Hi all! I’m poor. I’m attempting to get my balcony garden started without spending more than 30 dollars. (I’m probably nuts, I know.) It looks like a good chunk of that will be going to a water hose and sink attachment so I don’t have to haul a milk jug of water back and forth a hundred times, so I’m hurting a bit on funds for fertilizer. To make matters worse, the landlord says I’m not allowed to compost anywhere in the apartment or on the property. (I would just hide it under my kitchen sink, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her etc, but there’s other reasons why I can’t unfortunately.)
Is there any option for fertilizing my plants with like… five dollars left? If I mix coffee grounds and eggshells into the soil will it do anything other than bother the local slugs? I’ve seen that stuff about letting plant scraps sit in a bucket to make “tea” but what I read said it can’t replace fertilizer - is there a way to make it so that it can?
I have a bag of epsom salts, a strong appetite for veggies, and the willingness to steal the neighbor’s lawn clippings if I must.
I’m also willing to accept that I may have to forgo the water hose C:
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Our city will compost mountains of compost then every May they will give them out 5 bucket per car and it’s great as planter soil or just to top off the yard. If you keep checking Kijiji or Facebook some people will give out top soil or extra planter soil for free to get rid of it from renovation or too much order. You can try those.
Maybe bokashi. If you dont make too much at a time you can do the soil part indoors without smell. And the fermentation is closed lid
Have you tried bokashi? If anyone asks, you just say the container is your trash bin
Anyway, it’s not composting, so, per the landlords’ rules, it’s fine.
the most i use for container gardening is the same tomato feed for every plant, tbh. you might be able to find a bottle within your budget, and since it’ll need to be diluted a lot, it should last a while.
if you want to really go above & beyond, plant-scraps-tea & crushed eggshells etc will top up their nutrients. if you’re ever boiling veggies etc in water, consider letting it cool down & watering your plants with that too.
overall, i try not to go overboard with feeding various nutrients, unless it looks like the plant needs a pick-me-up. it’s a lot easier to give them more nutrients when they’re too low, than to try to flush out nutrients if they’re getting too much of something.
FWIW, “salting” one’s cooking water does fuck-all beyond vibes. The saline levels required to quicken the time it takes to reach boiling, for instance, would make the food prepared in it chemically burn your mouth —with salt. So, bonus! 🤫
No, but seriously. It’s physics. 😝
I always learned that the point of salting water is to infuse salt into whatever you’re boiling. It super does not make water boil faster though.
I completely understand, and yet that too is folklore. 👨🏼🍳🤌🏼 Ah well, can’t blame the nanas for mostly getting it right, in their own ways. 🙇🏼♂️
Coffee grounds and eggshells will go a long way, but they aren’t a substitute for any other augmentation.
I wouldn’t even consider composting in an apartment - the logistics are just too painful in such a small space (and with long composting timelines).
So about the watering - the cheapest thing you could do is get a faucet aerator-to-hose adapter. It screws into the aerator on your sink and lets you screw on any regular garden hose fitting. The down side is that many faucets don’t like seeing back pressure when the faucet is on, so you could damage your faucet if you turn a valve off at the end of the hose. One option is just “don’t turn it off”, or look at a waterbed filling/draining kit. It’s got a sink adapter very similar to the metal one but it lets some water hiss through under pressure.
Another possible fertilizer source would be an all purpose chemical fertilizer from a dollar store. You don’t get much but you also don’t need much. Definitely not as natural as rolling your own compost, but a lot more practical in a small space.
Question - is this what you mean by aerater-to-hose or am I looking at the wrong things? If I can bring the hose cost down then I’ll have more for dollar store fertilizer
Close! This one looks like the right fit: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Danco-Chrome-Female-Standard-Adapter/3647052
That assumes your faucet has an aerator you can unscrew!
I mean… for the truly free solution you could potentially use your own urine. It’s a little much for most people but historically it was used.
