Use These 7 Homemade Fertilizer Recipes in Your Garden (2024)

FAQs

How do you make homemade garden fertilizer? ›

Quick how to: Add banana peels, coffee grounds, vegetable scraps, tea bags, and any other organic waste to a large, glass jar using a 1:10 ratio of compost to water. Mix in fresh or dried seaweed as an added nutritional bonus. Seal and shake the mixture once a day to agitate the tea.

You'll need four to six tablespoons of coffee grounds, one teaspoon of cinnamon and one cup of club soda. Simply mix the ingredients until well combined and use on a bi-weekly basis for a slow release of nutrients without causing the soil's acidity levels to rise too much.

Most gardeners should use a complete fertilizer with twice as much phosphorus as nitrogen or potassium. An example would be 10-20-10 or 12-24-12. These fertilizers usually are easy to find. Some soils contain enough potassium for good plant growth and don't need more.

Coffee grounds contain several key nutrients needed by plants, including nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, and other trace minerals. These are all nutrients that plants need to grow. The grounds are particularly rich in nitrogen, making them a great addition to compost.

Plant-based fertilizers such as cottonseed meal has been proven to work well, as do many of the animal-based products such as composted manure. Manure must be composted, or broken down over time, so the nutrients are released slowly. This will minimize the risk of burning the plants with a shock of too much nitrogen.

When applied to plant leaves and stems, baking soda does slow or stop the growth of fungi. However, the benefits are fleeting at best. Studies have shown that while baking soda impacts the growth of fungal spores, the spores and actively growing fungi are not killed.

In most cases, the grounds are too acidic to be used directly on soil, even for acid-loving plants like blueberries, azaleas and hollies. Coffee grounds inhibit the growth of some plants, including geranium, asparagus fern, Chinese mustard and Italian ryegrass.

To use coffee as a plant fertilizer, you'll need to dilute it. It should look like weak tea. If you aim for about 1/4 coffee and 3/4 water, or even a half-and-half mix, in your solution (depending on how strongly you brew your coffee), that's about right, but you don't have to be fussy about it.

You shouldn't sprinkle more than a thin layer around your plants, or else the coffee grounds can become impenetrable, preventing water from getting into the soil. If you evenly sprinkle coffee grounds around the plants once a week or so, the amount will likely be okay.

You can use kitchen waste to make compost. Combine scraps with grass clippings and leaves, and you've got one rich source of natural fertilizers. Coffee grounds, eggshells and fruit and vegetable peelings are great choices for composting.

Which fertilizer is best for tomatoes? ›

Continue feeding with the water-soluble fertilizer until seedlings are transplanted outside. Look for a fertilizer that has a high middle number, which represents phosphorus, in the N-P-K analysis. Commonly available fertilizer analysis that are great for tomato seedlings include 8-32-16 and 12-24-12.

Avoid using organic fertilizers made primarily from processed manure when preparing the soil for beets, carrots, and other root crops. Manure can contribute to scabby patches on potato skins and forked roots in carrots and parsnips.

Coffee grounds are rich in nutrients, especially nitrogen. They also have some amount of other nutrients like potassium and phosphorous. Overall, this means that adding coffee grounds to your garden can work fairly well as a fertiliser. Coffee should be spread in a thin layer, rather than being clumped in one place.

Banana peels can be placed directly onto pot plant soil, or around the base of your garden as mulch. As they decompose, they will release nutrients into the soil to feed plants. If using banana peels in your garden, place a single layer straight on top of the soil, being sure not to let them touch the plant stem.

Acidic-loving plants such as azaleas, blueberries, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and roses will benefit from a sprinkling of coffee grounds around the base of plants. Vegetable crops that may benefit from coffee grounds include carrots, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, and radishes.

Banana peels are something that many of us have at home and they make a great natural fertilizer for your plants. As many of you might know bananas are high in Potassium and in the plant world Potassium is an essential nutrient for plant growth.

Vinegar has been recommended for use to up the pH levels in your soil. Apparently not so. The effects are temporary and require large amounts of vinegar in the garden before anything noteworthy occurs. The last, but most commonly suggested use for vinegar in the garden is as an herbicide.

Natural fertilizers are organic products that have been extracted from living things or from the earth. They can be either plant-derived or animal-derived. Some examples would be mushroom manure, blood meal, bone meal, cottonseed meal, kelp meal, poultry or horse manure (aged) and compost.

Heat a cup of water and stir in baking soda and Epsom salt until they dissolve. Then, pour the water into a larger container and fill with the rest of the water, plus ammonia. Once it's all stirred, you can pour the fertilizer mixture over your plants every few weeks.