Free

Fertilizer .. from garden weeds.

Oh .. yes, this can be a smelly project .. so wait for a wind free day to apply to your garden once your tea has brewed ... but the results will amaze.

Homemade Composted 'Weed' Tea

The Thrifty Garden Home/Natural Fertilizer

Natural Fertilizer

One4'x8' and another 1/2 same size bed together holding about 50 tomato plants ~ 2012

Yesterday I mentioned making compost tea .. It's really not made from compost .. but from green 'weeds' such as dandelion greens or comfrey leaves.

2012 crop ripened in basement

 I had this 'brewing' all summer; it takes about two weeks.  Here is a link with directions.  I mixed 1 cup of tea concentrate to one gallon of water and applied weekly starting mid summer.

part of 2012 crop ripening in the basement

two teardrop tomato plants produce oodles of goodness

If you read the comments in the linked post (particularly #2) some people make it by just throwing the greens into a bucket drilled with holes in the bottom .. and catch the liquid below in another bucket .. then use this super concentrated version .. diluted .. it's supposed to NOT smell.  Unfortunately .. my version is rather smelly and needs to be strained. I'm going to try both methods this summer.

Another few  links to homemade tomato fertilizer ... I have not tried these but found them interesting.