Gardening > Organic Feed

How to create your own organic feed:

Question

I'm looking for a recipe to make my own organic plant food. Can you help?


The Green Chronicle replies...

Hi,
here are some options:
1) Brew comfrey tea by stuffing a barrel (or something like it) with comfrey just cut; top up the container with water; put a lid on and leave. The brew will at first be thick and syrupy and then dark and really smelly. Use neat around tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes etc.
2) Make a comfrey or nettle concentrate. Weight down comfrey or nettle leaves in a container with a tap at the bottom. As the plants rot a black plant feed can be drawn off at the tap. Dilute to use, or store in old plastic bottles to use later. This is good as a foliar feed.
3) Wrap a good quantity of manure in a sheet or length of agricultural fleece; tie the bundle together at the top and suspend in a barrel of water. This will produce a manure tea for foliar feeding.
4) Collect your urine and, if you are confident that you are in good health, dilute at a rate of 1-20 and use as a foliar feed. I would only suggest doing this for home consumption and don't feed plants like this that you are harvesting from in the near future.

There are some other alternatives you might like to consider: worm bin liquid; seaweed feed if you live near a good source; finally, a good composting system and regular applications of compost around your plants is probably the best feed we can give them - start your estimates at around 8 tons/acre per year.

Good luck, and by the way try not to spill the comfrey tea on your clothes, the smell is rather distinctive.