is the technique I use at the moment, with water that has been sitting overnight to let the chlorine from the town supply dissipate, because my tank is empty. It coincidentally is also the way industry produces the ready-made teas that are currently offered (according to one source, but there could be variations).

The aerobic way uses an air pump to circulate oxygen trough the brew, which aids the bugs to multiply rapidly so that the solution becomes more concentrated. Often a feed medium like molasses is added to further boost this process. When I first googled how to make worm tea, I came across some set ups for the aerobic preparation of tea and thought: OMG, what did I get myself into here; this is far to involved for me AND I have to buy still more equipment. But after my little info binge, this way has become absolutely viable, as far as I’m concerned:
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my air pumps that I use are the highest output aquarium bubblers and have four outlets

Do you have a plan for building your set up?

I got a blue plastic 200ltr drum.
I cut the top off and use it as a lid.
Then clean it thoroughly out from what it had in it before.
Next, I got a 40mm irrigation tap and fit it in the bottom(actually side).This is a two person job..one inside holding the nut and the other , outside doing it up.
Then I placed it on 4 limestone blocks so that it was stable and that it is holding 200 ltrs of brew. It has to be high enough off the ground to fit a plastic bucket or standard watering can under the tap.
I then fill with water and let stand for a day or two to get rid of the chlorine. Then I check the ph of the water and reduce it down to about 4.0.
Then I got some hesian bags and place my castings in or manures in. This way it leaches out and does not block the tap if it wasn't in there. Take the hessian bags out after every brew is made and let dry out(the manures and castings go onto the garden) and the bag rots and breaks within two weeks if left in the water.
24hrs before I want to use the tea, I put in the fish emulsion , molasses or any other solubles I need. I then put my four bubbler tubes in and away it goes. It will froth on top which shows the anerobic action of the oxygen

That sounds like an excellent set up, thank you for writing it up. 200L of brew sounds like a huge amount in one go. How often do you brew a batch and how many roses do you have?
I know manure is acidic, but read worm castings were typically slightly alkaline with a PH level of greater than 7, would it still be OK to brew tea from castings in a solution that has been reduced to PH 4?

50 roses...once a week

Yes, I foliar feed once a week, and have somewhere between 40 and 50 roses at the moment and really want to start spraying the soil and my vegies as well, but 200L still sounds a bit overwhelming …
How long does that amount last for you?

10ltrs goes into spraying and the rest gets bucketed to each bush..top and bottom feed...

Why do you reduce the PH of the water down to 4?

it is good for the uptake of nutrients and also when I bucket it to the roses, it helps to keep my soil ph down as well

Cheers, Neptune

Here’s my set up for making 7L of worm tea per week using the anaerobic procedure:

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1. Worm farm with one working tray in place
2. Buckets with one day old water and the local rag soaked overnight
3. 10L Watering can
4. Bowls to catch the tea
5. Bowl with handle and lip (not in picture, but most important)
6. Sieve inside knee high stocking
7. Soft drink bottle with bottom cut and knee high stocking inside
8. 7L pump spray
9. Pure soap flakes and vegetable oil to make wetting agent
10. Table for farm lid and equipment (bird cage pedestal)

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I’ve been covering the bedding with soaked newspaper to keep the moisture in. The worms are remarkably tidy creatures and have been coming to the surface to deposit their castings, which neatly stick to the paper. So I’ve been turning it over and opening it inside out to get is nice and covered for a couple of weeks. Today I will replace it with new paper.

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This area was wiggling with worms, but they’re quick and most disappeared before I could snap them.

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They really like pasta and have been munching at it from the sides

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Half of this tray was covered with spaghetti two weeks ago and most of it is gone. It’s gone a bit smelly, so ½ a pack was far too much and I’ll reduce this amount to ¼ pack or even less. I cannot smell a thing once the tray is covered by the newspaper and lid.

