Feed Your Garden With This Organic Liquid Fertilizer Tea—for Free!
Feed your plants—with other plants! It may sound strange, but you can use your own weeds and grass to make homemade fertilizer tea that’s 100% organic. It’s a great boost for your plants in midsummer when soil fertility is running low. Here’s how to make fertilizer tea at home.
Yes, garden plants appreciate a spot of tea now and then, too—just like I do—as a pick-me-up. No expensive Earl Grey or Darjeeling for them, though. Instead, I make a free fertilizer tea from plants, weeds, and grasses that I find on my property.
What Is Fertilizer Tea?
”Compost tea” and “manure tea” have long been mainstays of the organic garden. It is not hard to toss some compost into a bucket of water and let it steep for a few days to a few weeks, stirring daily.
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“Fertilizer teas” made from plants are just as easy. Plus, they don’t require you to pick up a load of manure or use any of your precious compost.
Making Fertilizer Tea
- Next time you are weeding the garden, throw chopped weeds into a bucket or trash can, chopping them up as you go.
- When the container is about half full, fill it with water. Don’t use chlorinated water; rainwater is the best (also free!).
- Screen the top to keep mosquitoes out. You can use a piece of screening or a row cover.
- Stir daily for 3 days to 2 weeks. Or, pour it from one bucket into another to mix things up and keep it aerated.
- Strain off the liquid to use as a fertilizer or foliar spray. After you strain off the liquid, return the solids to your compost pile. It can be diluted or used at full strength on established plants. Since plant leaves tend to absorb more nutrients more quickly than roots, foliar feeding is an efficient way to fertilize versus a soil drench.
Weeds are full of nutrients that they have absorbed from the soil, so it is only fitting to extract the water-soluble ones and return them to your garden plants.
Weeds and Plants to Chop Up for an Axtra Nourishing Fertilizer Tea
- Stinging nettle is high in nitrogen, calcium, iron, vitamins A, B, & C, phosphorus, potassium, boron, iron, zinc, selenium, and magnesium. A natural insect repellant, when sprayed on leaves it can help plants resist insect and fungal attacks. Learn more about stinging nettle’s many benefits.
- Alfalfa is high in nitrogen, vitamin A, folic acid, potassium, calcium, and trace minerals. If you don’t have access to it, you can use alfalfa hay, meal, or pellets. This is a “weed” whose growth I encourage in my garden, along with clover. Both are legumes and make a great soil-enhancing mulch or nitrogen-rich tea.
- Horsetail is a deeply rooted weed that draws minerals, including potassium, silica, and iron, from far below the soil.
- Willow is rich in growth hormones, making it especially good for getting young transplants off to a good start.
- Comfrey is rich in calcium, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, vitamins A, B, & C, and trace minerals.
- Chicory is high in potassium, calcium, and vitamin A.
- Dandelions can be put to good use making a tea that is full of vitamins A & C, as well as with calcium and potassium.
Don’t have any of those plants? Plain old grass works well too. Fresh grass clippings are high in nitrogen and potassium. Gather up your clippings next time you mow the lawn, fill a bucket 2/3 full of them, add water and steep 3 days, stirring daily.
Fertilizer teas are fast-acting and free. Apply them every two weeks or when your plants need a boost. They are especially effective on newly transplanted ones and those in blossom or setting fruit. Brew up a batch of weeds and throw a garden tea party for your plants!
See another post on making organic plant fertilizers at home!
Have you ever tried making fertilizer tea? Tell us about your experience!
Robin Sweetser
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This was my first attempt. I made six of those large plastic totes. OMG, I made too much, so I was glad you can use full strength on newly planted plants. I have to say I forgot what fermented grass smelled like. I was out in my yard pulling weeds and I kept smelling dog poop. Well, it was the fermented grass. :) Going to add to my plants now. Thanks for this article, Robin.
Thank you Robin, for the wonderful idea and in depth information. You’re awesome!
Hello Robin, I really appreciate you for this plant tea. Am going to try it right away.
Is the plant tea supposed to be smelly, mine is dreadful.
Also, how long does this tea last for
It certainly can put off a strong smell, and one that is unpleasant to some. The longer it sits and the plants and weeds break down, the smell can become stronger.
It should be used all in the same year as you make it, but using it as soon as possible is recommended, which will decrease the chances of it getting moldy and the smell getting worse.
A good rule of thumb is to only make your batch as big as what you need in the immediate future. Hope this helps!
Thank you much
I noticed in the hotter weather a black looking layer on top of the water. Is that mild and should I throw out and start over? I’ve used weeded and green clippings from my blackberry tree and food scraps. I may not be stirring it enough?
Thank you
You’re not suppose to add food scraps to a tea, it will cause bad bacteria to build, only green leaf clippings, fresh grass clippings.
This sounds like it could be the answer to my problems. Just to double check, would this process work well with foxtails? That’s the main weed we have to deal with in our yard and a major cause of my stress with our family pets. The only other concerns I’d have is would it matter if the weeds were dry or the dogs used the bathroom on them? Sorry for the questions my brain worries about things too much sometimes. Thanks!
Maybe double check on what the foxtail weed contain but I believe any plant material contains some sort of organic nutrient you can pull from them.
