PLANT FOOD
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There are many different solutions for fertilizing and enriching soil to promote growth, and many of them can be found in your kitchen, or even in your garden already.
Much of our kitchen waste can be repurposed as fertilizer as well. Things like citrus peels and eggshells have certain nutrients that plants love, but often times they require more processing than simply throwing them into your soil. Here we’re going to explore ways to give waste a new life and turn it into plant food, as well as debunk a couple myths when it comes to using kitchen scraps for fertilization.
Remember to try homemade plant food on only 1-2 plants to start to test their efficacy. Different plants have different needs, and it takes plenty of experimentation to figure out which fertilization methods hold the most rewarding nutrients for each individual plant. Before adding anything to your garden, it is helpful to test your soil pH and see what your garden needs and if it requires any fertilization. Check out this source for helping test your soil.
Obviously, there are two most effective methods for creating fertile soil - compost and animal manure.
You can buy animal manure at certain farm/ranch stores or hardware stores for relatively cheap if you do not have chickens, cows, llamas, goats, or turkeys. If you are using manure from your own animals, there are a couple measures to follow before throwing it into your garden as the manure needs to be composted and cured in order to be fit for fertilization. Do not ever use waste from meat-eating animals or house pets, they can end up being very harmful to your garden.
Here is a very in-depth guide to composting animal manure from North Dakota State University.
If you do not have the space or desire to keep farm animals, you should most definitely be composting your kitchen waste, as it is the other most extraordinarily effective method of fertilizing soil, and one that is significantly more accessible to the average person of smaller means than a full-on self-sufficient homestead or farm.
Remember when composting that there are certain guiding lines to follow. Here’s a couple to consider off the bat:
Only use plant waste - never use meat/bones, dairy or anything with grease/oil in it.
Cutting plant waste into very small pieces helps with faster decomposition. Do not add very large items to a compost if you are looking to use it anytime soon. I once made the mistake of adding a rotting jack-o-lantern without cutting it up.
There are certain common compostables that should be avoided due to the tremendous amount of time it takes to decompose - fruits with stones like peaches, nectarines, avocados (including avocado skins), and even egg-shells do not add much in the way of short-term nutrients (see later in this article where I debunk common myths about fertilization).
Although I plan to compile my own best-practice composting guide in the future, for now here is an in-depth guide to learning the ins-and-outs of composting, from almanac.com
Aside from composting plant scraps and animal manure, there are a few other effective ways of fertilizing your garden soil to promote healthy growth and flourishing plants.
Make weed tea from all your garden weeds
Fill a 5 gallon bucket about 1/4 of the way with recently pulled garden weeds, then fill that bucket up with water. Let that bucket sit outside for 1-2 weeks to steep, then water your plants with the weed tea once a week or so. Garden weeds are fairly rich in nitrogen (an essential nutrient for most plants) and it is thought that soaking them can pull the nutrients out into the water (similar to tea that you drink, the antioxidants and nutrients are ingestible through drinking the tea). Just be warned that a bucket of weed tea will most definitely stink, so keep it out of the way.
Grass clippings are also rich in nitrogen
Take your lawn cuttings and sprinkle them over your garden beds - they can enrich the soil with nitrogen as well as help a little bit with preventing weeds.
Don’t recycle your fallen leaves in Autumn
Instead of bagging and sending fallen leaves to the recycler in the Fall, set them aside to use for your garden, or even consider just leaving them where they fall (so long as your HOA doesn’t massacre you for it). Fallen leaves have some nutrients, but they also attract earthworms, help maintain moisture in soil, help prevent weeds from popping up, and lighten up heavy soils. You can crush them up and till them into your soil, or lay them over the top of the soil like mulch.
Citrus peels are rich in many essential nutrients
Citrus peels are very good for compost, as they also release nitrogen when they break down. They also are rich in magnesium, sulfur, and calcium - other nutrients that gardens thrive on.
You can add them directly to your soil by zesting the peels into long, very thin strips using a vegetable peeler and drying them. If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can use a conventional oven at the lowest temperature (usually 170 degrees) and keeping the oven door slightly cracked, check every 20 minutes until they are dry to the touch with no give when you squeeze them. From there, grind them up using a blender or mortar and pestle and simply stir them into your soil. This is mostly beneficial for plants that love slightly-acidic soil, such as berries (cranberries, blueberries, elderberries, thimbleberries, and more), sweet corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, and onions. There are also plenty of herbs that enjoy their soil to be slightly-acidic, like lemongrass, oregano, thyme, and rosemary. There are also plenty of non-edible flowers and trees that like things slightly-acidic - do some extra research on your plants to see what kind of soil they like.
