Make your own plant fertilizer for free using things you already have! From food scraps to yard waste, save money and make natural fertilizer at home.
I was admiring my friend Maria’s garden, especially her booming zucchini plants, and wondering why I didn’t have zucchini growing out of my ears as she did. She asked me what I was using for fertilizer.
Fertilizer? I thought that was just for the super gardeners. You know, the ones who can leave bags of zucchini on your front porch and still have plenty for themselves.
Maria pointed out that my plants needed food because once the roots grew past the topsoil, they’d be in the sand, where there aren’t many essential nutrients.
Plant Fertilizer
Since plants need nutrients, I took her advice and fertilized it. I bought some organic fertilizer (like this one on Amazon) for vegetables and plants. I have been faithfully feeding the plants every four weeks (per her instructions).
The result? My zucchinis are looking better, the tomatoes are busting at the seams and my broccoli is HUGE!
In any case, I knew there had to be a way to make natural fertilizer for plants without having to go to the garden center and buy fertilizer products. Especially if we’re keeping up with it once a month AND trying to keep this organic gardening grow-your-own food thing as frugal as possible.
Homemade Plant Food
So, I did some digging and came up with a list of 50 ways to fertilize plants for free. As a bonus, it’s possible to do it organically too!
Homemade plant food falls into three categories: food, plant, and animal. Don’t expect to be able to do them all because I surely won’t! But it’s a great place to start when you’re looking to feed your plants this season, and as you prepare the soil this fall for next year’s garden.
In either case, be sure to pin this post so you have it ready when you are!
Natural Fertilizer from Food
I’m always looking for ways to get one more use out of my kitchen scraps, so making natural fertilizer from food makes perfect sense to me. Possible organic matter fertilizer includes:
- banana peels (chopped and planted at the bottom)
- beer
- carrot peels
- citrus rinds
- coffee
- coffee grounds (consider checking local coffee shops for their extras)
- corn meal (soak 1 cup per 5 gallons of water, strained)
- egg shells
- energy drinks (perfect use when they come as game day snacks!)
- Epsom salt (diluted 1 Tbsp per gallon of water)
- gelatin
- green tea
- molasses (diluted 1-3 tbsp per gallon of water)
- onion peels
- peanut shells
- potato peels
- pulp from juicing fruits & veggies
- sugar
- tea
- tea bags
To Make Food Mulch: Add 1 Tbsp of finely ground organic material and work into the soil around the plant. Repeat weekly.
To Make Food Tea: Add food to a large container and fill it with water. Allow to steep for several days, to several weeks. Dilute 1 cup of tea to 1 gallon of water to make liquid fertilizer. (Here are some more detailed ways to make fertilizer tea for your garden.)
To Make Powdered Food Fertilizer: Allow food items to thoroughly dry. Process in a blender until it is a fine powder and sprinkle around the base of each plant.
Related: 10 Ways to Regrow Food in Water
Homemade Plant Fertilizer
You can also make homemade plant fertilizer from other plants you may have around your house or lawn:
- alfalfa
- alfalfa meal
- brow leaves
- burdock
- chickweed
- clover
- crimson clover
- comfrey (line either the bottom of planting holes or chop leaves and add as mulch)
- dandelion
- dollar weed
- grass clippings
- green manure (mostly wheat, oats, rye, vetch, clover, peas, buckwheat, and broad beans)
- horsetail
- kelp meal
- leaves
- nettle
- newspaper
- oat straw
- sawdust (from untreated wood)
- seaweed
- water weeds
- wood ash (from untreated wood)
- yellow dock
To Make Plant Tea: Fill a container with plant ingredients and top with water. Cover and allow to sit for 24 hours to three weeks. Dilute 1 part plant tea to 10 parts water.
To Make Green Manure (i.e. plants fertilizing plants): Start plants in the fall and allow them to grow. Before blooms appear, till back into the ground.
Related: Composting for Beginners
DIY Plant Food from Animal Products
You can even make DIY plant food from animal products! Some ideas include:
- aquarium water
- blood meal (dried animal blood)
- bone meal (ground bones)
- fish guts, bones, and head
- manure from non-meat-eating animals
- shrimp shells
- worm castings
Related: Instant Pot Chicken Stock
Tips for Homemade Fertilizer for Plants
I am not a gardening expert. But I have learned that perennials, annuals, plants for food, and flowers need fertilizer to grow well!
A good general rule of thumb is to start with a little bit of fertilizer and test each plant accordingly. Not all plants like all types of fertilizer.
You can do a soil test to see your current nutrient levels and work from there. Or look up your plant type and use a fertilizer that works best for that plant.
Start by checking this list of plant fertilizers you already have at home. Right away, I can easily fertilize my garden with 12 of the items listed above – and it would be completely free! It would mean fewer items in the trash can too, so I wonder if I could get away with using fewer trash bags in the long run…wouldn’t that be a nice fun bonus!
Be careful not to overdo any particular homemade fertilizer, especially an acidic one like coffee grounds. Even acid-loving plants can get too much fertilizer!
Best Fertilizer for House Plants
Many of the same organic fertilizers listed above work for houseplants too! Indoor plants need nutrients as well as outdoor plants. In fact, they almost need it more! Healthy plant growth requires micronutrients and macronutrients and without fresh soil or fertilizers, houseplants won’t get those plant needs met.
When choosing indoor plant food, consider your plant types and how that fertilizer will work in your home. I honestly don’t want to use fish guts in my potted plants. Powdered food fertilizer may be a better choice!
FAQs for Homemade Plant Fertilizer
What is the best homemade fertilizer for plants?
Different plants are going to like different types of fertilizers. Start with a little bit and test each plant accordingly to see what it likes best. Plant growth is a good gauge but keep in mind that all plants have a growing season too.
What happens if you never fertilize plants?
Without plant fertilizer, your plants may start to show signs of nutrient deficiencies. Giving them the nutrients they need helps them grow. Flowering plants will produce more flowers and green leafy plants will have more robust leaves.
What is the cheapest homemade plant fertilizer?
The cheapest homemade plant fertilizer is going to be something you already have on hand. Check the list above to see what you can find around the house to boost plant nutrients!
What are the three main plant fertilizers?
Commercial synthetic fertilizers mainly contain three primary nutrients for plants: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, with the ratio of each listed on the label. DIY plant fertilizer will have varying amounts of these nutrients, depending on which type you use.
More Gardening Tips
- Beginner’s Guide to Compost
- Starting a Frugal Urban Garden
- How to Build a Raised Garden Bed for Under $15
- How to Vacation Proof Your Garden
a woman
I am gardening on my balcony, in containers. I am adding all the mentioned from article (not shell eggs, thanks for the tip, I will use it in the future) but in plus I added all the vegetable peelings, instead to throw away + some egg cartoon unpainted in a plastic box and wait to decompose (2-3 months). I keep the box closed and add some water to keep the humidity; the excess of the water from the box I use it (diluted) to feed the plants. Finally I have compost too in the box, and I mix it in the soil every season.
In plus, I reuse the water from kitchen: water to wash fruits and vegetables, water where I boiled eggs or vegetables etc. ( cold water, of course). We can garden for free!!
BClark
OH YEAH! Totally forgot about cooking water! water from pasta, potatoes, eggs, whatever you cook up adds starches and calcium and more to your soil and compost. Just remember to let it cool before you pour it on! And if you’re heavy-handed with the salt for your pasta or potatoes, either don’t use the water or don’t add much salt before cooking.
Another good way to condition soil if it’s heavy clay or sandy and if you have the tools is to till the soil up, sow a bit heavy with buckwheat and when it flowers – before it goes to seed! – till or plow it under. If all you have is a rototiller, you’ll want to till it in when it’s not much more than 4″ to 6″ high or you’ll tangle your tiller. If you live in town, you’ll likely get yelled at or even fined if you let it grow over 6″. You may have to do this several times during the year. Buckwheat adds nitrogen and good bulk to soil.
Meagan
I know this sounds weird but we put urine on our plants.
Tiffany
Not weird – I’ve heard of that too! (Just a bit inconvenient is all 🙂 )
Tiffany
LOL, we don’t have many animals where we live Beth, except for the neighboring cat. One way around it though is to blend all the food scraps in a blender with water, and then pour into the dirt!
jean muehlfelt
When we lived in SE Asia, we did strip composting. Otherwise the rats would chew through a compost bin (metal rusted away from the salt air) and eat the composting foods. To strip compost, just dig holes, or long trenches, and bury the food. The smaller you cut up the food the faster it decomposes.
a woman
thanks for the tip! I will cut small pieces.
