Used Tea in Gardening Use

Today we will discuss the use of used tea leaves in gardening. We all love tea. What better it would be if we can use the tea leaves after taking out the liquor from it and use it in garden.

Tea leaves are very rich in organic materials, disposing them like trash is like throwing out valuable natural resource. Adding them in the compost pile will reduce the need of adding other fertilizers.

They are a fantastic source of Nitrogen. After taking out the tea liquor, the remaining leaves can be used as a great source of nitrogen in the compost pile. It can be a good supplement to balance the brown materials (rich in carbon) of the compost pile. To know more about carbon nitrogen balance check out our earlier article on composting ingredients.

You can take out the tea leaves from the tea with a strainer.  Store these along with your kitchen scraps. Once the bucket gets filled dump them into the compost heap and let them decompose.

If you are using tea bags to prepare tea, you can use the bags also as composting ingredient. But while dumping the tea bags, cut them open and take the tea leaves out.  Not all tea bags can decompose. In cases where the bags are made up of nylons, they will not do any help in composting. Some tea bags can be made up of paper or silk they will decompose but the rate will be very different from the leaves. That is why it makes sense to take out the leaves from the bags.

Tea leaves can also be used as mulch. Unlike other kitchen scraps, tea leaves don’t need to be composted before applying as mulch. Tea leaves hold water in large quantity. So don’t apply if your garden soil is damp and your plant requires dryer soil.

Tea leaves also protect the plant from many soil borne diseases. It is a little acidic in nature so mixing with soil will decrease the pH of the soil, and provide ideal growing condition for many plants. Tea leaves are rich potassium (K) and phosphorous (K) apart from Nitrogen (N), which are key elements in plant growth. Tea leaves are beneficial for Mushrooms in particular. Tea leaves mixed with peat moss works wonder for Mushrooms. Apart from Mushrooms tea leaves have also shown good results in rose cultivation.



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