Doesn’t that contain too much sodium? How do you prevent disease spread?
Apparently it does not contain too much sodium, although you probably have to apply sparingly (like any fertilizer). Most plants can (and must) tolerate some sodium in the soil. Some plants are much better at this than others. It would probably help if these balcony plants are getting rainwater or non-salty tap water (like, you don’t have a water softener).
Urine doesn’t have the same parasite issues as feces but probably best to skip using it if you had a UTI or were regularly taking medications. I’d also just apply it to the roots and not the whole plant (like any fertilizer). I don’t know, I’ve never used it, I just know it has been used historically and it has a ton of nitrogen. Anecdotally the spots in my (extremely rural) yard where I’ve pissed green up noticeably.
The “proper” way to use urine is to basically dilute and cycle it with aeration through some kind of filter media to convert the urea/ammonia to nitrates. It’s pretty much exactly the way that aquaponics works with beneficial bacteria.
The lazier way is to “age” it so the urea converts to ammonia, raising the pH which essentially kills most harmful bacteria. Pathogens usually can’t survive for long outside of a host, anyway.
Anthroponics is the term to look up.
I’m not too proud to pee on my plants!
Jk, I’ll dilute it first. I’m doing a bit of reading (since I do take a few medications for chronic illnesses) but it looks like if you age the urine for two months, most pharmaceuticals will degrade below readable levels, (here’s what I’m looking at) so I guess I just have to decide if I’m willing to risk creating plants full of antihistamines and painkillers or if I need to ask a friend. I’m not sure if I have any friends who don’t at least take a Claritin in the mornings? …But I’m not too proud to ask the group chat to pee on my plants! :D
Thank you for sending me down this rabbit hole. Genuinely love the idea of using my own urine to fertilize my garden… that’s about as low-cost as you can get I think.
Though an antihistamine painkiller tomato does sound great tbh
Just be sure to accurately ID it, so you don’t risk it being a Pain/Killer Tomato plant 🤞🏼
I think a sneaky micro worm farm is the primo solution personally. Landlord be damned.
I just stumbled across this video on DIY compost-free fertilizer today and immediately thought of this post, so I’m sharing it here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1q7NonSlEU
Quick summary if you would rather not watch: bloom yeast in warm water with sugar, add in what you have of powdered eggshells, wood ash, and Epsom salt. Ratio from the comments that I can’t double-check against the video is:
Metric:
- Mix 1 Tbsp of dry yeast into 950 ml of warm water with 2 Tbsp of sugar. Let bloom for 10 minutes, then place into fridge overnight.
- Mix yeast mixture into 19 litres of room temperature water.
- Add 1 Tbsp of wood ash, if you have it
- Add 1 Tbsp of ground eggshells, if you have that.
- Add 1/2 tsp Epsom salt, if you have that.
- Add about 236 milliliters at the base of plant you’re fertilizing every two weeks.
'Merican:
- Mix 1 Tbsp of dry yeast into 1 quart of warm water with 2 Tbsp of sugar. Let bloom for 10 minutes, then place into fridge overnight.
- Mix yeast mixture into 5 gals of room temperature water.
- Add 1 Tbsp of wood ash, if you have it
- Add 1 Tbsp of ground eggshells, if you have that.
- Add 1/2 tsp Epsom salt, if you have that.
- Add about 1 cup at the base of plant you’re fertilizing every two weeks.