Janet
So many great ideas! Some I already do, and some new to me. Thanks! One more freebie, if diluted 1:10 and used early in the season and not directly on edibles is urine. I grow sweet potatoes in straw bales which require conditioning with fertilizer before you can plant. I was spending a small fortune on organic fertilizer till I read about this freebee. Sorry if you find this gross but to me it is recycling and saving flushing water.
Tiffany
No more gross than manure, which seems to be acceptable. 🙂 Thanks for the tip Janet, on both fertilizer and on growing sweet potatoes!
Kmcg
BTW- Do NOT use fish tank water from a salt water aquarium! Trust me- the salt in it will kill your garden, and grass, and weeds. (said the voice of experience)
Because we had a fresh water aquarium for so long before switching to a salt water tank, I totally forgot to not use that water for our lawn. I finally figured out why the grass in the front lawn turned brown a few weeks later. Fresh water aquarium water is fine to use, though.
Tiffany
LOL – thanks for the tip!!
Richard Buse
Tiffany, these tips are great. Thanks for sharing them. I’m rather fortunate that my Dad is frugal and an avid gardener, so I learned some of these tips growing up with him. I can attest they work great. You also provided other tips, though, that I am eager to try. Again, thanks for sharing this!
Tiffany
You’re most welcome Richard! How wonderful that you learned these growing up, and even better that there are new ones to try!
Sharon Bohannon
Great ideas! Sawdust, however, is not recommended. As it breaks down it will put nitrogen from the soil.
Tiffany
Thanks for the tip Sharon!
STEVE "BLUE KAHUNA" CARR
Hear me out, don’t mean no disrespect BUT think of it this was clean untreated sawdust is a great nitrogen fixer, yes it pulls the nitrogen out of its surroundings but it doesn’t eat it, Where’s it go KaHUNa?-well it holds it till it decays then releases it back slowly (which is great) and more than it consumed. Cause it itself is affixed with nitrogen. Not to worry in fact rotted sawdust is a wonderful fertilizer and has the added benefit of helping hold mositure, stuffs not perfect mind you
cause too much can: draw termites, withddraw to much nitrogen at one time, but it has more bennies than drawbacks. This info brought to you by BLUE KaHUNa organic gardener for over 42 years. Yes I”m the Ancient and WISE one, thank you very much and great site Tiffany your doing a great service to many……steve.
STEVE "BLUE KAHUNA" CARR
Post Script:Also would like to add I get my natural sawdust right from the big supplier. I refer to rotted logs in the woods I only take 2 five gallons bucks full One in each arm to even the load and also spread one before I take the two, that way I help mother earth with the benefit of mother natures help.
Anne Marie
I made an inexpensive composter from an old plastic garbage bin by drilling holes all around it and on the cover to allow air circulation. Any worms I find after a rain get tossed in along with all household vegetable scraps, shredded newspaper and lots of coffee grounds. I stir it with a shovel now and then. It’s amazing how quickly it decomposes. There’s no odour although it does seem to attract fruit flies.
The heat generated is obvious in the winter as the snow melts around it quickly. Now if I could only figure a way to rig up a system beneath my driveway!
Robynne Catheron
Btw, this was an awesome post today, thank you!
Tiffany
You’re most welcome! 🙂
Robynne Catheron
I remember reading somewhere that if you don’t have room for a compost bin, you can bury your scraps in a hole in the ground, I imagine you’d have to protect it somehow from the dog, but a piece of chicken wire weighted down with a couple of boards or cinder blocks should work as long as they’re around the edges of your hole; you want the sun to warm the soil that covers the hole. I believe it said to just keep adding to it with a few lawn clippings, dead leaves, kitchen scraps, etc, and turn it a bit after each addition. If you find a worm or two, throw them in there. Just keep it covered with soil, 6″-12″ or so. Once the hole is filled to the top, leave it alone until spring and voila, compost. If you don’t have enough to use for everything you’re planting, just put a couple of handsful of the compost in your watering can filled with water, let it sit for a couple of days, and water all your new plants with your compost “tea.”
