On a budget? Make your own fertilizer for your garden vegetables. Fertilizer isn't inexpensive, and it is getting more expensive every year. And organic fertilizers, which we use, cost even more! But you can create your own organic fertilizer, in fact, you may already be making fertilizer in your kitchen and you don't realize it!
- Do you make mashed potatoes? Skip the salt when cooking and use the water for your garden! The cooled (unsalted) water used for boiling potatoes is a highly nutritious, free fertilizer for plants, providing starch that boosts soil microorganisms, potassium, phosphorus, and calcium. Don't dump it down the drain, treat your garden with it! Use organic potatoes to avoid any contamination from herbicide, fungicide, or growth inhibiting hormone residues into your garden soil, which can be present in non-organic potatoes. Use on outdoor plants like your vegetable garden. Did you know that some non-organic potato farmers spray Roundup (glyphosate) before the harvest in order to dessicate and kill the foliage, which aids in harvesting and skin set? This is a terrible practice, that puts our health at risk, not to mention the health of our ecosystem.
- Do you make beans from scratch (from dried beans)? Use the cooled (unsalted) bean soaking water as fertilizer for a sustainable, cost-free, and nutrient-rich treat for your garden plants. The water from soaked beans is full of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK), along with saponins that act as a wetting agent for plants. Use this gardener's liquid gold outdoors, and use within 24 hours as old bean soaking water can get stinky! Use organic beans to avoid any contamination from Roundup and other herbicides or fungicides into your garden soil, which can be present in non-organic beans. Did you know that most conventional farmers use Roundup as a pre-harvest desiccant on beans to dry out bean plants to make harvesting faster and easier? This is right before they harvest them. This is not a healthy practice for our ecosystem and stomaches, which is why we always try to buy organic if available, or at least from growers we know are not using Roundup to kill the plants before harvesting them to sell to people to eat them. What a world!
- Compost: Create your own compost – a cost-free fertilizer at home using common organic waste. Nutrient-rich kitchen scraps (like peels, coffee grounds, eggshells, and banana peels), garden debris (such as grass clippings and leaves), and aged manure can be repurposed effectively. To nourish your plants without spending a dime, you can compost these materials, use them as protective mulch, ferment them into a potent liquid "tea", or make quick "compost extract" by mixing compost with non-chlorinated water, agitating it for 3-5 minutes, and filtering the liquid. Compost is the best for feeding the soil and soil life, which, in turn, will feed your plants!
- Leaf Mulch: Pile up the leaves on your garden beds in the winter months, and feed the soil! By spring, much of this will be eaten by the soil life, but whatever is left you can use to mulch your vegetable plants, and/or throw into the compost bin to break down further for compost to feed your plants.
This year, start reusing your kitchen scraps and garden debris to create your own fertilizer and save a bundle, plus your vegetable plants will LOVE it!
Happy growing!