Anecdotal evidence supports this. I cannot find any studies or articles about this because when I try to Duck around and find out, I cannot tell which of the top results are AI slop and it’s all over the place. We are in Hell. So my advice is to try it, maybe omitting different ingredients for comparison, and test it out. I’m currently trying to find a good vegan alternative to add calcium in place of eggshells that’s cheap, available and which I would actually have on hand regularly as someone who does not use eggs.
this is such a useful resource thank you!! I have a shocking amount of wood ash available to me and weirdly enough an absolutely thicc bag of Epsom salt that someone gave me as a gift. And of course I have sugar and yeast, I bake a lot of bread XD I saw some people in the comments were saying that you can skip the egg shells but I do have some. And I also saw a comment saying you can use rice water to get natural yeast? I eat a ton of rice so I’ll probably experiment with that c:
I hear you on the AI slop stuff. I use Ecosia instead of Google for obvious reasons but it’s so difficult to find real websites instead of slop. These days I do trust anecdotal evidence a fair bit (when there’s no potential to harm anyone) so I am happy to give this a shot! A friend has also gifted me a jar of homemade compost tea, the kind where you put plant scraps in with water until it turns gross. So maybe I can divide my plants into two groups and see which makes them happier C:
That sounds like a great plan! If you feel like it, I’d love to see you report back with the results.
Spent mushroom grow media should help with adding nutrients to your dirt (With a nice mushroom bonus).
You can look into farming some oyster mushrooms and then after the second flush add that to your soil.
You might need to have a decent size mushroom operation if it is your main source for nutrients however.
Oh, I know some mushroom farms will just kind of give away their used growing media if you ask. Another resource to check for.
Don’t forget to check if they’re giving away spores, too 🤩🖖🏼
Maybe just use cheap synthetic fertiliser if you want?
It’s used for potted plants, so there’s basically no runoff.I personally love Masterblend, which is what plants crave ® /s (contains all essential nutrients and you don’t need much of it). You need to weight and dissolve it tho, but that’s not much extra effort for me.
But any cheap all purpose fertilizer with micronutrients will do.
Some have mentionned pee, which is good but unfortunately provides only nitrogen.
Well, I have another good source of nitrogen to suggest: legumes. Grow legumes and they will naturally add nitrogen to your soil, without adding any sodium
I am comically allergic to nearly all legumes XDD But I don’t know anyone else who is, so I’d be good to give away my harvest to friends and neighbors. Legumes are often used to reset a field, right? Do you think I could rotate my pots/beds next year to refresh this year’s soil by planting legumes?
Some municipalities will have programs where you can get free or low cost compost; I’d ask around there, as well as look for local gardening clubs and mutual aid groups to see if anyone has some to spare.
Also, both rabbit and Guinea pig droppings can be pretty good soil additions, if you know anyone who keeps either as companions/fosters or a rescue organization for either.
Also also, if you have any friends who keep fish, the water left over from when they change the water out in their tanks is also nutrient rich
I second asking around on local forums! Someone might have leftovers lying around, and containers too if you need some.
Do you know if rat droppings are similar (from pet rats)? I have a friend who fosters rats! I’ll ask around and see about the fish
From quick research, it seems like even domestic rat droppings can harbor some nasry viruses like hantavirus. You’d want it to be well-composted at sufficient temperatures before use to break down any pathogens, and that unfortunately just brings you back around to the composting problem.
Yeeeesh. I don’t want to fuck around with hantavirus. Oh well!
The grass clippings are a good idea and easy - find something porous to hold them in (cheese cloth? a hairnet would work) and a large bucket of water. soak for a week(?) like making tea and you’ll have a great nutrient plant water.
If you have any banana peels grind em throw some in the bucket, they have great phosphates and potassium. Probably keep the bucket covered in case mosquitoes. Dispose of the solid matter as appropriate, you don’t want algae or mold so make it use it clean it cycles.
I’ll give it a try!
20:1 diluted urine is my first idea, but I’ve never tested it on house plants (because the salt accumulates and the water does not run off it may be riskier). But it works great for garden plants, tomatoes, cucumbers
This is good but will only provide nitrogen.
Mixing in uncomposted material will actually reduce nutrient availability to your plants so I wouldn’t recommend it. I also strongly recommend against indoor composting.
Alternative get a large watering can and carry that, many times, but fewer times. A family member had a huge balcony garden and never ended up with a tap.
If your starting soil is decent, and you don’t over plant, your need for fertilizer is not that high.
