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How to make fertilizer at home – 7 DIY Homemade Organic Fertilizers

How to make fertilizer at home

A lot of gardening beginners get disappointed at the beginning of their trials in gardening that their plants are dying and the reason behind it is unknown. Well, like each human is different, each variety of plants is different as well. Different types of plants need different levels of care and watering.

However, there’s one thing that is common for most plants is fertilizer. What if we tell you that making fertilizers at home is easier and more fruitful than buying them from the market? So, we are here with an article to tell you how to make fertilizer at home like a pro so you do not see a plant die in your garden!

There are 100s of organic fertilizers in the form of foliar sprays, potting mix amendments, etc. available these days commercially which makes it very easy to feed your plants in a variety of ways. So why would you want to make your organic fertilizers:

As your garden grows so does the need for fertilizers grow and that may get expensive over time or require a dedicated budget (Honestly you would still need a budget)
Purity and quality of fertilizers: Like any other commodity, cheap fertilizers can also be adulterated with harmful chemicals.
It is always good to have homemade alternatives.

So besides home composting, there are many types of fertilizers that you can make yourself but the following are some of the simple, tried, and tested organic fertilizers recipes.

Homemade Moringa Foliar Spray

Moringa (Sehjan in Hindi) has recently been gathering so much attention due to its amazing health benefits for humans. Flowers, leaves, and fruits all are edible and have amazing nutritional values thus making them a superfood for humans.

You can find Moringa trees almost anywhere in Indian homes, societies, roadside, highways, and even in forests and that makes the availability of moringa leaves super easy.

We can make an excellent foliar spray fertilizer (a plant growth promoter) for our plants using Moringa leaves. This is practically a free fertilizer for your Terrace garden.

A study published in 2000 shows that Juice from fresh moringa leaves can be used to produce an effective plant growth hormone, increasing yields by 25-30% for nearly any crop. One of the active substances is Zeatin: a plant hormone from the Cytokinines group.

Here is the original recipe from the study on how to make the spray:

Make an extract by grinding young moringa shoots (leaves) (not more than 40 days old) together with a bit of water (about one liter per 10 kg fresh material).
Filter the solid out of the solution. This can be done by placing the solution in a cloth and wringing out the liquid. The solid matter, which will contain 12-14% protein, can be used as livestock feed or can be put in compost making.
Dilute the extract with water at a 1:32 ratio and spray directly onto plants (if the extract is not going to be used within five hours, it is best stored in a freezer until needed). Apply about 25 ml per plant.
The foliar spray should be applied 10 days after the first shoots emerge from the soil, again about 30 days before plants begin to flower, again when seed appears, and finally once more during the maturation phase.

For container-grown plants, you can spray this on weekly basis for excellent growth.

Another alternative method is to boil the Moringa leaves in water and strain the leaves and spray this liquid on your plants on weekly basis. Take about 5 to 10 kg of leaves and boil them in water. The shelf life of this method is longer as you can keep the liquid for a few weeks. We suggest you make it on monthly basis.

DIY Plant Fertilizer With Coffee

Coffee works great as a fertilizer for acid loving plants like daffodils, marigolds, and some roots like sweet potatoes, potatoes, etc. This is because coffee is capable of regulating nitrogen and acidic levels in these kinds of plants. Also, you don’t have to follow tedious processes to use coffee as a fertilizer!

Well, there are two ways you can use coffee as a plant fertilizer. One, you can sprinkle the ground coffee powder on the soil evenly. Or two, you can mix 1 teaspoon of ground coffee powder in 1/2 liter of water and spray the diluted mixture over your plants.

Cow Dung and Cow Urine Foliar Spray

While searching for a low-cost do-it-yourself organic fertilizer made using cow dung. This is a very simple recipe but it results in a great organic fertilizer. Here is the recipe.

Things you will need: An earthen pot (matka), A 20-liter paint bucket, a piece of cotton string about a foot long, 10 kg fresh cow dung, 10 kg cow urine, about 1kg of neem leaves
Make a small hole in the earthen pot, about the thickness of a pencil, let the string pass through it, and tie a knot at the end so that it keeps hanging through the hole.
Mix cow urine and dung nicely. Make neem leaves paste by grinding the leaves and mixing them.
Place the earthen pot above the bucket and transfer the mixture to the pot. Cover the pot opening with something.
Over a while there won’t be much liquid left in the earthen pot, this is where you transfer the collected liquid to some air-tight plastic bottle and you may store it from 6 to 12 months. Also, you may add more cow urine to the mixture and let the process start all over again.
For spray dilute this mixture in a ratio of 1:10 parts of water and spray weekly.