Tiffany
That’s great advice Robynne! We’ve started adding kitchen scraps to the raised bed, and I’m hoping that it makes a difference come spring. We don’t have grass, but the tree behind our fence leaves more than its fair share of leaves, so we’re putting them to good use. 🙂
Sarah
I use coffee grounds all the time for my indoor plants, especially the ones in my classroom. Why buy fertilizer when you can just raid the coffee room?
Tiffany
LOL, free fertilizer for teachers! LOVE!
Michelle
Has anyone mentioned a worm compost? It’s super easy and they break things down so fast! The best composters are the Red Wigglers and you just need a handful or two to start. I got mine off Craigslist last time for about $5, but if you know someone with a worm compost, they would probably share for free. Use an 18 gallon bin that costs about $6, drill a couple drain holes in the bottom and some air holes under the top edge. Then put in some shredded newspaper, leaves, a little soil, and your worms. Done! Add food scraps and the worms do the rest. Keep it out of extreme temps and catch the “tea” that runs from the drainage holes at the bottom. Plants love it! I will be doing all this again in the next week, since we just moved across the country and the worms stayed behind.
Tiffany
Yes! Worm casings is mentioned in the listing, and I have a friend who swears by it. One question: does it smell bad?
Michelle
No, absolutely not! But like someone mentioned above, you need to throw in some leaves and dirt once and awhile if you have a heavy load of food scraps. Otherwise the worms won’t be able to compost it fast enough! I don’t do citris rinds (they go in the garbage disposal to make it smell good) or banana peels because they don’t break down well. Last winter, after having a baby, I forgot about my compost for quite a few months. When I finally checked on it, I braced myself for the stinkiest mess possible! All I found was this beautifully smooth, rich soil that smelled earthy and wonderful. Well, wonderful if you like the smell of dirt! 😉
Tiffany
LOL – I LOVE the smell of dirt!! 🙂 Thanks for the tip on banana peels. I’ll slow those down a bit, lol.
Martin
Also look into black soldier fly composting. They eat fast enough that you can add food waste containing oils, dairy and meat. The larvae themselves are great for feeding chickens.
I’d echo some other comments here, too: Compost shouldn’t smell bad. If it’s a pile or worm composting, don’t add anything with oils, meat or dairy; do include greens and browns; and stir the pile so oxygen can get into it. Bad smells come from anaerobic processes.
Before you add wood ash to your soil, get the soil tested because it can change the pH.
If you’re adding peanut shells, make sure they’re not salted.
🙂
Kirstin C
My compost doesn’t smell at all. Unless you pile too much “green” materials (food waste) on at a time, yours won’t either. Mix with shredded newspaper or other “brown” materials like leaves. Sometimes I just mix mine up with some dirt. It all just needs a little moisture (like a wrung out sponge).
Conventional wisdom says to skip the citrus peels and use only the onion peels, no actual alliums, so I don’t put those in.
Tiffany
Thanks so much for the tips, and your wisdom from experience Kirstin! 🙂
Sarah
I have had no problems with citrus, but we don’t have so much that it would upset anything either. Our main trick is that whenever possible, we dump a bucket of weeds on top of the food waste. Along with helping maintain the balance, it makes our dogs have to work at least a little bit to get to the goodies. Our pile is much to big for a container. We just pile it up in a heap and turn it when we need more.
Terra
What a neat idea, and a GREAT post! I’m a lazy composter also. But many keep mentioning the composting smell??? We have a 1/8th acre backyard smack dab in the middle of the city. (I can reach out one window and almost touch our neighbor’s house.) We also have kids that constantly play in our backyard. Our compost doesn’t have a bad smell. In fact, unless I told you, you probably wouldn’t even know it was there.
I really don’t know what I am doing (ha!) but I mix in our kitchen scraps with leaves, sticks, garden trimmings and some existing soil. Occasionally I remember to wet it a bit. That’s it!
And Kim, we started our garden a while before we began composting. You don’t need a compost pile to have a garden. Girl, just get out there and dig! {smile} And Leah, I agree – beer is sacred. We never have a drop left over to sprinkle around our garden.
