What I do with leachate

A lot of people are confused about the difference between leachate and worm tea. Worm tea is made from taking worm castings, placing various amounts into a teabag of some sort (usually made with pantyhose) or just by placing the worm castings also known as earthworm castings (ewc) directly into water until dissolved and mixed adequately.

Leachate on the other hand, is what leaches out of the bottom of a worm bin and is often captured in a bucket. It is comprised of many substances, including various bacteria and fungi, as well as worm urine, vegetable juices, and whatever else might have leached out after water was added to the top. It can become anaerobic (stink) and I've even read online that some people have complained of their plants getting diseased after adding this leachate to their gardens. I have not had that problem, in fact, just the opposite. So I decided to show you how to add this magnificent "waste byproduct" to your garden and hopefully, you can achieve the same results that I have.

I begin by carrying the bucket outside to a patio area and filling it up with water. I always feel like I should be using distilled water to keep as many microbes alive, since my tap water contains chlorine and is probably killing many of the beneficial organisms that help break down plant food in the soil.

I fill the bucket completely, and it's usually a lot lighter in color than what you see in the above picture, but I let it sit and ferment for too long this week and the microbes were abundant, as you can see by the foam.

I poured half of this batch onto my neighbors tomatoes because he has been donating a lot of his vegetables to my worms and I wanted to show my gratitude. I only used half because I have a lot of gardens I am also feeding this leachate to and a little bit goes a long ways. In fact, after I added leachate to my neighbors garden, I filled the bucket up with water again.

 After feeding a few plants, I saved some in the bucket to show you what color the leachate usually is after I dilute it. It should be a tea color.

These are Roma Tomatoes that my wife uses to make various tomato sauces for dinner. They might not look that big, but my hands are pretty huge and these tomatoes were only growing to half this size before I started adding leachate. These aren't even the biggest ones either, but were the first I spotted and still shocked me, as this plant hadn't produced any fruit this year until I started adding leachate a few weeks ago. The plants seem to love leachate, but it's important to dilute it first and spread it far and wide in your gardens! :)

And yet another benefit is that it seems to bring dead plants back to life see Zombie Celery.

I also added it to a dying washington navel orange tree that seemed to be a complete loss, with the hopes of bringing it back after the success I had with the donated Celery. A few days ago we noticed that the orange tree seemed to be coming back.

Not only did the root base come alive (below the graft), but it started to grow new shoots. I'm not sure what kind of tree the root base is, but I assume some sort of dwarf citrus.

The thing that got me excited was that I noticed the stem of this upper part, which is definitely a washington navel orange graft and it's alive! Are there Zombie Oranges in my future? I'll keep you updated!