How to grow your own Fertilizer?

Brainstorming this idea

What plants would make good fertilizer?  Comfrey seems to be a good one though I am sure there are a lot more.

Or will any plant work for making fertilizer?

What methods would make good use of plants for fertilizer?

Chop and drop
Fallen leaves
Grass Clippings
Making Compost

What plants do you feel would make good fertilizer?

What methods would you use to make fertilizer from plants?

We have a seed mix with radish which goes down deep to break up soil and here is a suggestion;
FROM https://www.sgaonline.org.au/green-manure/
What plants to grow
Cool/cold season crops:
Fava beans, broad beans, tick beans, fenugreek, lupins, oats, subclover, woolly pod vetch, ryecorn,
yellow and black mustard seed, other brassicas, feed oats, wheat or barley.
Warm season crops:
Buckwheat, cowpea, French white millet, Japanese millet, lablab, marigolds, mung bean and soybean
Benefits of Particular Plants
Different crops have different benefits, and can be grown in combination. Seed sellers will often sell individual seed types and green manure mixes.
Some examples:
Biofumigants, like marigolds (Tagetes patula) planted in spring, brassicas (Brassica napus and Brassica campestris) and mustard, planted in autumn help to control root knot nematodes and root rot fungal pathogens. These crops must be dug in to release beneficial gases as they decompose.
Legumes, like lucerne, clover, beans and peas, which fix nitrogen and will make it available to whatever follows the green manure crop.

Weed smotherers include lablab, cowpea, lucerne and buckwheat.

I think any plant will make good fertiliser in time. I suspect the best ones are ones that grow well in your climate - think weeds for a start! All plants contain Carbon, Nitrogen and Phosphorus so ought to make good soil and plant food in time. Quicker results (more nitrogen) I guess from sappy soft plants, and slower soil structure building from more structural plant materials like wood chip and straw with a higher C:N ratio.
I've planted comfrey near my growing beds to make it easy to use. I'd like to make more use of tree prunings, and even to grow willow for biomass and top dressing, but I think mechanical shredding would be a bit of a chore (suggestions welcome on that!).
I mainly use what bulky plants are easy to harvest - earlier it was grass clippings, recently I pulled loads of bracken to mulch my potatoes, soon there will be crop residues.

A wheelbarrow of green goodness

Thank you, John and Nancy

Green manures from seed mixes and just plants that are readily available sound like great choices.

What methods would you use to make fertilizer from these plants?

I am sure chop and drop is the easiest way.

Is there extra benefits if composted and then used as compost tea?

I endorse Nancy 100%.  One thing I have done for last 5 years or so is religiously is mow my fields after cows are done strip feeding through a paddock.  Initially I did it to rejuvenate fields by setting back plants that had gone senescent and stop weeds (aka anything my cows wont eat) from going to seed.  What I didn't expect was how much greener and lusher my fields have become. I believe its because yes even weeds have NPK and trace minerals in their tissues that become available to the grasses and forbes that I want to see in my fields once the 'bad' weeds have rotted away or have been eaten by worms and pill bugs etc.

I want to stop mowing (have you seen the price of diesel lately??) and am working on improving my fencing so I can keep goats and sheep and let them do it for me. I believe, but not sure if its true ,  that plant matter that goes through the digestive tract of a ruminant  is more beneficial to the land than if it just gets chopped up by a rotary mower.

Thank you, Jeff, for explaining your method and how you do it.

I love that you are finding how much greener and lusher your fields have become.

I wonder if you could stop mowing and use a scythe for what the cows don't get?

The goats and sheep are a wonderful idea.

Thanks Anne, I have such immense respect for our forbearers who cut their fields with scythes. I would never have the time or the energy!  As it is it takes me a whole day to brushhog some of my fields now!  Lovely thought though.  

My first post.

Home Made Fertilizer Experiment Gone Bad. Really Bad!

So I had seen a video last year made by David the Good, or something like that. He put green foliage into a 55 gallon drum, added water, and whalah! Several weeks later, 50 gallons of liquid fertilizer.

