Let us worm our way into discussing compost tea

It is a difficult subject for most people to talk about.

Even topics like colorectal polyps, erectile dysfunction, femine hygiene products and PMS have moved into the public arena. And while home breast exams are widely discussed, hardly anyone will publicly raise the issue of home composting.

Until last Saturday at the Finch Arboretum.

The Inland Empire Master Composters provided training and hands-on tips advising how to get your home garbage bill reduced to one can a week. You just build a rotting little 3-foot by 3-foot compost box and throw in garbage and plants.

You still will have to drag out one garbage can a week because not all garbage is suitable for rotting. Things like meat, bones, dairy products and fatty foods (cheeses and such) are not compost friendly. Even if you are using worms.

And speaking of worms, Master Composter “Pete” Denison, who is an old friend and has had worms since I’ve known her, was demonstrating the value of those compost all-stars, earthworms. Pete can advise you on ways to build a worm hotel, and she even will sell you a couple hundred to kick off your project so you can have worms like she does.

It was hot out in the Arboretum under Saturday’s sunshine, and there was a circuit of several composting instruction stations that must be visited in order to get the full rotting picture.

I was thirsty and eager to skip ahead to the station with the sign that said, Compost Tea. Below the sign were 5-gallon buckets full of fresh black tea sitting on the table, waiting to soothe my parched throat. A lemon wedge and ice would be nice.

Compost tea requires the ingredient molasses, which I like. However, Pete’s worms also contributed, and I don’t know where they’ve been. So I declined.

Good thing. Compost tea turns out to be a sort of dark porridge distilled from compost and is used to replace liquid fertilizers.

If you’re not a plant, don’t drink this tea, not even with lemon.

After we freshman composters sat through a 20-minute video in the Arboretum House and visited all 784 (more or less) learning stations, we were issued a free folded home composter to take with us and begin our own rotten experience.

My wife chided me by speculating that I would put the free composter in the garage and forget about it. I responded from the high ground by reminding that I was years ahead of her in the composting practice.

“How so?” she asked, piqued by my assertion.

“Don’t you remember my apartment when we first met?”

“It’s been a few years, but I do remember,” she answered.

“I had that silver composter under the kitchen sink.”

“Composter? That was a garbage can.”

“Only if you take it out regularly,” I said, nodding my head up and down in recycling pride, showing off some of my newly learned principles on bacteria, moisture and rotting food over time.

“And you only took out that garbage can when the compost tea started leaking out of the bottom. Didn’t you?”

That kind of an accusatory remark is only meant to hurt and is certainly not in the spirit of the composting brotherhood.

It’s a rotten thing to say.