This is slowly becoming a garden blog, but I promise soon this will change. It’s just that time of the season where things happen in the garden daily – sometimes small things, sometimes bigger things. Today a small thing happened. I made my first DIY fertilizer.

I was watching my favorite belgian garden guy online, and he visited a belgian actress who shared her secret DIY fertilizer recipe with him and as it sounded really effective, I will share it below with you. I rarely watch “tv” these days, but when I do I’m mostly watching Belgian or English programs and often they evolves around gardening. Due to this I’m also developing a bit of a Belgian accent, I wish I picked up French as quickly, but maybe I should start watching French garden shows for that. If you know any good garden/nature shows I should watch that are spoken in French, please let me know.

Anyhow back to the fertilizer!

fertiliser coffee banana egg shells

What do you need:

  • banana peels
  • egg shells
  • coffee residu
  • water
  • blender

What do you do:

And then, just place everything in the blender, close it, keep your hand on top and just mix it up for a minute or three. And you’re done! I briefly considered using a different blender than the one that I used for food stuff. But then I thought about it a second longer and decided I was being crazy, since the only thing that I use for this fertilizer are things that are pretty “normal” and couldn’t be of any danger of my food blender if I just wash it normally afterwards. I don’t know, the look of the fertilizer somehow made me think *iewuk* for a split second.

home made fertiliser

homemade fertiliser made from kitchenscraps - pakovska.com

Now you just pour the fertilizer you made in the watering can and add some extra water to it so that it’s more easy to spread where you want to spread it in the garden. I used it on a bed where the plants were pretty “down” looking and needed some extra power. I also did it right before I expected it to rain (which it didn’t :S). The fertilizer will contain some small chunks of whatever, and you might find it difficult to pour from a watering can with small holes, if so, just use one with one big hole. Afterwards just clean your blender and your watering can and you are ready to start watching your plants grow.

 

fertiliser - 3 fertiliser from kitchen scraps

I’ve tried to find some more information about why banana peels etc are good for your garden and you can find several different sources that say that banana peels are good for roses. Coffee grind and egg shells are more commenly used to energise your soil. You can also place those two in your composting unit, you can’t do that with banana’s as it composts very slowly and it might slow down your whole composting pile. That won’t happen this way. It’s just another way to use our every day trash in a more sustainable way – me thinks.

I think I’ll make more of these mixes soon for our rose bushes down in the garden. I first need to figure out what mix works best for them. If you use this, don’t use too much of it at one place and only use a little bit if you use it in pots. It’s too concentrated for pots. It works better in open fields I’ve read.

I’ll update you on some miraculous growth if I see something interesting that happens in that crappy looking bed. If you are also making your own fertilizer from leftovers in the kitchen, please share some secrets with me. I’m very willing to learn.

Interested in gardening and organic composting? These books might be of interest to you: