Do your green leaves or monstera plants look like they’re about to fall over? It might be time to give your plants a boost with some home-made plant food. Like people, plants need certain chemicals to grow, thrive, and fight off diseases that are bad for them. You don’t have to run to the garden shop right away to buy pricey fertilizing powders and concentrates, though. You can save money by making your own animal feed.
Healthy Soil Equals Healthy Plants
In other words, you need to make the land better. Most people buy fertilizer because they don’t make their own waste at home. Most plant fertilizers you can buy at your local garden store are made with chemicals that are bad for your plants and the environment.
Homemade Plant Food for Prolific Plants
We already know that good soil is important for a yard. The earth has most of the nutrients plants need to grow well. These are the nutrients that plants need the most: nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and to a smaller extent calcium, magnesium, and sulfur. They are also known as macronutrients.
Some of the worst soils in the world can still provide small amounts of the other vitamins.
The most important thing for gardeners to know is how to use fertilizer, even if it’s not the most interesting subject. Just like people, plants need food to stay healthy. With just a little knowledge about fertilizer, you can help your garden grow big, strong, healthy plants without spending a lot of money.
1. Use food scraps to make lomi dirt
It’s best to make fertilizer at home that is easy to use and feed to your plants. The best homemade plant food is Lomi’s nutrient-rich dirt, which is made from food waste and is quick and easy to make.
Everyday organic waste is turned into ready-to-use dirt in as little as four hours by a Lomi electric composter. This dirt is then used to feed your plants. And if you don’t want to keep a jar of rotting food scraps on your kitchen counter or are still working on getting into the habit of watering your flowers every day, use a Lomi instead.
Quick steps on how to: Put fresh fruit and vegetable trash in your Lomi bucket. Before you choose the Grow mode loop, add a Lomi pod and 50ml of water. After a few hours, the dirt in your Lomi box will be full of nutrients. To make your own plant food, mix Lomi dirt with soil in a 1:10 ratio.
Best for: Because it is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and sodium, lomi dirt is great for plants that grow indoors and outdoors.
2. Create homemade organic compost
Compost that you make yourself is a great natural manure for plants because it is full of nutrients they need. Also, you can always get more as long as you have food scraps to get rid of.
It might be easy to just throw an apple core on top of your strawberry patch and be done with it. But unless you want to become friends with a family of local raccoons, you’ll need to use a homemade compost bin to hide your food scraps while you wait for germs to break them down naturally.
Quick steps on how to: You can make your own compost pile outside if you have a bin that won’t get damaged by weather or animals. Fill it with used coffee grounds, banana peels, tea bags, and fruit and veggie scraps. Every two to three weeks, add a little water to the compost and turn it over with a shovel to break it up. In two to twelve months, your compost bin will be full of dark, crumbly soil that is full of microorganisms that your plants will love.
Best for: This great source of plant food is good for all plants!
If you live in an apartment or want to get rid of your food waste faster, use an electric Lomi composter. It will turn your food scraps into nutrient-rich dirt in less than 24 hours. Rats, bugs, and bad smells are not there.
3. Use coffee grounds for acid loving plants
For plants that need more acidic soil, used coffee grounds are a great natural manure. Also, coffee grounds have a lot of nitrogen, which plants need to grow strong and healthy.
You can also start feeding your plants without having to go shopping for more ground coffee if you already have it at home.
Quick steps on how to: You can feed plants with coffee grounds in two different ways.
Once every two months, take your used coffee grounds and lightly sprinkle them over the soil of your plant. Slugs and snails will be less likely to eat your plants if you use this method.
If your pets are wandering around your yard, make a coffee spray to keep them from tasting the grounds. A 1:13 amount is used to mix brewed coffee that hasn’t been sweetened with water. (3 parts water to 1 part coffee). Putting the mix into a spray bottle, spray it lightly on the plant soil every two weeks.
The best way to use coffee grounds is to make your own fertilizer for azaleas, rhododendrons, roses, African violets, potatoes, blueberries, and cucumbers.
Useful hint: A little coffee grounds cover something well. Do not cover your plants with a thick layer of coffee grounds. Instead, put them on like you would salt food.
4. Keep eggshells that you don’t use
Most people know that an egg’s inside is full of protein, but did you know that its shell is also a great place to get potassium and calcium carbonate?
Calcium carbonate, which is a key part of farming lime, is what makes egg shell fertilizer work. If your soil is too acidic, the calcium in eggshells will help bring the pH level back to a healthy level.
