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I was reading something online a few weeks back about a 'tea-like' drink that you can make in your kitchen that would provide nutrients to your vegetables and flowers, and act like a homemade miracle grow in spray form. All I recall is that you 'blend coffee grinds, orange peels, etc with water and use it to water your plants'. Does anyone have a good recipe for this stuff? Or have any experience/success using it on their plants?

Are you by chance talking about Compost Tea?

If so, there is a huge sticky about it here:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17097

If not, can you give a bit more info about what you are looking for? I'm sure someone here will know what it is.

Tom

Sounds like the OP is talking about pre-compost tea, making tea out of the compostable ingredients without composting them first.

Anyone familiar with this?

Raindbow! I guess that's exactly what I'm talking about. I did read the [url=https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17097]compost tea sticky[/url], but I had read somewhere that there were certain ingredients that could be blended into water (as opposed to composting them, then steeping them like tea), and used immediately as a sort of fertilizer. I'll do some reading on the 'nettles tea'... looks quite interesting.

there were certain ingredients that could be blended into water (as opposed to composting them, then steeping them like tea), and used immediately

Is there such as thing as instant plant food that can be made at home?

Plants are not designed to take in and process organic macromolecules such as proteins (N), nucleic acids (P) etc. They do much better with inorganic ionic compounds (nitrates, phosphates, potasium K+). In short, they will starve if you try to feed them animal/people food = parts of other plants or animals. It all goes back to them being here before anything else and having to live off the primordial soup weathered from rocks.

So anything from your kitchen with N, P, or K in any appreciable amounts would have to be broken down by bacteria first to burn off all of the carbon associated with those big organic molecules, and that takes a while and smells bad.

A chemist could probably tell you a way to take ammonia cleaner, trisodium phosphate cleaner, maybe some bones, and some sort of potassium salt common under a kitchen sink and make something plants (or terrorists) could use, but it wouldn't be organic and it would be a gamble with the plants.

So this concept of "Homemade 'Miracle Gro' is misleading, mistaken or bogus?

In that case, if a visitor to this forum is new to composting & gardening it's probably best to check out the two sticky posts in the Composting Forum:

Aerated Compost Tea

Simple Compost Ingredients List -Browns and Greens

If you're a new visitor and have additional questions then create a member account on our forum here. Then ask a question, like in the Composting Forum. This is a friendly gardening community that is welcoming to new gardeners and experienced ones alike.