A great way to save money is to grow your own home garden . That way, you can get certain vegetables or fruits that you would normally pay good money for at the supermarket. You can enjoy delicious food while also putting money back into your bank account.
One barrier to your home garden is that setting it up could be seen as being expensive. The main thing you have to worry about is fertilizer. Having to get that from a store can cost a decent amount of money. But what if there was a way you could do it without having to spend a lot of money.
Top 5 Homemade Fertilizers from the Kitchen Waste
We use a lot many things at home that produce residual which we throw in the bin anyway. If you look carefully, you will find some great fertiliser material hidden in them. You can use any separate bin or residential dumpster rentals to keep the useful stuffs and use them later to feed to the plants. It might take a bit of sifting, but it will be worth it to help your home garden.
Here are the five best things to make your best homemade fertilizer for your home garden:
Coffee Grounds Leftover as Fertilizer for Home Garden
Don’t pour out your coffee grounds when you are finished with the coffeemaker for the day. Instead, use it to fertilize your plants. There are a lot of essential elements in them.
Once you pour the coffee grounds into the soil, it makes it become 6.5 ph. The scale for ph runs between 0 and 14 and 7 is the true neutral. By doing this, you are improving the fertility of your garden.
What are the important elements in the coffee grounds? They have nitrogen, iron, calcium, phosphorus, and potassium. That can help you create a very healthy garden.
If your soil has a lot of heavy metals, the coffee grounds absorb them. Your garden is not the only thing that will benefit from this – worms will also make their way there.
What can you use this for? Anything, including flowers and vegetables.
Are there any extra things you should do before you put the coffee grounds in the soil? Rinse it off, since the grounds will also have sugar, which can damage the plant roots. Humans are not the only ones who are affected by sugar.
Do some research about the coffee brands. There are some that are just loaded with caffeine and don’t have the elements in them.
Banana Peels
These peels offer far more value than just being a gag for someone to slip on in a comedy. If you take them and put them in your garden, you will be giving them excellent fertilizers. This is thanks to their nutrients, which include magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium.
Another benefit is that they will not be around long, since they break down very quickly. This is something you surely notice due to the bananas going from ripe to rotten in what seems like record time. Since they decompose so fast, it releases the nutrients into the soil and helps the plants get healthy.
How do you do this? Just lay the banana peels out in the sun to get rid of all the moisture in them. You can then make a powder and sprinkle it into the soil. You can even store the powder for another time since it will retain all the nutritional properties once it is dried out.
Leftover Vegetable and Fruit
Just like the banana peels, you wind up wasting a lot of things from your kitchen when you toss out vegetables and fruit. Make good use of those instead and turn those into fertilizers for your plants and your home garden. The good thing is that if you have a variety of these fruits and vegetables, they will have different nutrients that can help in different ways.
The process for doing this is a very simple one. Gather up all those leftovers and put them into a bowl and grind all of that into a paste that is fine in texture. Then you mix that with 10 times that amount in water … and wait.
How long do you have to wait? Usually for about two weeks or a bit more. That is going to give it time to ferment.
Once it is fermented – look for a fizzy liquid on top – you can either put some of it into a spray bottle or you can simply pour it into the soil. Your plants will be getting nutrients like iron, calcium, zinc, and nitrogen. This is an easy way to do it and not pay a lot for a fertilizer spray.
Don’t want to get into this mess? Check these great balanced fertilizers for potted plants.
Eggshells
You can make a lot more than an omelet or scrambled eggs if you crack open eggshells. They can actually help the plants in your home garden grow healthy and can also help make the pH of your soil become more neutral.
How does it do the last part? The eggshells make the soil less acidic, which is very beneficial to all kinds of plant life. The calcium in the shells is also very good for the plants.
Preparing your eggshells is very easy. Put them in a bowl or a brown paper bag. You can then crush those eggshells and make them turn into a fine powder. Get a tablespoon and sprinkle about three spoons worth into the soil.
What happens next is that the calcium carbonate that is present in the shells then mixes with the acid in the soil. That interaction then makes nitrogen, which is very good for plants and helps them grow.
Rice Water
When you finish boiling your rice, what do you do with the leftover water? Pour it down the drain? If you do that, you are pouring a great source of vitamins for your plants. Also, if you use the starchy residue to get rid of pests that linger on your plants. It’s a fantastic thing to use in your garden.
The rice water has micronutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. As far as the starchy residue goes, mix it with fresh water and let it ferment for 10 days. After that, it will be an excellent natural pesticide that is not dangerous to people or plants. This is a better way to protect your garden and not use chemicals that can also pollute the area around it.
As you can see, it’s easy to make this fertilizer and you won’t have to spend a lot of money doing this, either.
These are great options that are much less expensive than having to go to the store to buy expensive fertilizer. All it takes is a little bit of work and some waiting, but the results will be great for both your plants and your wallet.
This way, you can also be doing something for the planet, since the things that it produces can be used to help create more of the same. If you do things right, you can have a good cycle that lasts a very long time. Take a look around your house and see what you have in your refrigerator or pantry. You can always add these things to your grocery list, as well. Have fun with your home garden!