What I Use Instead of Miracle-Grow. Plus Free HomeMade Fertilizer!

I did a video a couple weeks ago about why I don't use Miracle-Gro and it was a popular video and a lot of you asked me to go over what I use actually instead of Miracle-Gro and I'm even going to go over some free fertilizers that you can make at home DIY including this manure tea which by the way plants absolutely love and on a hot summer day is super refreshing. It's actually just regular tea but manure tea is good and we're going to talk about it. So I'm going to go through first of all some fertilizers that you can buy so if you have more money than time these will be for you and then I'm going to go through some cheap or free fertilizers so if you have more time than money those would be for you. So the first organic fertilizer that you can buy is bone meal. Now bone meal is just what it says it's ground up bones and it's very good for adding calcium and phosphorus to acidic soils and the decomposition process feeds the microbes in the soil. I don't really use bone meal here except for bulbs in pots because our soil is very alkaline and the calcium and the phosphorus are not readily absorbed or be able to take be taken into the plant in any soil that's not acidic. You need to have a pH of seven or lower so if your pH is tipping toward alkaline adding bone meal may have little to no effect. Now adding lime to the soil to neutralize the pH in studies has shown that it really doesn't change the effect of the uptake of the phosphorus into the plant so there's something else going on there in an alkaline soil other than just the alkalinity. Studies show that adding organically complex phosphorus in a liquid form with humic substances increases the availability and the uptake of the phosphorus in all soils. Now I'll get to that in a minute. The second one that's usually applied alongside if you're applying bone meal you're usually applying blood meal and that's just what it says it's dried blood. It's a great source of nitrogen and again the breakdown the natural decomposition of the blood meal in the soil helps to feed microbes and really give a lot of life to your soil. My concern with blood meal is that a lot of times it will say organic and organic in that instance and that way it's used could mean that it's an organic versus a synthetic fertilizer not necessarily that the cows whose blood this came from were treated organically. So technically that blood meal could contain pathogens and antibiotics that I don't want in my vegetable garden. Now the brand Espoma that I trust I'm not sponsored by them I do have a link to them to their product on my website under products I love a lot of these products will be on there if you want to look for them. So I trust that company and I just when they say organic they mean organic. The next is kelp meal. Kelp meal comes in a powdered form it's basically ground up seaweed and seaweed actually is very rich in micronutrients and minerals. It has a cell structure that filters the ocean water and takes all those good minerals and stores it in the plant tissue. It's a well known fact that seaweed collects over 70 types of minerals and is very rich in potassium. Sticking with the ocean the next one is fish emulsion. It's basically decomposed fish blended up and cooked it's got a really strong intense odor. If you've used a fish fertilizer and the odor is so strong it can knock you over and it lasts for more than 24 hours then you probably use a fish emulsion. It is a really strong fertilizer so almost like synthetic fertilizers if you add too much it can burn your plant. Now I used it for years I used the Alaska brand until I discovered hydrolyzed fish. It is a milder form it is a cool process a cold process it is not cooked it's ground up fish so it starts the same but then it's digested with enzymes because when you cook the fish emulsion it kills all of the good microbes and bacteria that are in that product that would help build your soil. It adds life to your soil and so when you hydrolyze it instead of cook it and make an emulsion it keeps the life in there. It's a living product even though it's dead fish. So all of the benefits are preserved it keeps intact all of the enzymes the natural growth hormones everything is in there and it doesn't have the knock you over smell that fish emulsion has. Yes it has an odor it's fish but that odor in my experience dissipates well within 24 hours and it's not as strong to begin with anyway. So now might be a very natural time to tell you what I use if you haven't been watching me long maybe you don't know but for years actually before I partnered with them I used Neptune's Harvest fish and seaweed at the time that's all I knew and I still do use it especially for seedlings and for fruit trees and plants that aren't in their flowering stage or fruiting stage. Going back a little bit I also use a handful of their kelp meal and a handful of their crab and lobster at planting time under each thing that I plant I just put a handful of each of those and like I said for years I used the fish and seaweed