Be sure to watch our video explaining exactly how we make our plant fertilizers!
How it works
When plant debris is submerged in water, a process of decomposition begins almost immediately. The word for this process is putrefaction—a term originating from the word “putrid,” often associated with foul odors. For some of us, this may conjure up memories of a leftovers Tupperware forgotten in the back of the fridge for several months, only to be cautiously recovered, opened, and discarded as quickly as possible.
Although this feels like a process we would rather have no part in facilitating, putrefaction is a thoroughly natural occurrence. It’s natures way of breaking down cellular structures into their basic nutrient building blocks. And if done intentionally, we can create valuable liquid fertilizer that can be used to grow healthy, strong, and nutritious plants.
Easy Homemade Fertilizer
It’s as easy as plant matter+water+time.
Gather up your lawn clippings, freshly pulled weeds, crop residue, etc. and throw it in a bucket. Add water to the bucket so that the plant debris is fully submerged. This is an anaerobic fermentation akin to sauerkraut or kimchi (minus the salt to preserve a healthy colony of microbes). The microbes on the plant debris will go to work as they are submerged in the water and will break down the organic matter into bioavailable nutrients that are excreted into the water.
After a single week, you will have ready to use plant fertilizer. Give it a month and you’ll have an even more potent brew. A year or more and you’ll have an eye-watering sludge extremely powerful fertilizer that you will need to dilute heavily!
Now, remember the word putrid. This fertilizer will stink. Really badly. Imagine the breath of a person who hasn’t brushed their teeth in a week…times twenty. But fear not, this is all part of the process.
All Purpose Fertilizers
For basic, all purpose fertilizers use a combination of different plant material from around your or your neighbors yards.
Grass, weeds, comfrey, nettles, purslane, and dandelions are all excellent choices for your all purpose brew.
Specialized Fertilizers
To step it up a notch—consider making specialized fertilizers! This is extremely intuitive. Perhaps not surprisingly, plants are made up of the nutrients that they also need to thrive. Especially fruits are rich in nutrients vital for plant health.’
Consider how a plant creates fruit in order to propagate its seed. In a perfect world, the nutrients from the fruit surrounding the seed would nourish the fallen seed the following season. Therefore, we find that in order to make a fertilizers specifically suited for a certain plant, simply use that plant to feed
For example: to make a specialized fertilizer for tomatoes, simply use rotten or leftover tomato fruit and/or prunings, end of year debris, etc. for your base plant debris.
A perfect plant for making “real-time” fertilizers would be any flower that needs “pinching” such as dahlias or zinnias. At a certain height (~12-16 inches) you cut off the central growth tip to encourage greater flower production. This part of the plant can be immediately used to create a plant fertilizer that can be applied later on the same season!
We also like to gather up all the debris through the season and at the end of the season and make a collection of specialized fertilizers we will use the following spring. Left to ferment over late fall-early spring, these fertilizers are heavily diluted (1:100 in water).
Adding Leaf Mold Soil (JADAM)
To elevate your amendment to the final tier, do yourself (and your garden) a favor and add a handful of leaf-mold soil. It’s too simple to NOT do.
Adding leaf-mold soil (check out our article on ___) to your brew is a small addition that takes the fertilizer to the next level. The microbes in your leaf-mold soil will go to work in these anaerobic conditions and gladly digest any and all plant debris.
Not only will these “super-microbes” break down plant matter more quickly, they will also help to draw out and convert more nutrients and make them bioavailable for your plants to absorb.
Consider fermented foods such as nato or kefir. Through fermentation, Vitamin K1 is converted into K2 and enhanced from the raw soy beans (in the case of nato) and milk (for kefir). Similarly, leaf-mold soil microbes serve to process and culture your plant liquid fertilizer so that the result ends in a highly effective plant nutrient.
Get Started Now
There’s no reason to wait! If you’re picking weeds or mowing your lawn or pruning your tomato plants, toss that in a bucket and get a’brewing! If you don’t end up using up your fertilizer, great! Let it continue to sit and add to it. These fertilizers will last indefinitely and only become more potent and nutrient-rich with age.
Use our free printable PDF to track your brews and calculate dilution rates!