Herbal tea is good for your new seedlings!

I saw this headline on an  email from Organic Gardening: “Herbal tea for healthy seedlings”.  It got my attention as I have been saving my tea leaves from past tea brewing for another project.  What has happened is that I have way more discarded loose tea than I need for that project. To hear that my tea can have yet another use besides compost makes me want to learn more!

“To prevent damping-off from killing seedlings, try watering them with chamomile tea. Make a strong tea with 3 teaspoons of dried chamomile in 6 cups of boiling water. Let the tea steep and cool. Water the seedlings two or three times until all signs of damping-[o]ff vanish. ”  -According to Organic Gardening

Is your next question the same as mine? What is damping-off?

There’s a fungus among us! And it affects young seedlings as well as sprouting seeds. It seems there are a number of fungus ailments that are placed under this term of damping-off. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

A given seed can become infected with a fungus, often causing it to darken and soften. This can kill it before the seedling emerges, or cause the seedling to be weak, sometimes getting “wet” patches on it which decay until it falls apart.

Likewise, a seedling can be infected after it sprouts, before it leaves the ground, or even after it appears well-developed, the latter often resulting in the plant mysteriously thinning right where it touches the ground, until its stem at that point rots and it falls over.

While the Organic Gardening site recommends new chamomile tea leaves, my plan is to throw in a bit of reused leaves to water my seedling lovelies!

Happy Washing!

~Regina