fertilizer the liquid until I found that they had a tomato and veg formula. Technically it's kind of new. It's basically the fish and seaweed blend except they add several things which make this a product unlike nothing I've ever seen and I've gotten so much feedback from you guys on how great this product is all these Neptune's Harvest products you guys have really shown me and Neptune's Harvest the love when it comes to this product. So you've got the fish you've got the seaweed in that product however there's three other ingredients that I want to tell you about. The first of which is molasses. Molasses are about five percent potassium. Tomatoes need potassium as well as many many things that you grow but tomatoes especially and then the sugar in the molasses is eaten by the microbes in the soil so you're feeding the microbes in the soil that way and you're giving potassium to your plants. This really makes those microbes and all the soil life just explode in number and the more microorganisms you have the more plants you can grow in a smaller space. So if you have a small space garden that is essential. The more microbes you have also the better the uptake of all other nutrients into the plant. You see all the microorganisms and enzymes in the soil all that soil life shuttle the nutrients into the plant's root system. So technically you don't need as much fertilizer when you have a good amount of soil life. The second ingredient I about in this tomato and veg formula are humates. Now humates are when you think of the best blackest compost that you can get just that great black gold that black stuff in there that is the humates. It's the carbon rich matrix of fully decomposed organic matter. So as good as it can get as black as it can get that is humate. It improves the soil structure the root system it basically builds the soil life just like compost does. And then the third ingredient they add is yucca extract. Yucca extract is a natural wetting agent does just what it says it keeps the soil moisture consistent. Now obviously within reason you can't not water for a week and expect there's still be moisture in there but it does keep the soil moisture even between regular watering. It also helps nutrients and moisture soak deeper into the root zone. So this is great for dry climates like now remember earlier when I said that adding organically complex phosphorus in a liquid form along with humates helps bring out the phosphorus availability in the soil. Here's the organically complex phosphorus and the humates together. So if you have alkaline soil like I do this is the exact type of phosphorus that's going to get to the roots and up into the plant where it needs to be. So in a nutshell 90% of what I use in my garden is Neptune's Harvest products. Kelp and crab and lobster at planting time and pretty much the tomato and veg every two weeks throughout the season. I use it as a ground and a foliar feed. This is a great foliar feed if you can put it in a spray like a backpack sprayer or a pesticide sprayer except instead of pesticides and make sure it's clean. You'll mix this up in there and spray it on your plant leaves preferably in the morning so it doesn't sit wet on the plants all night long and then also around the root zone and you don't want it sitting on the plant wet all night long because that invites disease. So I love supporting family businesses. Neptune's Harvest has been in business since 1965. They use wild-caught deep Atlantic ocean fish and it started as a seafood company and it still is actually but 60 percent of the fish is actually non-usable as a seafood and so they used to pay a lot of money to take it out in the ocean and dump it and then they realized that that was wasteful and they could actually make fertilizer out of it and so they started with the hydrolyzation process. Stick around at the end of the video Neptune's Harvest has agreed to give away more of their product to our viewers so again stick around and I'll let you know how to enter for that. Okay so that's what I use so if you have more money than time those would be fertilizers that you can purchase. Now if you've got more time than money right now and you're on a budget I'm going to go through some ways where you can actually get fertilizer cheap or maybe free. So number one is compost. Now compost doesn't necessarily feed your plants but it does build the soil. It builds the soil life and then any fertilizer you put in there like I mentioned before you're going to get more bang for your buck because the plants need less fertilizer when there's good microbial activity. So if you can make your own compost we just did a video with Tony at Simplify Gardening a few days ago. Go check that out. I also have a couple of compost videos on my channel but if you can make your own compost that's always going to be your best bet. The next thing I want to talk about are animal manures. Rabbit is a great one. In fact we have two rabbits and really the reason I have them yeah they're cute. However their fertilizer is top notch or their manure is top notch as fertilizer