Homemade Organic Fertilizer

[Greenkeeper2021]

Good Evening from Ireland,

I have a question about an all round homemade fertilizer for fruits, plants and veg.

If I place a couple of banana peels, tea bags, and eggs in a 2 litre gallon, heat it and leave it over night. Will this be a beneficial liquid for growing strawberries, blueberries, lettuces, carrots?

The purpose of this liquid is to keep the garden organic, I am an apprentice horticulturist so I welcome any assistance

Thank you in advance for reading this.

 

[Chuck]

Good Evening from Ireland,

I have a question about an all round homemade fertilizer for fruits, plants and veg.

If I place a couple of banana peels, tea bags, and eggs in a 2 litre gallon, heat it and leave it over night. Will this be a beneficial liquid for growing strawberries, blueberries, lettuces, carrots?

The purpose of this liquid is to keep the garden organic, I am an apprentice horticulturist so I welcome any assistance

Thank you in advance for reading this.

Your ingredients are all good overall for plants but their NPK content is very very small, not nearly enough for vegetables. The NPK value for dried banana peels is .6, .4, 11.5. For fresh peels it is .1, .1, 2.3. For tea it is 4.4, .24, .25 and for egg shells it is 1.2, .4, .1. These numbers are percentages per volume. You would be much better off incorporating dried manures such as cow, horse and poultry to your soil and to save your egg shells, bananas and tea in a compost pile along with your kitchen scraps. Then when composted use the compost in an aerated compost tea and soak your plants soil with this.

 

[Greenkeeper2021]

Your ingredients are all good overall for plants but their NPK content is very very small, not nearly enough for vegetables. The NPK value for dried banana peels is .6, .4, 11.5. For fresh peels it is .1, .1, 2.3. For tea it is 4.4, .24, .25 and for egg shells it is 1.2, .4, .1. These numbers are percentages per volume. You would be much better off incorporating dried manures such as cow, horse and poultry to your soil and to save your egg shells, bananas and tea in a compost pile along with your kitchen scraps. Then when composted use the compost in an aerated compost tea and soak your plants soil with this.

Thank you for your detailed response, I will use the advice given and work on using manure for vegetables and saving kithcen scraps for the compost pile.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

If you have a general compost heap kitchen scraps will help it rot down a bit quicker, but I put my kitchen waste in a compost bin on a base as otherwise it encourages vermin. Before I did that I once jumped off the top of the aviary I had been fixing onto the compost heap I had just put a load of dry grass on, there was a funny squeaking noise. I found the skeleton of a rat when I dug it out.

 

[Greenkeeper2021]

Good advice, thank you.
I learned this the hard way with my grass seed bag, didn't have it fully sealed and it had a good few guests in it.
I have purchased one this weekend and excited to have latge supply of organic compost In the future.

 

[Oliver Buckle]

excited to have latge supply of organic compost In the future.

It is good stuff to have, but it does reduce an awful lot as it rots down. I find the bin good not just for kitchen waste, I put the stuff like dock and dandelion roots that can survive in the ordinary garden heap in there as well. Those deep roots are good for pulling up nutrients from deeper down, I know one gardener who leaves them at the edge of his plot so he can regularly hoe the leaves off and incorporate them in the tilth.
I always build compost heaps and stand compost bins somewhere I am going to use in the future, worms will take stuff down from the bottom of a heap, and there is always a certain amount of liquid seeps from the bottom of bins. I make the base out of a 2"X1" criss-cross with a bit of aviary wire nailed across it.