Quick steps on how to: When you’re done, crack open an egg, take out the inside, and wash the shells really well. Spread the eggshells out flat to dry after you’ve cleaned them. Either a mortar and pestle or a food processor can be used to turn 6 to 12 dried egg shells into a fine powder. Sprinkle egg shell powder on top of the dirt around your plant.
Best for: You can use egg shells to fertilize lilac, forsythia, honeysuckle, broccoli, and Brussel sprouts at home.
Helpful hint: If you add too much lime, your plants might not be able to take the nutrients they need to grow. You can put eggshells in your compost pile if you don’t want to use them on your plants directly. They are on the list of things that can be composted.
5. Gather grass clippings
If you mow your yard often, the grass clippings will act as natural fertilizer for your plants while keeping weeds down. Not only do grass clippings keep bugs away, they also give your plants more nitrogen and potassium and make it easier for them to hold on to water.
Quick steps on how to: Cut some fresh grass from your yard and spread it around the soil in your garden. Put some dirt on top of the grass clippings to keep them from blowing around.
Best for: This organic fertilizer will help all of your plants grow, whether you are gardening inside or taking care of flower fields.
Tip: If you want to use your grass clippings for something else, don’t use harsh chemical fertilizers on your yard. These toxins might bother or hurt plants that are already healthy.
6. Fertilize with aquarium water
It might be strange to hear that a cloudy fish tank full of fish waste can be used to feed plants naturally.
But if you know about aquaponic gardening, you know that fish and plants can grow together and both benefit. Aquarium plants naturally clean the water, and fish waste is full of organic nutrients that plants love.
Quick steps on how to: Like always, clean out your tank, but save the cloudy fish waste to use on your plants.
Because it’s full of nitrogen, aquarium water is a great way to make your own fertilizer for leafy flowers like golden pothos, Philodendrons, bamboo, arrowhead vines, and dumb canes.
It works best to use water from fresh water tanks. If you regularly add certain chemicals to your tank water to make it better for plants, don’t fertilize plants that you eat.
7. Brew compost tea
You can add any organic waste to compost tea, just like you would with regular yard composting, to make a strong natural fertilizer for your plants. To make this easy tea fertilizer, all you need is a jar that you can seal and water.
Quick steps on how to: Put banana peels, coffee grounds, veggie scraps, tea bags, and any other kind of organic waste into a big glass jar with 10 times as much water as compost. As an extra healthy touch, mix in fresh or dried seaweed. To stir the tea, seal the mixture and shake it once a day. After a week, strain out the solids and use the same 1:10 ratio of clean water to reduce the tea liquid that is left. Spray on wet ground in the morning or evening.
Best for: Because it has many nutrients and good bugs, compost tea is a good addition to homemade plant food for both indoor and outdoor plants. As a fertilizer, waste tea is good for sweet corn, red leaf lettuce, and soybeans.
When you’re done boiling or heating the vegetables, add the rest of the water to your compost tea. You can even add extra nutrients to your tea by adding rice water that you have left over.
8. Use discarded weeds as plant food
Any farmer with a green thumb can use weeds to their advantage. Like other fertilizer tea recipes, this one is simple and only needs a few things to produce and feed plants.
Weeds are bad for your yard, right? In fact, the leaves and roots of weeds contain a lot of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and sulfur. Weed tea won’t grow any unwanted plants in your vegetable yard as long as you keep their seeds away from your plants.
Quick steps on how to: In a 1:4 ratio, mix weed leaves, stems, and roots with water. Keep the blend in a jar or bucket that won’t let air in. For four to five weeks, stir the liquid every few days. When the weed tea is ready, use a cloth or paper filter to strain the mixture. Mix the tea with water in a 1:10 ratio before using it on your plants.
If you want to fertilize plants, weed tea is great for flower and veggie seedlings that have been moved and are starting to bloom.
Do not pull dandelion stems, but they are full of good things for you. Any houseplant that isn’t growing will quickly come back to life with weed tea made from only dandelions.
9. Spray Epsom salts for extra magnesium
Adding more magnesium to your plants’ food quickly can be done with Epsom salt manure. If your plants don’t get enough magnesium, they might turn a light yellow color. Use Epsom salts to help plants grow in a healthy way to stop this from happening.
Quick steps on how to: Mix two tablespoons of Epsom salts with one gallon of water. Shake it up and spray it on plants inside and outside.
