Making Manure Tea for Tomatoes

Organic and made from steer manure, manure tea helps tomato plants grow large deep green leaves and loads of fruit. Liquid nutrients are absorbed almost immediately—your plants will love this.

What You Need

Purchase well-aged composted steer manure with compost. The bags are small, about 1 cubic foot. Don't use fresh manure—use composted manure that's dry, over 3-4 months old, well-cooked with no pathogens or germs to worry about. Buy it at big box stores.

If you use fresh poop in your garden, I won't be eating your carrots. Haha!

You'll also need a burlap bag or pillowcase to hold the manure, and a 30-40 gallon trash can (or 100-gallon for lots of plants).

Composted steer manure and a burlap bag—everything you need to get started

Why Store-Bought Manure?

Sometimes barnyard poop contains too much urine, which means too much salt. Excess salt in your soil can take years to leach out. Use store-bought composted manure to avoid this problem.

How to Make It

1. Fill the bag
Put about half a bag of composted steer manure in your burlap bag or pillowcase, then tie it shut. Don't use more than half a bag—once wet, it becomes too heavy to lift.

Half a bag in the burlap sack, tied shut and ready to steep

2. Steep and agitate
Fill a 30-40 gallon trash can with water. Drop in your giant tea bag and soak for 3-4 days, agitating it daily. The tea will become foamy and take on color.

3. Apply to plants
Fill a bucket with the manure tea and pour it around the base of your plants so it gets down into the root zone. You almost can't use too much of this liquid steer manure tea.

Use a bucket to pour around the base of plants, or pump it if you have many tomatoes

For lots of plants, a pump setup makes application easier

How Often to Use It

Water your tomatoes as needed—sometimes every couple days. Fertilize according to package directions—manure tea doesn't replace regular fertilizer. Pour manure tea around the base of plants at least once a week, ideally twice.

For convenience, you can add your regular fertilizer to the bucket of manure tea before pouring. The tea and liquid nutrients will be absorbed almost immediately.

Review our fertilizer recommendations →

Scaling Up

Have lots of tomato plants? Use a 100-gallon trash can for your manure tea with about 3 burlap bags of steer manure compost. Just remember—don't park this brew under your open bedroom window.

What Does Science Say?

Science says there's mostly no evidence that manure teas do much for tomatoes. But after these last few years learning to question everything, I say give your plants steer manure tea anyway. Your tomato plants will love you even more.

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Next Steps

Choose the right fertilizer →
Master watering techniques →
Learn the fundamentals →

Dave Freed / The Tomato Guy