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I pour about ½ the water (4-5L) over the bedding whilst holding the sieve under the tap. The sieve alone didn’t work, because tiny worms got stuck in the mesh and could not be splashed out; took them ages to climb out by themselves (waste of time). Tying the stocking to the tap didn’t work either, because that blocked the flow. This works reasonably well.

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There’s always some bedding material flushing through and there’re always worms coming with this material. And there will be still more worms in the tea, so I do the next step very quickly so that they don’t drown.

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I filter the tea again as I pour it through my soft drink bottle funnel and straight into my pump spray, and then let the worms climb out of the stocking back into their tray.
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I repeat this process until my 7L spray pump is full. This takes between 9 and 10L depending on the temperature and humidity, i.e., a standard watering can. There will still be more tea dripping through, so I keep a bowl underneath. This is the tea I keep for my 500mL spray bottle and which I mix with a wetting agent to spray on new shoots and leaves. The tea sticks to and covers older leaves very well and evenly without a wetting agent. It’s the new actively growing leaves with rapidly dividing cells that benefit most from the tea, but also don’t let the tea stick.
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I remove the tray and tilt the farm to drain as much tea as possible. This elevated island in the basin is supposed to help the worms climb back into their tray when they fall through. Hmmmm ….
I’ve covered it with wet paper, so that I can just lift that whole piece back into the tray.
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But they’re very quick and will crawl for cover and hide, so I’m using a bigger piece of paper this time. (Can you see where they hide? Clever little buggers)
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Today I’ve also added some leave mulch to the bedding, because they like that more than anything. I put it all back together and cover with clean paper and lid.
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I don’t do this every week, but maybe every three or so. The paper that is covered in worm castings will make excellent mulch around my rose bushes. I’ll put the leave mulch back over it, of course.
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In future I will use the castings to brew some tea the aerobic way. I’m very tempted to get a 200L tank to do this, because I believe I’ll use every little bit of it. Maybe I’ll start with a large bucket set up first, to see how I go, maybe I should skip that step and just get on with it right away …
Perhaps Neptune will post a picture of his set up to give me an idea as to where I might fit such a tank in my garden. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of suggestions here with respect to nice climbing roses that would cover such a thing.

Thank you for giving us such a detailed description of your setup Jaci. Your pics helped a lot to follow the steps and understand the process. Very interesting. I'm keeping this for reference for the future.

Thanks Silky, the farm comes with an info booklet, too, but a lot of the detail isn’t mentioned, and I hope this will safe some time fiddling with the process. Honestly, my farm is the best investment I made since buying the actual roses. I didn’t have to go and do a lot of research on exactly how worm tea works to know it’s great, but now that I have, I’ll make sure I get the production up to spray everything; all my other plants, the soil and especially new beds, not just my roses’ leaves.
Friends, who are into vegie growing, have been buying all the special vegie specific paraphernalia (a shelf of products just for tomatoes) saw my tomato leaves and flipped out. They weren’t interested in getting a farm at first, but when they looked at buying worm tea, changed their mind quick smart. They also spoke to the grounds keeper at their bows club, where there are many roses, and he, too, swore by worm tea.

Ready-made worm farms are pretty neat, but now that I’ve seen how they work, I’d make my own and buy only the worms. They have to be compost worms, which are different from earthworms that live deep in the ground where they aerate the soil. There’s not much to building a worm farm. Here’s a Gardening Australia Fact Sheet on how to make a worm farm in a bathtub:
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But any container would do with some minor alterations. If I started any farm from scratch, I’d line the tray with a synthetic fabric that cannot be broke down, maybe nylon, so that the worms won’t fall through into the basin (the only concern I have with this set up). That’s what I’ll do with my second tray and make that the lower storey. I also won’t buy the $20 refill of coconut fiber that provides the bedding material for the second tray, but use shredded paper and cardboard, leaf mulch and crass clippings and probably prop that up with some soaked garden friendly kitty litter, made from recycled paper.