Best for: You can make your own Epsom salt fertilizer that works great for roses, pansies, tomatoes, peppers, and plants like azaleas, rhododendrons, and evergreens.
If you want to plant roses, add a tablespoon of Epsom salts straight to the soil. This will help the bush produce more flowers during the blooming season.
10. Banana Peels
A lot of us have banana peels around the house, and they are a great natural way to feed your plants. A lot of you may already know that bananas have a lot of potassium. Potassium is an important nutrient for plants to grow. The sandy sands here in Perth often wash Potassium away, so we need to keep adding it back in. Extra potassium is often needed by fruiting plants to get good amounts, make the fruit taste better, and make more flowers. Potassium also makes plants stronger by making the walls of their cells thicker. This helps them grow big and strong. Most of the time, when I make this Banana Peel Fertilizer, I use it to feed my fruit trees first.
Making banana peel fertilizer can be done in a few different ways, and I use all of them at different times. Putting the peel in compost or burying it in the garden is by far the best way to do it. This will slowly break down, letting nutrients into the dirt that your plants can use. Some things can be done to speed up the process of getting the nutrients out, though.
Put the banana peel in a jar of water after cutting it up. This is left on my table with a cloth on top of it. It needs to be able to breathe, but you don’t want bugs to get in. Then I add another banana to the jar every day for a few days because I only eat one a day. You can use it after one day, but I like to let mine sit for three days and stir it every time I add a new peel. After that, you can strain out the banana peel and either compost it or bury it in the yard. Then make your water at least 50% less strong. Even if I only have one banana peel, I might not dilute it. But if I have three, I can dilute them and spread the nutrients to more plants.
You can also cut up banana peels, put them out in the sun to dry, and then blend them into a powder. You can mix this powder with water or just put it on your plants.
11. Comfrey Tea
You should grow comfrey in your yard just to help the soil get better. We now know that NPK is important for plant growth because it is found in large amounts in the comfrey plant. It also has many other minerals and proteins that are good for you. Comfrey is also a great way to cover your dirt and give good bugs a place to live. Pollinators can also find beauty in its flowers. Comfrey is one of the best plants for permaculture because it gets along so well with other plants. If you’re going to grow your own food, you might as well grow your own clean soil too!
Its roots go deep into the ground and pull up all the good nutrients. It has a lot of big, lush leaves that can help your grounds with plant matter, nutrients, and fiber. Soils that are sandy or clay-rich need a lot of fiber added to them to help them hold on to water (sandy soils) or break up the soil so it drains better (clay-rich soils). The ground here in Perth is very sandy. I often cut and drop layers of straw to add more fiber and help spread out the sand. It’s not good for plants to have sandy soils because they let water and nutrients run away.
There are many ways to get nutrients from the comfrey plant, just like there are many ways to get nutrients from banana peels. “Chop and drop” is one way to do it. I use that phrase a lot because it’s one of my favorite ways to do things because it’s so easy! It’s best to have some simple gardening tips on hand so that you are more likely to do them regularly. The “chop and drop” method is easy to use. Just cut off the leaves and use them as mulch around your plants.
You can also bury comfrey leaves in the yard to use them. This is helpful when making new beds or planting again at the end of the season. Spread Comfrey leaves out under your dirt or compost. The leaves will break down and feed your plants.
Cutting off the leaves of the comfrey plant and putting them in a bucket of water to ferment is another way to get juice from it. Make sure the cloth on top lets air pass through. If you don’t, you might also end up with mosquitoes. Once they start to break down (be warned, this will smell bad), stir them around to help the nutrients get into the water. After that, you can strain out the leaves and put them in the yard or compost. You can also water down the tea to feed your plants. I use an easy spray gun that thins the mix out on its own.
12. Black strap Molasses
Black strap syrup is a great way for plants to get a lot of different nutrients. Potash, calcium, manganese, potassium, copper, magnesium, and carbon are some of these. The fact that it feeds good bugs that keep the soil and plants healthy makes it a great natural fertilizer.
When you want to use black strap molasses as fertilizer, you need to mix it with another all-purpose fertilizer. It works well to mix 1 cup of Epsom salts with 1 cup of alfalfa meal. Mix this with 4 gallons of water, and then add 1 tablespoon of black strap sugar to the top.
You could also just mix black strap syrup with compost tea. After the waste tea has steeped, do this.
