Making Weed Tea Fertilizer: Does It Work & Is It Worth It?

Written by: Luke Marion

Published on July 2, 2026

Updated on July 2, 2026

Homemade fertilizer teas are soaring high in popularity, and for good reason! They can stimulate plant growth by providing fast-acting water-soluble nutrients. So, how does weed tea compare to other homemade fertilizer alternatives, like compost tea or liquid seaweed fertilizer?

A man reacting to the foul odor of weed tea fertilizer.

There’s no denying that weed tea can get putrid, smelly, and disgusting. Is it a good choice for fertilizing an organic garden that is worth all the trouble? Let’s talk about what weed tea is, the basic recipe for this green fertilizer, and the pros and cons.

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The Appeal of Gardening

One of my goals is to make gardening more appealing by showing ways that you can have a garden, have more fun gardening, garden more efficiently, and ultimately enjoy it more, all the while removing those negative stigmas that gardens are messy, weedy, and smelly. So, I hope you’ll use this information on weed tea and all these other free MIgardener resources to level up your gardening game this year!

What is Weed Tea

Weed tea is a homemade garden fertilizer that is made out of the weeds pulled from a garden. The idea is that organic material is broken down by anaerobic bacteria as a passive way of creating liquid fertilizer for your plants.

All of this sounds fantastic until you get to the reality of making weed tea. While the basic premise behind weed tea is logical, I think there are much better ways to fertilize your plants that don’t involve creating a stink bomb for the entire neighborhood.

How to Make Weed Tea

To make weed tea, you take weeds from the yard or garden, put them in a bucket, and fill the bucket with water. The weeds could be grass, clover, dandelions, comfrey, or other plants that you no longer want.

The bucket of water with weeds is left to sit for a long period of time, usually a month or so. The weeds break down over time in the water, releasing their nutrients.

Why Is Weed Tea Controversial

Only anaerobic bacteria can decompose material in an environment without oxygen, and because weeds are submerged in water, the decomposition happens by anaerobic bacteria. Those anaerobic bacteria create a lot of methane (which plants do not need), and also some hydrogen sulfide and ammonia.

The methane, ammonia, and sulfur compounds created by this anaerobic decomposition can be very, very strong and create the famously vile odor of weed tea! There’s no way to sugar coat it, weed tea has the most foul, fetid smell I have ever smelled, and your neighbors won’t appreciate it.

I have heard the argument that making weed tea is still worth it because it releases more nutrients than the alternatives, just like making sourdough bread. I hate to say it, but this is simply not true! Yes, sourdough bread improves the bioavailability of minerals by neutralizing phytic acid, but the same principle is not at work in weed tea.

No matter how long you let it sit, a pound of weeds will only have a fixed amount of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients because of the principle of conservation of mass (which states that matter cannot be created or destroyed). You cannot create more, it can only be rearranged.

Does Weed Tea Make Good Fertilizer

What many people don’t realize is that, when making weed tea, you can actually trigger the denitrification process. In soil or aquatic environments, accumulating methane causes microbes to quickly consume nitrates and transform them into nitrogen gas.

As I shared in How to Add Nitrogen to Soil, plants cannot use nitrogen gas. Instead nitrates are the soluble form of nitrogen that plants can uptake.

In conclusion, weed tea will provide plants with fertilization, but the nutrient profile varies widely. I’m going on record saying that weed tea is one of the nastiest things in the garden and probably one of the most unnecessary. I think that people who like to make weed tea, just like to suffer.

The Better Fertilizer Tea

Don’t lump all fertilizer teas together as a waste of time just yet! Compost tea is a fantastic fertilizer that can stimulate plant growth and inoculate plants with beneficial bacteria and fungi. Use this tutorial to make the best compost tea fertilizer.

Other Great Options For Fertilizing a Garden

In addition to compost tea, there are several options out there that can give you results without the disadvantages of weed tea:

Chop and Drop - If you want to use your weeds to fertilize, take your weeds (with no roots attached), chop them up, and use them as a mulch around other plants. The aerobic bacteria in the soil will break down the weeds and release the nutrients without the smell.
Homemade Seaweed Fertilizer - This is one of the best micro-nutrient fertilizers on earth! You’ll be surprised how little time, money, and work are required to make liquid seaweed fertilizer right at home.
Revive Rx - Revive Rx is the latest in the MIgardener plant food line. By harnessing the power of mother nature we have made a highly potent liquid-based fertilizer that is 100% water soluble with high nitrogen, gentle phosphorus, potassium, humic, fulvic, & lysine amino acids along with over 40 trace minerals. Plant stress will be a thing of the past and insane growth will be the new norm.
VegaGrow - I understand that some people don’t like using animal products in their garden, and I respect that. If you or someone you know grows veganically, MIgardener also has a great vegan fertilizer called VegaGrow that is all mineral-based with no animal byproducts.
Trifecta Fertilizer - Trifecta+ is an all-purpose, natural base, premium blend fertilizer. This soil supercharger is rich in fast-acting and slow-release nutrients, beneficial bacteria, fungi, and over 50 trace minerals!