What is compost tea and how does it help trees and shrubs?

Compost tea is a living mixture of water and organic composts like leaf mulch and worm castings. It introduces beneficial microbes into the soil, improving nutrient availability and overall tree health.

Why is compost tea better than traditional chemical fertilizers?

Unlike synthetic fertilizers, compost tea builds long-term soil health by restoring microbial life. It improves soil structure, reduces runoff, and mimics the natural forest ecosystem trees evolved in.

How does Leaf & Limb make compost tea for deep root fertilization?

We brew compost tea in-house using organic materials like food scraps, leaves, and wood chips. It's steeped in rainwater and applied the same day using a soil probe or a watering wqnd to inject living microbes directly into the root zone.

Why does urban soil need compost tea?

During construction, nutrient-rich topsoil is stripped away, leaving compacted, lifeless dirt. Compost tea replenishes soil biology, turning dead dirt into living soil that supports healthy trees and shrubs.

Video | Tea for Your Trees

Hi friends! Did you know that there’s more microbes in one teaspoon of soil than there are people on planet Earth? I mean, how incredible is that!? You know what else is cool? We can actually put these microbes to work for your trees.

Hi, I’m Greyson, and today, I’d like to talk with you about compost tea. What is compost tea? That’s a really good question. It’s actually a mix of several different types of compost, and we steep it in water to make a tea. This can be easily utilized to help improve soil.

Why do we need compost tea? Well, it goes all the way back to the construction process where all of the good topsoil that took decades to form is scraped off the site, hauled away, and sold, leaving compacted and lifeless dirt.

Now, our main goal here is to infuse life into otherwise lifeless dirt using our compost tea. Now I know we’ve talked at length about avoiding the use of chemicals and instead adding rotting stuff. These living microbes play a key role in the tree receiving the nutrients that it needs. Basically, we’re just trying to emulate what we find in the forest.

Let’s talk about how we make it. Now we don’t want to give away all of our secrets, but our compost tea starts with a big helping of rotting stuff. Here at Leaf & Limb, we create all types of compost. From leaves and leftovers to wood and worms, these create all sorts of fungi, bacteria, and nutrients that our tees love. Then we put all of this goodness together in our giant tea bag.

And now we just add water, rainwater, that is. We collect thousands of gallons of rainwater using our cisterns. This helps us avoid the chemicals and make the best compost tea possible.

Now that we are ready to begin steeping our tree tea, it’s really as simple as: just put it in the water and wait. One fun detail here, since our compost tea is alive, we make it right before we use it every time, so it’s always fresh.

Ok, the tea is steeped and ready to go. All we need to do now is hook up our soil probe and we will inject the tea right into the soil where it needs to go.

So, there you have it! Turn lifeless dirt into living soil in an ecologically friendly way using compost tea.