By the beginning of June, most avid gardeners will have their flower beds and vegetable plots planted and ready to grow. A healthy garden, however, does not stop at the planting stage. There are many tricks that successful gardeners use to ensure their gardens flourish, and all of them have to do with one simple concept: garden fertilizer. 

Continue reading to learn how to create the best garden fertilizer to maximize the growing season and have the best garden season yet.

Garden Fertilizer: Ten Ingredients to Make your Garden Grow

Wood Ash

Adding wood ash to your garden provides many benefits. First, its high alkaline content makes it perfect for neutralizing acidic soil. You can purchase a pH test kit from any garden center to find out if your garden could benefit from some wood ash for this purpose [1].

Wood ash is also an excellent source of lime and potassium, two nutrients that are highly beneficial to plants, as well as many trace elements that plants need to survive. It is important to note that wood ash will produce lye and salts when it gets wet, so it is best used lightly scattered in small quantities since a small amount of those elements likely won’t harm your plants. Another option is to compost the ashes first to allow the lye and salt to be leached away [2].

Related: 19 Ways to Use Wood Ash

Bananas

Banana peels contain potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and magnesium, all of which are highly beneficial for your plants (and humans too). 

Potassium supports your plants in growing stronger stems, phosphorus helps produce healthy roots and shoots, and is essential in producing blossoms, pollen, and fruit, calcium is important for the proper development of roots and stems, and magnesium supports healthy photosynthesis [3].

Chop the peels up and add them directly around the soil when you plant tomatoes, rose bushes, and green pepper plants to enrich the soil and strengthen your plants [1].

Read: Bad Neighbors: 11 Plant Pairs Never to Grow Side by Side

Compost Tea

Compost tea is prepared by steeping compost in water. You then add unsulfured molasses as a food source for beneficial microorganisms and aerate the solution for a few days. This creates a “tea” that contains thousands of healthy microorganisms.

When sprayed onto your garden, the beneficial microorganisms in the tea will crowd out the ones that cause disease, thereby improving the health of your plants [4].

In 2002 a pair of researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder examined the effects of watering plants with club soda. The experiment lasted ten days, in which the researchers compared the differences between the plants that received club soda versus a control group that received regular water.

The plants that were watered with club soda grew twice as fast as the control group, and were brighter and healthier [5].

Carbonated water contains carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulfur, and sodium, all of which provide benefits to your plants. The researchers did point out, however, that the sugar in flavoured soda could prevent the plants from absorbing those nutrients, and could even kill them.

To achieve the same results as the researchers, let the soda go flat before adding it to your garden [1].

Aquarium Water

If you have a fish tank in your home, you may want to reconsider dumping the old water down the drain when you clean it. That water contains waste and bacteria that is harmful to fish, but beneficial to plants. 

Important limitations are that this water should only be fresh (not salt water), and should only be applied to ornamental plants, not edible ones [1].

Read: Woman Up-Cycled Old School Buses into Greenhouses

Coffee Grounds

Instead of throwing away your old coffee grounds after you brew your morning cup, save them for your garden. Coffee grounds contain significant amounts of calcium, potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus to boost your plants growth [1].

Coffee grounds can possibly acidify the soil. Though it should be noted, that the level of acidity can vary from very acidic to even slightly alkaline. With that said, don’t expect them to acidity high pH soils [6].

When using the grounds, take care that they don’t comprise more than ten to twenty percent of your compost volume, or else they might inhibit good microbes from breaking down organic matter.

If you want to add the grounds directly to the soil, use only a thin layer that is no more than half an inch, then cover it with a thick, two to four inch layer of organic matter like shredded bark, wood chips, or compost [7].

Egg Shells

The high calcium content in egg shells makes them great plant food. Simply wash them, crush them up, and add them to plants that often suffer from calcium deficiency, like tomatoes. You can even start seedlings in shells that have been halved and rinsed, which can then be planted directly into the ground when the seedlings are mature enough, since the shell will decompose under the ground [1].

Read: How to Build Hugelkultur Beds and Why You Need Them

Tea Leaves

If you’re more of a tea in the morning person over coffee, you should be keeping those leftover tea leaves, too. Adding them to your soil can help with soil drainage and healthy aeration for plant roots, and help the soil retain moisture and nutrients.

Their high nitrogen content is also great for your plants, along with a host of other nutrients that they release gradually into the soil. You can simply sprinkle them at the base of your plants, or incorporate them into your compost [8].

Grass Clippings

A thin layer of grass clippings on top of your soil can prevent weeds from growing and help plants to retain moisture. How much you add is important here though, since too much grass could make it difficult for water to pass through. No more than a quarter-inch of grass mulch will be enough to benefit the soil without going overboard.

If your grass is full of weed seeds, you should compost it first before adding it to your garden, since the heat from a compost pile will kill weed seedlings [1].

Plant Food

You can make your own plant food at home by combining epsom salts, baking soda, and household ammonia. This will help your plants stay healthy at a fraction of the cost of store-bought plant food [1]. 

You can learn how to make your own plant food here. 

A Successful Garden Doesn’t have to be Expensive

As you can see, you likely have many things in your home that, instead of throwing away, could be repurposed to provide benefit to your garden at no extra cost to you. While some of these tricks take a little bit of extra planning, the effort will be well worth it when you have a thriving, healthy garden.

Keep Reading: 5 Cheap Gardening Tricks for Self-Reliance

The post 10 Secret Ingredients to Make Your Garden Grow appeared first on The Hearty Soul.