How to Make An Organic Vegetable Fertilizer Blend

Looking to go green with your vegetable fertilizer blend? Vegetable farming is so much fun and very rewarding, but no-one really want to buy chemical fertilizers for their cropping plants anymore. There are many, many solutions out there, but you can make your own fertilizer blend at home using kitchen scraps. Not only will you have an excellent vegetable garden, but you will be re-using and recycling even more waste. This is a terrific way to stay green while gardening.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• A Large bucket (at least 15L)
• Washed organic eggshells
• Used organic coffee grounds
• Used organic tea leaves

1. Make sure that all of your discards are organic, particularly the eggshells. Non-organic egg farmers often use vermicides (worm killers) that can remain in the products and kill beneficial garden worms. If you aren't certain that your eggshells are organic, simply leave them out.

2. Crush the eggshells well, we want them to be fairly well crushed, but not powdered. You can do this by hand or in a towel. It really doesn't matter what your eggshell crushing technique is.

3. Place equal parts of eggshells, coffee grounds and tea leaves into your bucket and mix well. You can use your hands, a stick, whatever you like to mix them with, as long as they are evenly mixed

4. Head out into your garden and sprinkle it on your veggie patch. You can water it I like other granular fertilizers, or leave it to break down into the soil from the top. This particular mix will help to discourage crawling pests like snails and slugs as well, so you may find it beneficial to leave a ring of fertilizer around your plants.

Tips & Warnings

• Dig this mix in with your soil when preparing sites for planting for strong, healthy and high yielding plants.

Resources

• ehow Going Green Guide

[Susanh]

on 5/12/2009 Excellent idea for fertilizer!