and the great thing about rabbit manure is you get a lot of it and you can use it green or fresh. You can take it right out from under the cage put it right into your garden. It's a great source of nitrogen. It has a lot of microbial activity in it and it's super easy to use and it doesn't smell bad. Another manure I have here plentifully is chicken manure. Now chicken manure is super good for your plants however it is a very hot manure meaning you have to age it six months to a year before you can put it on your garden. Now if you throw it into a hot compost heap it can be ready in as little as six weeks. Chicken manure if I'm not mistaken is one of the highest in NPK. It's got calcium and organic matter so it's really really really good but you do have to age it but it is a good soil amendment. It improves the soil structure, helps with drainage, helps with drainage and also helps hold on to moisture. Go figure. So a couple other manures are horse manure and cow manure. Both are hot manure so you do have to let them age and decompose. They're a great source of nitrogen. They're not a complete fertilizer but they do have a lot of nitrogen. Like chicken manure they do add bulk and add volume and improve the soil texture. They improve the water holding capabilities and microbial life is going to love it. You do have to watch out especially in horse and cow manure. The salt content you saw my last well a couple videos ago about the manure that I added actually had some issues. Salt was my guest. Later this week Friday or Saturday I can't remember which I'm going to have a video showing the test results on my soil and what I need to do to fix it. So horse and cow manure can be very salty, too salty for the soil. It would need to be leached out first which hopefully your aging process will do for you. Unfortunately unless you can guarantee that it's from an organic farm you don't know what these horses and cows were fed. They could be fed something called grazon which I'm going to get into in my next video. It's basically an herbicide that is put on hay that the cows and horses eat. It goes through their digestive system. They poop it out. You put it on your garden and it's still herbicide. It's basically an herbicide compost that's going to if not kill it will seriously disfigure your plants for up to three years. So always make sure you know exactly where your manure is coming from and what they have been eating. Okay now back to the manure tea. This is real tea but manure tea is amazing amazing stuff and super easy to make. All you need is manure any kind will do a cloth pillowcase like a cotton pillowcase and you're going to put a third manure in the pillowcase like a big tea bag and then however much manure you put you're going to put two parts so one part manure two parts water in a five gallon bucket or a trash can however much manure you have in your big tea bag and you're just going to put it in that water let it steep for a couple of days maybe a couple times a day just go out and you know what do you call it I don't know dunk the tea bag up and down a little bit to kind of fluff it up inside and get some of that goodness out into the water and then after two days it's ready to be used in your garden. So just pull that tea bag out kind of wring it out get all that goodness down into that water take that manure and throw it in your compost bin and then you want to dilute the tea before you use it. So if you have a gallon watering can you want to put one cup of manure tea into the gallon of water and then you can use it on the soil you can use it as a foliar feed and it's great stuff. Now you can also do this with comfrey or nettles these are both plants so you'll get yourself a five gallon bucket and a brick and either some comfrey or nettles and you want to chop it good not like mince like for a salad but chop it up pretty good and put it in the bucket put a brick on top of it to weigh it down and then fill the bucket up and cover it over let it sit for a week or two you want all of those leaves to rot in that water and then you're going to be able to strain that out so you just have the tea left and if you think fish fertilizer smells bad you ain't seen nothing yet. Now the darker the tea is the more you need to dilute it just like regular tea usually the average is one part tea to eight parts water and again you can use it as a soil feed and as a foliar feed. Now if you want the benefit of kelp meal and you have more time than money and you have a beach nearby go to the beach with a couple of trash bags pick up the kelp put it in the trash bag take it home lay it out on your driveway and wash it off good you want to get all the salts out of it and then chop it up as finely as possible and you can either put it directly in the garden or put it in your compost. If you have an aquarium or a fish bowl that's changed all the time that's great. Fertilizer may not go a long way unless you have a huge tank or lots of fish but it is one free way and a way to recycle that water that you're just pouring out of your fish bowl or tank. Vermicomposting