How To Fertilize The Soil In Your Vegetable Garden WITHOUT Making Compost.
Composting is a great way to recycle organic kitchen waste.
This is true for the peelings of fruits and vegetables as well as for all leftover food.
This compost is then used as free fertilizer to enrich the soil in the vegetable garden.
The concern is that not everyone has the space to put a compost bin in their home. And even less when you live in an apartment ...
What if we told you that we can still have natural fertilizer from the kitchen without making compost?
here is how to fertilize the soil in your vegetable garden without making compost.
Just use up the leftovers from your kitchen that you would normally throw in the trash. Look, it's very simple:
3 leftover food to fertilize your vegetable garden
1. Eggshells
When you cook, save your eggshells. Rinse them (so as not to attract the animals) and let them dry for a few days in the sun or on a radiator. When they are completely dry, they crush more easily and decompose more quickly once in the ground.
Crushed eggshells improve drainage, provide calcium which promotes plant growth and prevents flowers and tomatoes from catching diseases. You can also grind them with an old coffee grinder to get a nice white powder.
By breaking them coarser, the eggshells repel slugs and snails. To do this, just make a barrier of eggshells around the young plants. For slugs and snails, it's like walking barefoot on pieces of glass.
2. Coffee grounds
Coffee grounds can also be added directly to the garden floor. It is a natural fertilizer that adds organic matter, improves drainage, allows soil aeration and retains water. As it decomposes, the coffee grounds will release nitrogen into the soil, which is great for plant growth.
Coffee grounds do not affect the pH of your soil unless you really put a lot of them in one place. For plants that like rather acidic soil, coffee grounds are your best ally. Also remember to empty your Nespresso capsules or Senseo pods to recover the coffee contained in them. Note that you can also save the coffee grounds for later use.
Coffee grounds can also be used as a mulch around plants. And don't worry, even earthworms love to kick themselves up with caffeine!
If the coffee grounds are a bit moldy, don't worry, it's part of the natural decomposition process. It is therefore a sign of good functioning.
Don't you like coffee? No worries ! You can use the tea bags to fertilize the soil. It also works great! Find out how here.
3. Banana peels
Another way to increase the fertility of your soil naturally is to put banana peels in your garden soil. To do this, simply put the banana peels as they are in the ground or cut them into very small pieces. They will thus decompose more quickly, allowing all the micro-organisms in the soil to benefit from them.
You will soon see beautiful earthworms appear which will aerate the soil in your vegetable garden. Once the banana peels break down, they will release a powerful cocktail of nutrients: calcium, magnesium, sulfur, phosphates, potassium and sodium. All these nutrients help plants to grow well to develop their fruits and flowers, including the roses which are particularly fond of them. Discover other uses of banana peels here.
Your turn...
Have you tried these natural fertilizers to improve the soil in your garden? Tell us in the comments if it worked for you. We can't wait to hear from you!
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Also to discover:
The Cooking Water of My Vegetables, An Ecological Natural Fertilizer.
The 7 Best Do-It-Yourself Garden Fertilizers.