Tiffany
Maybe people are associating composting with manure for the smell? I’m not sure since my compost pile consists of 4 banana peels and 4 egg shells, lol!
Terra
Hey, that’s pretty good! You may have more than my compost pile. 🙂
Tiffany
LOL!
Sarah
I agree. Compost shouldn’t smell at all. When ours does, it is because we waited too long to take the kitchen scraps out. After being outside just a little bit, though, the smell goes away.
Sondra Carter
Ok , I’ve read many of these compost/ fertilizer practices. I live in the PA Poconos. We have deer that graze in our yards, as well as, squirrels, raccoons, possum, ferrets, wood chucks, and infrequently, a bear. Do I dare use food scrapes as fertilizer or will I have a nightly feeding frenzy?
Tiffany
I’m a lazy composter too, but mostly because my backyard isn’t big enough to have dedicated space… and we’re too close to neighbors for them to NOT notice the smell!!
Kylie
Great list here! Several that I hadn’t even thought of.
Tiffany
Thanks Kylie!
leah
You list beer. Now, around my house it is pretty much sacrilege to waste beer, but we are also homebrewers. Can you think of any reason that the yeasty slug at the bottom of the fermentor would be a problem? I can’t and if no one else can, it will be great to not just be dumping it down the sink.
Homebrewer too
Dead yeast is a great nutrient. Some yeast nutrient is made from it as well as human diet supplements. To prevent any issues with the yeast growing and to prevent issues with high acidity from the left over beer they are swimming in I would dilute with hot water and maybe boil the yeast on the stove, allow to cool and water your plants with it. Being microscopic other natural bacteria and fungus should break it down quickly and delivery those nutrients to the plants. I’m going to try this next time I empty a carboy! 😀
Tiffany
Thanks!!
Tiffany
I don’t know too much about the leftover from homebrewing, but I like what the other homebrewer reader suggest for keeping the acid levels safe for the garden. 🙂 Another option is to use it post-season, and in small quantities to enrich the soil BEFORE the next season starts.
BClark
Fermented ‘juice’ is good. I always replace a watering or two with beer when our veggies are flowering. That helps ‘set’ the blossoms and we get better yield. If you think your ‘juice’ is too strong, water it down. Mulch tea is great … for plants that is.
Heather
Cute blog/post! Keep in mind too that some of these have different uses for fertilizers. The very first thing one should do before planting is to get a soil test done, often cheap through a county extension, to determine what kind of amendments need to be made. I also got the tip from someone at our local organic extension to use stainless steel items to get the soil for the test, since shovels can contain iron and even trace levels of iron can skew the test to say you have heavy iron soil. As for fertilizers though, things like burdock are GREAT for blueberry bushes! Blueberry bushes have such shallow roots, and the burdock brings up nutrients from lower in the soil to the top of the soil (they are nitrogen fixing). I keep the leaves cut back some to help the nutrients stay in the soil (and also to keep them from getting huge and shading my plants!).
Tiffany
Thanks for the tips Heather! I thought soil tests were expensive, but I also didn’t know you could be able to work through the county. Hopefully that would make it a bit more affordable.
Kim
A big reason I haven’t started a garden is that I can’t come up with a frugal way to create a compost bin that’s big enough, and I can’t afford to keep buying organic compost/fertilizer. If I’m reading this correctly, it sounds like I can just add these things without worrying about actual compost. Is that right? I can’t wait to find out what you think of this at the end of the gardening season–this could be exactly what I need!
Tiffany
Traditionally, compost is putting all this stuff in a big pile, making it really hot (which means really smelly) so that it will eventually decompose and create a nutrient rich soil. You can bypass that method and add many of these things right into the containers or planting bed. The key is to chop/cut them small (like food particles) so as not to attract unwanted bugs/animals and do it either throughout the off-season and till, or at the very beginning of the planting season and plant on top. I hope to incorporate some of these techniques myself, so we’ll see how the garden grows next year. In the very least, dumping coffee grounds and egg shells into the garden is easy to do now. 🙂
Matt
If you make a compost pile that is smelly then you’re doing something wrong. A properly prepared compost pile won’t have any smell.