basically a worm farm on a small scale I haven't done it yet I keep saying I'm going to try it if you've tried it let me know how you did down below but you get worm castings which you can mix into your soil and you can make worm tea from it. Another way of fertilizing and it takes a while but it's really good is green manure. Now green manure is not from an animal it's actually plant based so you plant a crop of let's say rye, buckwheat, crimson clover, scatter the seeds out over the area that you want to fertilize let it grow just to the point of flowering and when the flowers start to open cut it down to the ground with a weed eater or machete whatever you have get it chopped up a little bit and then either if you're doing a no-dig garden just let it lie on top of the soil and decompose could take about six weeks or if you're not doing a no-dig garden you can dig or till it right into the soil leave it for about a month and then you can plant right in there and all of those nutrients from those leaves are going to be in the soil not only the nutrients but all of that organic matter that is decomposing is going to be in the soil as well. Now if you get my book or if you have my book Companion Planting for Beginners I talk a lot about green manure not only to help build the soil but there are things that you can plant and chop down just like I mentioned here that the residue from those plants will actually fight disease and weeds the following season so get my book if you want to know how that works I'll put a link to it down below. Now there are some things that I see all the time that people are adding directly to their garden and I think they're all good but I think that they should be added to a compost bin and not directly to the garden for many reasons. Number one are banana peels great source of calcium I do think people go overboard making all kinds of banana peel tea and things I'm not sure you get all the potassium out of there you can instead throw all the banana peels in the compost and just let it do its thing there and then add it to your garden once it's all fully composted and all those nutrients are in that compost. Kitchen scraps the only time I would put kitchen scraps in the garden is if you are trench planting your beans which basically you make a long deep trench put all kinds of kitchen scraps and cardboard in there and then fill it over with soil and plant your beans on top. Coffee grounds are another one I would rather just add to the compost you know you can't add too much to your soil you can't have like non-brewed coffee can add too much acidity to your soil so I would rather just let the compost bin take care of it. Grass clippings you know you can add those as a mulch but very a very thin layer the problem with grass clippings is they form kind of a mat that has actually repels water and so it could be doing more harm than good I'd rather throw them in the compost under the soil it can rot and create a really smelly mess I've had that happen and then wood ash is another one that you can add directly to the garden but there can be problems associated with that I would rather just put it in my compost bin. If I've forgotten anything that you thought of please add them to the comments below so like I said earlier Neptune's Harvest has agreed to give away more of their products and there are three ways to enter first of all I would love for you guys I'm going to link it down below go to Neptune's Harvest Facebook page if you're on Facebook give them a like follow them so there are two ways to enter we're going to be choosing two winners from right here on on YouTube and one winner from Instagram so if you have Instagram then you have three chances to win if you're not on Instagram then you have two chances to win so on YouTube just be a subscriber to Next Level Gardening all this information is down below by the way like this video and comment down below what you're looking forward to the most in your garden this year that's it and over on Instagram there's going to be a post this post right here today all you have to do is give it a heart and comment same thing what you're looking forward to most in your garden this year now on Instagram it's very important you know I don't I'm not able to enter you into the drawing if you DM me so don't send me a message I can't get those into the automatic picker you've got to comment on that particular post and as always usually now I'm finding out if I don't put giveaway in the title of the video the scammers don't find it but just in case they find this video and you see a WhatsApp number or any kind of comment on your comment reply to your comment saying you won and even if my logo is there it's not me I'll be announcing the winners in a video next week sometime so this goes for a full seven days so today is Wednesday it's going to go through Wednesday of next week so probably Thursday or Friday I'll announce the winner on a video all right thanks for joining me to guys today I'm just going to sit here and enjoy some more of my manure tea and I will see you next time.