I replicated the process, although not exactly. I used some foliage, chicken manure, and a bail of straw I got from the farm store. I heard that. Some people here smacked their fohead. So a couple days ago, I poured some on most all of my garden plants. Next day everything looked leaf curled, and drooping. By day three it was obvious the garden was on deaths bed. So I had some suspicions: Perhaps it was too hot- As in nitrogen content, or had fermented and had either acetic acid or alcohol content.

I started doing some research and found this video on youtube that fit the bill:

Here are the search terms I used should anyone care for a deeper dive into the subject matter: compost hay herbicide killed my plants: youtube.com

So what happened is, it turns out some herbicides will stay in the treated product and pass to the soil for between one to three years. After seeing the referenced video above, I can tell you, my garden looked like that. The particular herbicide only effects broad leaf weeds and not grass. You know broad leaf weeds like tomato, broccoli,collards, cucumber, squash. The corn I planted is looking like it is developing a problem, even though it is in reality, a grass. So a caveat for making your own fertilizer: Only use known organic ingredients in the process.

Last year I planted a fall garden and composted straw into the soil. The garden never really took off. This year I had been doing much better. I'm only a couple years into the learning process. Now this lesson learned. I'll still have the fall to work on and I'm presently in the process of dumping all the soil into a pile, that got the fertikiller applied.


Regards,

I'm a big fan of the nasty swamp water fertilizer. I use comfrey, most of the time, but other times I use whatever nasty weed I have to chip otherwise it will take root (there are a few of those in my garden, chop and drop just makes the problem way, way worse).
I never use bought hay, so not sure about that.
I do chop and drop comfrey, and occasionally buckwheat. Here forage radish is a very common green manure, and sometimes I'll use that or winter wheat as well.

But if you've got a backyard farm and are so inclined, the best fertilizer suggestion I can make is to feed your weeds to rabbits. Whatever they don't eat, you chip and mix with their droppings, and you've got amazing, amazing fertilizer that costs you almost nothing.

Welcome to the forum, Richard!

Thank you for sharing another reason to grow your own.

I am sorry you had to learn a sad lesson about not growing your own straw/hay.

For other folks that might not know:

https://permies.com/t/154485/Straw-herbicides

https://permies.com/t/113586/composting/Herbicides-hay

I currently use my mulberry trees and grape vines, because they are the most resilient and abundant producers of biomass that I have.
The biomass goes into my lacto-fermentation buckets, the chickens composting yard and around the base of nearby annuals.
I am trialing an informal practice of stripping the leaves from the limbs and vines that are still growing.
This is to cherry pick the high nitrogen, easily broken down greens, and save  the hard to break down,carbon heavy bits for fiber harvest or charcoal making in the fall.
It also removes shade, temporarily.
The grapevines grow back new young leaves, but I've not seen that with the mulberry branches.
The vines and the trees grow upward into spaces that can be hard to use for crops you need to harvest.
For example, I "chose" to pick some pears way too early because the squirrels were "sampling" them away to nothing.

Another way I grow fertilizer is through potatoes.
I bury garbage picked potatoes in my beds, allow them to grow and then allow them to be killed by frost.
Any root, tuber or bulb you find in a dumpster could be used this way.
We process and eat most of the the onions we find , but the rest gets planted.


I recently mentioned prairie mimosa in another thread.
I am saving the seeds from the single plant I have, with the hopes of spreading these plants throughout my landscapes.
These and siberian pea shrub have been disappointingly well behaved.
I was hoping to see lots of little seedlings growing everywhere by now.
I would love to have these in or near all of my beds, as chop-n-drop and plant support.


I would love to grow bamboo and willow as feedstock for charcoal and wood vinegar production, but they are potentially problematic.

Does anyone here use azolla or duckweed?
I think they could be the best possible plants for this.
Thermal mass, anaerobic digestion, and fertigation could potential spring from a single container.

I have been working this out for some time.

My solution is to grow feeder gold fish to maturity, then used the finished fish for fertilizer.     The native Americans would put a fish under their corn to fertilize them.

The fish water as well can be used to water plants.

At present I feed the fish ground up chicken mash feed, so it is cheap for a bag of non gmo feed.

I am in process of growing cassava which I plan to make into powder to mix with moringa to make my own fish food.

Slowly I am closing in on the loop of getting off the grocery food grid.

