Pilot develops tea for plants

This tea is not for people.

It’s for plants, as its name vermicompost tea or vermi tea, suggests.

And doubly interesting is that its inventor is not a full-time member of the science world, as he flies commercial airplanes for a living.

In his free time, however, Capt. James "Bong" Reamon is on his two-hectare farm in General Santos City in Mindanao.

As early as two decades ago, Reamon, now 51, had crafted a windmill that had won prestigious awards – among them as invention of the year in 1984.

Several other award-winning inventions followed.

Reamon’s latest creation is the Rex Compost Tea Brewer, which won the first prize in the Creative Research category in the 2005 National Inventors Week celebration held last November at the Philippine Trade Training Center in Pasay City.

The brewer, whose application for patent is pending, is used to make tea out of vermicompost (earthworm casts) for fertilizing plants. About 200 units of the brewer have been manufactured.

Reamon, who was Philippine Airlines (PAL) pilot for 16 years until he moved to Cebu Pacific seven years ago, culture earthworms on his farm (Felicidad Orchard and Gardens, Organics, named after his mother) managed by his wife Gilda.

An economical organic fertilizer, the verni tea can be sprayed on vegetable leaves (feliar fertilizer) or applied directly to the soil to add nutrients to the soil and to increase the density and diversity of beneficial microbes.

Those who have used the vermicompost tea attest to its effectiveness in promoting health growth of plants (vegetables and even rice), as one testimonial stated, "even without the use of any chemical fertilizer."

Reamon’s fascination with vermiculture (culture of earthworms) began in 2000 when he ventured into eel culture as part of feeds substitute (vermimeal).

He later joined the first batch of trainees of the Department of Agriculture-Bureau of Plant Industry (DA-BPI) vermiculture and composting seminar-workshop held in Manila in 2002.

This was followed by the vermi-symposium held in Los Baños, Laguna, under the auspices of the Department of Science and Technology-Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development (DOST-PCAMRD) and the DA-Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice).

Subsequently, Reamon obtained 20 African Night Crawlers (a popular earthworm species) from Ramil Rubia, farm supervisor of noted Agriculture editor/writer Zac B. Sarian.

"This set of worms took a residence in our living room for almost a year while studying their culture requirements. The reason for this is that, we were then worried that these creatures might migrate to somewhere else if we placed them in our garden," he recalled.

Finally, the earthworms, which had subsequently multiplied, were flown to the Reamon farm in General Santos City.

Today, the pilot-weekend farmer is among the country’s ardent promoters of the vermi tea that has been the product of his creative mind. — Rudy A. Fernandez