Your houseplants, your vegetable garden, or even your lawn will need to be fertilized regularly to ensure their growth. While there are chemical fertilizers that can be found at any right garden center, it may be best to go for a natural, homemade alternative!
Whether for the sake of the environment or economic reasons, homemade fertilizers offer several advantages. Curiosity Insights offer several natural fertilizer recipes that are easy to make at home below.
1. Natural fertilizer made from household waste
The most accessible natural fertilizers to make at home come straight from your household waste. Here are some of the household waste that you most likely have on hand, and how to use them as a natural fertilizer for your plants or vegetable garden.
Coffee grounds for indoor green plants:
Make a habit of storing coffee grounds in a pot every morning. This powder is an excellent source of phosphorus and nitrogen, two essential ingredients for maintaining the health of your greenhouse plants and your lettuce in the garden. Incorporate it regularly into the soil of your plants. On the other hand, avoid applying it during the flowering period, because nitrogen promotes leaf growth to the detriment of flowers.
Teabags as flowering fertilizer:
Make a second infusion with your used tea bags, which you will then add to the water for watering your plants. The residues of teas contain carbohydrate, an element that promotes beautiful flowering.
Eggshells on plant soil:
After cooking them, wash and dry the eggshells well before crushing them. You can then apply it to the soil of your plants, thus providing them with the calcium, magnesium, and potassium they need.
Banana peels, source of potassium:
Another great source of potassium. You have to cut them into small pieces and add them to the soil of your plants or make an infusion of them that you will add to the irrigation water.
Wood ash, a supernatural fertilizer:
If you are lucky enough to have a fireplace at home, save any ashes from any wood you burn there. Indeed, wood ash makes an excellent natural fertilizer for lawns and vegetable gardens. You only have to apply a thin layer of it on the property or the soil of the vegetable garden, and the rain, as well as the watering, will take care of incorporating this natural fertilizer towards the roots.
2. Nettle manure as a fertilizer for the vegetable garden
Although it is considered by many to be an unwanted plant, nettle can be very useful in the garden to nourish plants.
- It suffices to make a decoction, or liquid manure, by letting the plant macerate for a few days in a bucket of water.
- Subsequently, dilute this liquid manure with irrigation water, and apply it to the base of your fruit trees, in the vegetable patch or the flower garden.
In addition to being a natural fertilizer, nettle manure can be used as a natural insecticide against aphids but also against mites.
3. Make your compost
If you have a place in the garden to build a homemade composter, this is the best way to make your natural fertilizer. You can incorporate your green gardening waste and some of your household waste.
Then you let it all decompose for a few months, stirring regularly with a fork. Once well degraded, all you have to do is apply it at the base of your plants or in the vegetable garden.
4. Dried seaweed
You don’t live too far from the sea? Take your chance and take the opportunity on your next walk to pick green algae.
As green algae are rich in magnesium and potassium, they can be used as a natural fertilizer for your plants, lawns, vegetables, and flowers.
Then place them in a pile at the bottom of the garden, to avoid being bothered by the smell they give off, and let them dry for a few days. All you have to do is spread them in the vegetable garden to feed your vegetable or fruit plants.
5. The decoction of comfrey
Following the same principle as nettle manure, make a decoction of comfrey leaves to create a natural fertilizer for your plants.
You can then dilute it with irrigation water to nourish and encourage the flowering of your ornamental plants.
6. Other natural plant-based fertilizers
Their waste can feed several ornamental or vegetable plants. For example, the tomato suckers can be used as a decoction to then serve as a natural fertilizer for the vegetable garden, once diluted with the irrigation water. Infuse 80 grams in 1 liter of water for 4 or 5 days. Then, filter and add this decoction to 10 liters of water.
Use the stems of geraniums to make a natural fertilizer:
If you grow geraniums in your flower boxes or the garden, be aware that you can also use the stems to make a natural fertilizer. When you prune your geraniums, get in the habit of keeping the stems that you will then let soak for a few weeks in water.
7. Bird feathers as a natural fertilizer
If you have access to a poultry farm or other type of bird, collect their feathers to make a natural fertilizer in the form of juice.
You need to use two good handfuls of feathers that you will let soak for a few days in 8 liters of water.
Make sure you put some weight on them to keep them submerged underwater—no need to dilute before watering your vegetable garden with this feather juice.
8. Epsom salt as a natural fertilizer
An excellent source of magnesium and sulfur, Epsom salt can be used as a natural fertilizer for tomatoes and roses.
- Add one tablespoon of Epsom salt to 4 liters of water.
- Dilute well, and water your tomato plants and your roses, or any plant whose leaves seem bland, with this liquid.
9. The cooking water of your vegetables
Did you know that you can use the cooking water of your vegetables to make a natural fertilizer for your plants?
Rich in the nutrients your plants need, the cooking water for vegetables can be applied once cooled, without dilution, directly to the soil of your plants.
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