13. Cooking Water
When food is heated, a lot of different nutrients can get into the water. Food waste water, like that used to boil potatoes, eggs, veggies, and even pasta, can be used to feed plants. Don’t forget to let the water cool down before you use it on the land.
14. Corn Gluten Meal
The process of wet-milling corn makes corn gluten meal. It can be used as both an organic pre-emergent pesticide and a 10% nitrogen fertilizer. Spread a thin layer of corn gluten meal over the top inch of dirt and scratch it in. This can be used as your own fertilizer.
For the best nitrogen benefit, plant vegetable starts in the treated area. Don’t worry about hurting your plants by mistake. Since corn gluten meal only kills weeds before seeds sprout, not after, it won’t hurt plants that have already grown leaves.
15. Wood ash
You can add potassium and calcium carbonate to your soil by sprinkling ashes on it. Wood that isn’t soft is best, and please don’t use charcoal or lighter fluid around your plants.
But don’t use ash in places where you want to keep plants that like acidic soil alive. The ashes are alkaline, and they can make the dirt even more alkaline.
16. Horse Feed
Horse feed is very good for making your own manure because it is very tasty for horses. Molasses is what makes it work.
It’s simple and easy to use horse feed as manure. If you sprinkle it on top of the dirt, it can be used to improve it. You can also dissolve it in water by itself or mix it with another organic fertilizer and use it as a soil spray.
17. Matches
Easy-strike matches from the past are a great way to get magnesium. To use this as your own plant food, just soak the matches in water or put the whole match in the hole with the plant. The magnesium will mix with the water, which will make it easy to use.
18. Milk Powder
Powdered milk is good for both people and plants to use. Before you plant, you need to mix this calcium source into the dirt. The milk is ready for your plants to use since it is in powder form.
19. Gelatin
A great way to get nitrogen is to eat gelatin. First, mix one box of gelatin with one cup of hot water. Then, add three cups of cold water. Once a month, pour it right on the dirt around your plants. This is great for plants inside!
20. Green Tea
There is a weak mix of green tea that can be used to feed plants every four weeks. Add one teabag to every two cups of water.
21. Rice Water
When you’re done cooking rice, the water that’s left over can be used to water your plants. It has some starch and NPK in small amounts. Nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are those acids. All of these are important for the health and growth of plants. In simple terms, Nitrogen helps plants make leaves and greens, but if your soil has too much Nitrogen, you will only get leaves and no fruit or veggie. Phosphorus helps cells divide and grow, which is why plants need it. Potassium is great for helping plants grow and produce fruit. It’s important that your dirt has the right amount of NPK. Different amounts of each will be used up by your plants as they grow, so you will need to add more chemicals.
There isn’t much NPK in rice water, so you won’t have to worry about over-fertilizing. It also helps build healthy soil while reducing waste. Don’t put salt in the water; it will hurt the plants. Also, make sure the water is completely cool before you do anything else. The rice water doesn’t keep well, so use it as soon as you make it.
22. Pasta Water
It will leave behind starch, which you can use to feed your plants, just like the rice water. If the blend doesn’t have much liquid or looks cloudy, add water to it. This will give you more fertilizer without making sure you feed too much.
23. Potato Water
If you boil potatoes, the water that you save will be full of starch and good nutrients. Like with the rice and pasta, make sure you haven’t added any salt and let the water cool all the way down.
24.Vegetable Water
You can use the water that is left over after boiling or steaming veggies as natural organic fertilizer. The water from most veggies that you boil or steam can be used to feed your plants. Just keep in mind that some products, like Brassicas like Broccoli, Cauliflower, or Cabbage, can give off strong smells. Use only on plants outside, because the water will smell bad after a while. No one wants their home to smell like poop!
25. White vinegar and water
Everyone knows that white vinegar is a great natural cleaner, but did you know that it can also be used to grow plants? This is because the acetic acid in vinegar can naturally make the soil more acidic, which is helpful if the pH levels in your soil are off. Hydrangeas, gardenias, roses, hibiscus, and other plants that like acidic soil need a PH level of around 6 to grow well.
To make a solution, just mix one tablespoon of white vinegar with 4 1/4 cups (1 liter) of water. After that, give your plants water about every three months. Experts say that this can be used instead of soil acidifiers and nutrients for houseplants. To make sure your soil is healthy, you can buy a pH meter like this SONKIR Soil pH Meter ($10, Amazon) to check how acidic it is.