Here are the top three ways to make lovely nutrient-rich fertilisers cheaply, easily and continuously for use on your garden.
Liquid Manure fertiliser
Your choice of chicken, horse, pig, sheep, cow, guinea pig, etc. One of these or a concoction o them all can be used
- Heap the manure on a piece of shade cloth, bring the corners together, and bind them with a rope. This will form a giant ‘tea bag’. Or use a porous bag or sack, e.g. hessian, and close it up.
- Put the ‘tea bag’ into a drum or bin and half-fill the drum with water.
- As a regular tea bag, lift ‘n’ drop the manure tea bag in the water to release the nutrients in the manure. Then you can leave it to brew for a few hours or a few days.
- Dilute 1 part liquid manure with 10 parts water.
Liquid Worm Castings Fertiliser
Once your worm farm is in full operation, i.e. when the first tray is filled up and you’ve had to add a second tray for the food stuff, you can regularly trickle water through from the top. As it goes through, it picks up particles of the worm castings in the first tray.
Drain it out of the reservoir tray and dilute 1 part with 8 parts water.
Liquid Comfrey Fertiliser
Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) is a herbaceous perennial to 1m, can be used to make one of the best fertilisers for the home garden. Its deep tap root takes up a variety of nutrients and minerals and stores them in the leaves.
- Fill a drum or bin with comfrey leaves.
- Fill two-thirds of the bin with water, ix and stir, put on a lid
- In a week it will start to smell; it smells for about another 3 weeks
- Once the smell has gone it is ready to use
- Dilute 1 part fertiliser with 1 part water