Homemade Plant Fertilizer With Vinegar

Did you know that you can use vinegar as your plant fertilizer? Well, like coffee is for regulating acidity and nitrogen in plants, vinegar is for regulating the alkaline levels of the plants. This can especially be used for small and container-based plants. Vinegar also helps plants in getting rid of ants and unnecessary weeds.

So, how to see this easy-peasy homemade plant fertilizer? We are here to help you with that as well! Do not make the mistake of pouring vinegar into the plants directly. Make sure to dilute 1 cup of white vinegar in 2 gallons of fresh filtered water and use the mixture for watering your plant.

Homemade Plant Food – How to make NPK fertilizer at home?

Homemade Plant Food

Well, like we take plants as food, plants need food as well, don’t they?! So the most important elements in the food for plants are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. This combination is also popularly known as NPK. Other elements like magnesium and calcium are also important for a few plant varieties.

To make this homemade plant food at home, you will need the following ingredients:

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon Epsom salt
½ teaspoon of ammonia
1 gallon of water

Take an old plastic container, add all the ingredients mentioned above and rest the mixture for half an hour so that the solid ingredients are completely dissolved. You can add this to plants directly once a month and regulate the dose as per the requirements.

Banana Peel Fertilizer

Have you been throwing away the banana peels each time you ate one? Well, you do not know the benefits of them in your beautiful garden! Some plants need more amounts of a particular element, like phosphorous. In that case, you need to use only phosphorus-rich fertilizer instead of an NPK. And banana peels are rich in phosphorous.

To use this ultimate phosphorus-rich banana peel fertilizer, chop the banana peels and add them to fresh water. Soak them in water for at least four days and spray the mixture into the soil. You can also directly borrow the chopped banana peels deep into the soil.

Organic Fertilizer Recipe – How to make organic fertilizer from kitchen waste?

Organic Fertilizer Recipe

Nothing benefits the plants in your beautiful garden more than organic manure or compost. So, how do you make one at home with something organic and not useful for you anymore? We are here to guide you on that. You will need to add one extra ingredient, i.e; the bokashi powder to ease the process of fermentation.

To make this ultra-easy compost, follow the steps below:

Take a drum (or a large plastic container will do the job).
Fit in a tap for it at the bottom or punch a few holes so that the excess water is drained out.
Add the kitchen waste to the container on a daily basis for a few days and add bokashi powder.
Around two weeks after adding the bokashi powder, you will notice a white fungus on the top layer.
Collect the kitchen waste for around a month and let it ferment for another 20 days and your compost is ready to use.

How to Care for Your Garden

Once you have set up your garden and planted all your seeds, you will need to take care of it to ensure that the garden proves fruitful and abundant.

Watering

The first thing you can do is begin ensuring that your plants receive enough water since it is one of the most important ways to nurture them. When plants transpire, they lose moisture that needs to be replenished by watering the soil so that they can absorb moisture back in through the roots.
- You should water your plants more during the summer months, as they lose more moisture and less during the winter months.
- Also, try to water your plants in the evening during the warmer months so that your plants can obtain moisture throughout the night.
- Young plants and seeds require more frequent watering like a human child breastfeeding all day.
- Plants that are placed in containers have restricted access to the soil, so they demand extra watering for adequate growth.

Fertilizing

Just like humans, plants need to eat. Plants absorb nutrients through their roots as well, which, in turn, help the flowers and fruits develop. The main nutrients required for the growth of plants are potassium (K), phosphorus (P), and nitrogen (N).

Plants obtain these nutrients from the soil through the decomposing plant materials that are released back into the soil. Still, this process tends to be disrupted in home gardens, negatively affecting the soil’s nutritional density.

You want to replace these processes in your plants’ soil with fertilizers. You can use organic or inorganic fertilizer to feed your plants, with the added benefit of promoting earthworm activity. Examples of this are nettle or well-rotted manure.

