Do you want to grow bigger, healthier, more tasty fruits and veggies? Then this video is for you. Today I’m gonna show you how to make your own natural, low cost fertilizer using something that you might already have growing on your property.
Hi I’m Christina with Forever Food Forest. A channel where we explore ways of growing food without the use of herbicides, pesticides or commercial fertilizers and instead we rely on permaculture principles and other gardening - natural gardening methods to grow food that's good for the garden and good for the planet. So let’s get started.
This method was inspired by Korean Natural Farming, JADAM, and some regenerative farming methods with my own personal twist on it. Because I have to utilize what I have here, your results may vary depending on what you have growing in abundance in your area. First thing you’re gonna need is some weeds. Weeds are amazing for their ability to extract nutrients from even the poorest soils. Which is why when they’re decomposed back they make such an excellent fertilizer because they concentrate all those nutrients. And some farmers in fact grow weeds such as nettles, chickweeds, comfrey, mullein. Some weeds are gonna have more nutrients than the others, but I like to use what I have right now. I might grow some soil building crops in the future once all of this is cleared of all of these noxious and invasive weeds.
To make fertilizer: you’re gonna need:
- a bucket, preferably with a lid
- a brick or a heavy rock to weigh your weeds down
- water. Rain water is best, but any water that has not been treated with chemicals such as clean river water, well water, spring water, estuary, tributary. Any kind of water other than the water that has been treated with chemicals will do. If you only have access to tap water you can let it sit out for 48 hours.
It's like you’re making a stew for your plants. You just toss all these goodies in there. Make sure the bucket is about 75% full. And then fill the rest with water. And then I take my brick and use it to weigh down the weeds. Fertilizer is gonna be ready to use in about 3 days. On day 2 I cover it with a lid to keep the flies out.
Just a word of caution when you are first making this, that smell is going to hit you. The first time I made it, I ended up throwing out the whole batch because I thought “surely something had gone horribly wrong because there’s no way that it should smell like this”. But no, no. Be aware that that is normal. And the smell is gonna get worse over the next month. That’s why I like to cover it up with a lid and let it ferment for another month. Even though right now it is ready to use. I could dilute it 1 part to 10 and use it as a drench in my garden, or use it to water my seedlings. That would absolutely work, but the longer you wait, the stronger of a concentration of fertilizer you’re gonna have. So I’m gonna show you how I prepare the fertilizer to use it in the garden. I'm gonna use the May vintage (It's currently July). I just strain the fertilizer into another bucket. So the ratio I wanna dilute it at is 30 to 1. I have 2 gallons of water here. Rain water. This is a little over 100 Milliliters. So I want about 180 and that will be about 30 to 1. And this is not exact science. If you make a mixture that’s a little more concentrated or more diluted, you know, do whatever works for you. I have a bunch of different weeds here. And different weeds have different concentrations of nutrients. 30 to 1 is pretty diluted, it shouldn't hurt your plants. I’ve also used a stronger concentration depending on the plants, so you're just gonna have to figure out what works for you. But 30 to 1 is a good starting point. So now I’m just gonna apply it to my okra seedlings over here. I do this about once a week as they’re growing because the solution is pretty diluted and we do get a lot of rain here. The rain has a tendency to wash away any excess fertilizer into our waterways. So I’m really careful about how much fertilizer I apply and how often. I try to apply less fertilizer than needed , more often. Because any excess I put in here is gonna get washed away.
I did a little comparison to see if this fertilizer actually shows improvement in plants. And I have two turmeric plants that were both started at the same time. Same size corms. One has been fertilized with this fertilizer. And the other one I just left alone and I’ve been watering it. That’s it. And look at the difference. The one that has been getting the fertilizer is twice as big. This is amazing. So this stuff really works. It’s a little funky. A little smelly. But it’s free and you can have as much of it as you want. As long as you have weeds, you can have fertilizer. So make something of those weeds and remember to wash your hands after touching that funky, funky, fertilizer.