William Bronson wrote:
I bury garbage picked potatoes in my beds, allow them to grow and then allow them to be killed by frost.
Any root, tuber or bulb you find in a dumpster could be used this way.
We process and eat most of the the onions we find , but the rest gets planted.

Composted a lot of stuff out of dumpsters. But also, lived two years harvesting out of two grocery store dumpsters. I spent maybe $75 during that time on store bought food. Highlights- Ten salmon still packed in ice, bread so prolific it couldn't be counted, The rollover from 12-31 to 1-1 netted about $250 worth of "Best By" specialty cheese' and run of the mine cheddar. Whole roasts still frozen to the bone, in a box. Friend of mine got a case of wine coolers but, likely pinched by an employee and left in the corner of the loading dock.

Store personnel would occasionally run the scavengers off. Not the kind you would expect. Regular folks that saw the value in collecting decadent waste that was perfectly fine, most of it.

As for estates where the family members  were only interested in the house- We regularly picked up items from a dumpster and resold them at a good profit; Sometimes astronomical. This was during the shabby chic madness days. I got a 1900's china cabinet out of a dumpster that had a broken pane. Maybe several, and no way to replace the glass, by me anyways. So, I broke the rest of the glass out, put chicken wire in place of the winders, painted it black and sold to to a dealer for $400. She sold it for $700. Ah, those were the days. Just before the refinance real estate crash.

Sorry if this is a thread drift.

Regards.

soil health principles:
1) “armor on the soil” (mulch, plant residue)
2) “no till”.  (minimal/optimal soil disturbance after initial bed prep);
3) diversity of plants;
4) “Keep a living root”.  (continual live plant/foot, perennials or cover crops alternated with annual crops);
5) livestock integration

Richard, this resonates with me deeply!
I have had to limit what food I bring home for our own consumption.
We are trying to eat low carb, and most foods in grocery store dumpsters is high in carbs.
Food waste is so freely available that for me , growing my own fertilizer is mostly about not being dependent  on a vehicle.            L

Hey Mart, do you feed your fish any aquatic plants?

William Bronson wrote:Hey Mart, do you feed your fish any aquatic plants?

I was growing algae for some time as well as duckweed, and I have used string algae.

It is too easy right now to just feed them grain,    but as of now  some starches are just too easy to grow  for the time in verses results out.

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I've planted comfrey near my growing beds to make it easy to use. I'd like to make more use of tree prunings, and even to grow willow for biomass and top dressing, but I think mechanical shredding would be a bit of a chore (suggestions welcome on that!).

Hello, response toshredding question, one which is taking up some head space at the moment, came across a thread about shredders, to buy or not to buy, rent, size, etc.
Interesting suggestions and opinions and am no closer to a decision.
Sorry that I can’t direct you to the thread more directly.
Bless you  - It’s way past bedtime, goodnight.
M-H

I am learning that anything can become fertilizer.
I have been battling garlic mustard on one of my hillsides and I gathered what I removed in a bucket.
After filling the bucket and putting the lid on I let that bad boy sit in the summer heat. Most of the plant matter has dissolved, and I plan on putting it through a cheesecloth filter to remove the solids.

Also, urine. I prefer adding it to the compost pile but I know people who dilute and feed.

Timothy Norton wrote:I am learning that anything can become fertilizer.
 

Back story: I do Karaoke. One of my go-to songs is from Lion King; "Can you feel the Love", by Elton John. Anyone in the bar that is like- born in the eighties, nineties, their singing along or rootin for me. While some may go do drunkin yokie, before I show up, I'm like, I'm not going to bomb this song; so I practice. So here's one, my son that has Downs watches Lion King on a regular basis, here's one about fertilizer. Hope y'all dig da circle.



Regards,

Silverfox.

Mike Philips wrote:soil health principles:
1) “armor on the soil” (mulch, plant residue)
2) “no till”.  (minimal/optimal soil disturbance after initial bed prep);
3) diversity of plants;
4) “Keep a living root”.  (continual live plant/foot, perennials or cover crops alternated with annual crops);
5) livestock integration

That is almost exactly what Helen Atthowe talks about in Wheaton Lab's online PDC. She doesn't use livestock integration because she is a vegan, I think. This is a snippet of her teaching:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOHPFDf2XeM