One method I’ve seen of using waste food items directly into the soil is to dig trenches in your paths and bury them there as you go along. When you transition from a spring to summer to fall garden, move the rows into the paths where the buried items should have already composted, and start burying waste food items into the new path to create new compost areas for the next planting cycle.
a woman
I have compost on my balcony. When is smell: take care of the juice to get out and put some cardboard (paper) on top. I use cardboard from egg box. As a remark, I use more vegetable leftover than fruits.
Harriette
You don’t even have to chop your food scraps into really tiny bits. Just put a 6-8 in. layer of straw or wood chips on your beds and stick the food waste under it near the plants. Some people are afraid that the mulch will tie up the nutrients in the soil, but only a tiny layer of the mulch is being composted at any one time and then it becomes part of even richer soil.
If you have a compost pile, I would add yarrow leaves to the list. I put yarrow, comfrey and coffee grounds in my compost pile for the first time and it got hotter and composted faster than any I had previously.
Tiffany
Thanks Harriette!
john
Tiffany, Can you put old bread into compost?
Tiffany
Yes you can, OR you can make breadcrumbs! https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/2017/05/homemade-italian-style-breadcrumbs/
Mae
I got one of those huge tote boxes, drilled a couple of holes in the lid and a few in the bottom, lined the bottom with a couple of used coco mat hanging basket liners (dead leaves, newspapers, whatev), filled it half full of dirt and used potting soil, and put it on a sunny corner of the house where it’s not easily visible from the street. (We live in a snooty subdivision with small lots.) My laundry lint, coffee/tea grounds, produce peels, overripe fruits, baked crushed egg shells, shredded papers, used paper towels, etc all get dumped in there and stirred in. Between stirring it into the dirt and keeping the lid on it, there is almost no odor. A black box will attract more sun (thereby getting hotter and accelerating decomp), and you want to get a really heavy duty one, which costs about $20. You can soak the compost for tea, or plant in it. If it doesn’t get hot enough though, you will get volunteer seedlings, which may be fine since it will probably be from something you bought to eat anyway. Plant the seedlings and if they live, you can eat the fruit/vegetables that grow from them. It has reduced our curb trash some, and my sons and the neighbor’s toddler love to dip in it with shovels like a sand box, which also accelerates decomp.😂
Kathryn
This is a great post! Thanks!
Kim – We build our compost out of old pallets, which we can get free from almost anywhere including Home Depot. The only thing we spend money on was hinges, latches, screws, wire mesh. We put the wire mesh around the lower half of the pallet walls and we used the hinges and latches to put on a door, which was also a pallet. Hope this helps 🙂
Kim
I actually asked about pallets at Home Depot a couple years ago, and they told me I couldn’t have them because they return them to the supplier for a credit. I kind of assumed that would be the case everywhere, but maybe I should check with a few more places. If it really is possible from some stores, it might be worth a try!
Bonnie
Not sure it you have it where your at but we have an online website called craigslist that is like an online classified you would find in the newspaper. People give away pallets on ours. You could see if you city or county is on there.
Liz
Try Craigslist. People sometimes are just trying to give the pallets away. I found tons of pallets at a factory near my son’s school. There are other places that get rid of them. Keep looking. Someone will be giving them away.
Kellie Tilley
If you have them near you…try Petsmart..we get tons of pallets from them. You can also try freecycle.org people give away tons of really good stuff!
Rose
Hi Kim i have been googling for weeks and i have decided on a fruit or vegie soup. I have blitz all unsavory / unused fruit put into a bucket filled with warm water and put a lid on it. The exact same with the veggie peels & leftovers including the egg shells. I get my buckets with lids (approx 4 litre), for free from my local suermarket – prior filled with continental foods such as olives etc. I will let you know of my results i a few weeks. Happy gardening. Rose
Mrunalini
You do not need fancy composting bins.I use a large size plastic bucket and a plastic bag with holes(Holes to be made on plastic bag 1 inch apart).Keep this plastic bag in the bucket .Start collecting kitchen waste in this plastic bag.Layer soil and dry waste also in this bag.after some days you will get black colour liquid accumulated in the bucket.This is excellent fertilizer. move the waste in the bag up and down every week. Once the bag is full keep this plastic bag aside start with new plastic bag. compost will be ready in 2 months time.