Pruning

Another plant care practice you can adopt and benefit from is pruning, which involves trimming the excess from plants for better growth and size management. This process can also help remove any diseased or dead material that could corrupt the entire plant if left unchecked.

Pesticides

You want to ensure that your garden is weed-free by weeding the bed weekly or whenever you find weeds trespassing the mulch layer. Keep a keen eye on pests and diseases that may be attempting to corrupt your garden. Apply the appropriate pesticide and remove any infected plants from the bunch to avoid spreading.

You can apply some Bacillus thuringiens to any plants with bugs. The bugs will ingest it and die while your plants stay unharmed. It helps to ensure you analyze the quality of your plants carefully before purchasing them because some may already be infected. Pay close attention to the quality of the plant’s roots, when purchasing them from a store.

Your garden will benefit from using fertilizers because this keeps the soil’s nutritional content high. You can use inorganic fertilizers, but organic ones tend to be the best as they contribute to the health of the soil for a longer time than their inorganic counterparts.
One of the best organic fertilizers you can use is compost. This is comprised of decomposed materials like vegetable scraps and leaves. You can blend this material with garden soil to boost the nutritional profile.
Manure is another wonderful and widely utilized fertilizer. It is essentially the waste of animals that can be decomposed into the soil. This fertilizer is generally used when it is aged, as the fresher version can be too hot for plants and eventually burn them.
You can use the manure of a vast array of animals, such as cows, chickens, horses, goats, and even rabbits.
Bone meal is another fertilizing agent. It is essentially smoked or cooked bones that are granulated or in powder form. This type provides an excellent amount of phosphorus and is easy to locate at your local garden store.
You can also use a blood meal as a fertilizer. This type is made from dried animal blood and can be beneficial for your garden when nitrogen is required. You can use it in the fertilizer or dissolve it with water to create a spray.
A blood meal is effective for dark leafy greens.
Worm castings are an alternative form of manure, and it is generated when worms consume compost.
Guano (also known as bat manure) is another fertilizing agent that can be utilized to correct the soil profile or directly feed the plants.
Other fertilizers are seaweed, fish emulsion, and kelp meal.

All these fertilizers can be purchased at a garden store, but they may become an expensive investment over time. The good news is that you can create some of these fertilizers in the comfort of your own home. Let’s take the bone meal as an example.

Bone meal

This fertilizer is not cheap in stores, and it can be quite shocking to realize that you are spending all this money purchasing bare bones.
What you can do is preserve all the bones from the food that you eat. These include chicken bones, lamb bones, turkey bones, and more.
Remove the excess meat from the bones and submerge them in water.
Simmer them on low to medium heat in a pot.
Rinse the bones under warm water and place them on a tray where they can dry (uncovered) for up to 30 days.
The size and density of the bones will determine their drying time. If you are in a rush, you can place these rinsed bones in an oven set to low degrees for a few hours.
Once the bones are all dry, you can ground them into powder form.
A mortar and pestle or a blender are great for this grinding process.
Once you obtain your powder, store it in an airtight container for immediate and long-term use.

Worm castings

Another example of a great fertilizer that you can make at home is worm castings.

This organic fertilizer is created by earthworms.
The casting (also known as vermicast) is the manure of worms that eat through compost. The soil becomes richer during this process of consumption and excretion.
Vermicomposting is easy and can be done in your own home. You can begin this process by constructing or purchasing worm boxes or bins.
Ensure that you have shallow bins (no more than 8-12 inches deep) and that they contain drainage holes in the bottom.
The worm bedding can be made with compost. Place your worms in and let them do their magic.
Red wiggler worms are the best for this process as they enjoy staying in the top part of the soil.
You want to feed your worms at least once a week to ensure they continue reproducing and thriving.
If you add in kitchen scraps, make sure they are cut up or blended so the worms can easily digest them.
You can harvest worm castings by emptying the contents of your bin on a newspaper or piece of plastic.
Remove the worms from your material and transfer them to another vermicompost bin.
You can reuse your worms and maintain them, depending on how well you feed them.
You can also do the rotate system for one bin.
The first week you add compost to the left side of the bin.
All the worms move to that side after a day or so.
Then the following week you add the compost to the right side of the bin. The left side is now good soil you can take out and use. You would do this rotation every week.