Undried, fresh citrus peels supposedly also ward off aphids and mosquitos, while attracting butterflies. You can tuck the recently peeled citrus peels underneath and around your plants, and see what happens!
Vermicompost (worm) Tea
Vermicompost tea is a fantastic method of fertilization, it will never burn out your crops and is very rich in essential plant nutrients.
To make vermicompost tea, you need to get your hands on worm castings. Worm castings can be found in garden stores, some nurseries, or the garden section of some big box supermarkets. Check the ingredients to make sure that you’re getting 100% worm castings and not a mixture of other soils.
In a 5 gallon bucket, combine 4 gallons of water and 6 cups of worm casting. According to some, a few tablespoons of molasses mixed in can help encourage healthy microorganism growth. Stir the mixture together and let sit overnight until it becomes a dark brown color.
I usually use a large liquid syringe to extract and place the worm tea directly onto root balls as I’m planting them. You do not need to limit the amount you use, but about half a cup or 2-3 syringes is a good place to start. You can also water your plants with the worm tea once every couple weeks.
Other unorthodox methods of fertilization that I’ve found online
Take these with your own personal grain of salt and do plenty of research. Remember to do more research and cross-reference different sources before you go putting anything in your garden; each plant depends on different fertilization methods and all soil has a different pH requirement per plant.
Epsom Salt for Fertilizing?
Epsom salt is a fantastic source of magnesium and are said to help some plants tremendously; namely tomatoes and peppers. However, it is best to check the levels already in your soil as adding epsom salt can cause issues if you already have a sufficient amount of magnesium in your soil.
To make the fertilizer, dissolve 1 tablespoon of epsom salt in 1 gallon of water and water your plants with this solution once per month. Do not overwater, a little bit goes a long way.
Banana Peels
Full of potassium (plant nutrient), banana peels are great for compost (especially if cut up into small pieces to help break them down faster). You can cut them up into small pieces and bury them in holes underneath certain plants (namely rose bushes and fruits), or steep them in water for 3-4 weeks and water your plants with that water.
As with many fertilization methods touted online, it isn’t fully known if the steeping method is very useful or effective in extracting nutrients. It will always be more effective to compost your plant materials and allow them to break down naturally rather than attempting to process the nutrients out of them.
Debunking some fertilization myths: coffee grounds and eggshells
According to The Arbor Gate on YouTube (and many more seasoned gardeners), coffee grounds and eggshells are not the magic fertilizing pills that they are made out to be by so many. Almost every gardening blog online will tell you that they work wonders, but the truth is that they provide very little, if any, nutrients in the short term. Now, they can be used for long-term soil amendment, but they will not do much good for your garden in the meantime. It is best to add them to a compost pile and allow them to break down over a longer period of time, sometimes even years, rather than believing that they will do anything directly for your garden.
Eggshells often end up still being whole by the time you go to till in your compost. This can be unsightly and overflow your garden with eggshells. They can take years to decompose enough to allow the calcium to come out and into your garden. They won’t particularly harm your garden, but they also will not help anything in the meantime. If you are going to add eggshells to your compost, be sure to crush them up as much as possible - it is much easier for them to break down quickly.
Another misconception with eggshells is that crushed eggshells can be used as a slug-barrier, but this is also untrue. They can still crawl over crushed eggshells. (Source: Epic Gardening on YouTube) This video also explains a way to extract the calcium out of eggshells using a baking and soaking process, so check that out if you do have eggshells that need to be used.
A Common myth with coffee grounds is that they acidify your soil, but they really don’t - at least not to a useful degree. The majority of the acid is released in the brewing process, rather than into the soil or compost after being spent. Unbrewed coffee grounds have more acid, but it would be wasteful to spend money on fresh coffee grounds to be used in the garden, rather than just purchasing soil acidifier. Used coffee grounds are also very low in nitrogen despite the claims of many gardeners.
Remember that all gardens and all plants require different means of fertilization and soil. Gardening itself is a trial and error process, so don’t be too upset if you make mistakes, and don’t be too sad if some of these DIY fertilization methods don’t change much in particular. Fertilization is a tricky game and changing the pH levels of soil is sometimes best left to the store-bought fertilizers and soil fixers. But it is worth digging into this area of research and finding out the best practices that your garden requires! Best of luck to all my fellow gardeners out there!
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Variety Jones
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