oggy
Full Member
Posts: 53
Joined: Mon Dec 16, 2013 7:16 am
Location: Central Vermont

Home-made fertilizers for indoor plants?

Hi again!

My indoor bell peppers and strawberries are in need of nutrients. All that they have had since October 2013 is Azomite.
I haven't used fertilizers of any kind on them even though they sit permanently in a seed starting soil. This is mainly due to the lack of organic fertilizers in my area and the insane cost to have them shipped to my home when ordering online.

I am interested in creating my own home made fertilizers from organic material. I know I can take my organic scraps and put them in a composting pile, but that's not a fast process. Especially in colder climates.

After some research, I've found that I have a fair amount of K through banana peels. But what about N and P? And the other micro/macro-nutrients? What is a readily available source of nitrogen and phosphorous in any home during the coldest, snowiest winters? And for those of us that don't drink coffee?

Also, how can I make the nutrients immediately usable by my plants? Would grinding up the banana peels into a fine powder help my plants absorb it quicker? Or is the only option to compost everything?

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applestar
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Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

My all time favorite is simply any leftovers: (non-alcoholic) beverage -- juice, milk, coffee, tea, melted ice water with a bit of leftover soda -- diluted with de-chlorinated water and used to water with. Alcoholic bevs can be used after the alcohol is completely evaporated out or boiled off. Watering with diluted greens blanching and and veg steaming water, rice and other grains washing water, and cooled pasta cooking water as long as no salt is added. A little oil or vinegar in the water is OK especially vinegar or lemon juice in the water for acid loving tropicals, but be careful.

Introduce fishing bait worms -- night crawlers and red wigglers -- in the plant container soil for live-in fertilizers, and scratch used tea leaves and used coffee grounds (UCG) into the surface of the soil for the wigglers. And start an indoor vermicomposter -- simple to make with doubled buckets or tubs. Then you can make vermicompost tea. I have also made fermented bokashi compost during winter months in the past, but not this year.

I also add UCG in the watering can for weak nutrient boost. For a little bit more imported material, I like alfalfa pellets soaked in water. Skim or pour out the water and dilute for N and K rich water. This can provide the extra N. I like adding a dollop of unsulfured molasses for the potassium, iron, calcium, etc.

Take a lok at the Aerated Compost Tea and AACT sticky threads at the top of the Compost Forum. I keep a small bucket continuously bubbling with an aquarium aerator (yes cleaning everything once in a while but not as consistently as when making optimum AACT)

Potassium could come from fruit and veg scraps but I don't know how to process that. I have heard of people using a dedicated blender to make a slurry and burying that in the garden but not so much for indoor plants.

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grrlgeek
Senior Member
Posts: 162
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 10:03 pm
Location: Southern California Desert

oggy wrote:
And for those of us that don't drink coffee?
You can obtain used coffee grounds for free from any Starbucks coffee house.
ucg.jpg
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Some stores have a basket near the door and they just put the bags in there as they fill up. Other stores don't use the bean bags like in the picture, but all you have to do is ask at the counter. The one in the grocery store near me has a trash can they dedicate to grounds/filters only, and right about the time I pass by on my way home from work, the bag weighs close to 50 pounds. Yours for the asking.

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rainbowgardener
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Posts: 25279
Joined: Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:04 pm
Location: TN/GA 7b

You could always have a worm bin (vermicomposting). It is a quicker way to get small amounts of "compost" (in this case worm castings) AND the bin continuously puts out "leachate" which is nutrient enriched liquid drippings which are good stuff to put in the water for your plants. Your worm bin can be indoors.



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