US of A, Mother Earth News – “Homemade Garden Liquid Fertilizers.” Philippines, Frank A Hilario – “No-Sweat Garden Fertilizers!”

From the Facebook sharing of Flarino Flauta, the left image says, “Free, Homemade Liquid Fertilizers” via Mother Earth News, MEN; the article is by Barbara Pleasant and is dated February-March 2011. 2011? Yes, it’s dated – but date is only 1 measure of usefulness.

The right image is my photograph of a poor neighborhood along the street where we live – the families do not know the riches they have!

The MEN liquid fertilizers referred to by Ms Barbara are organic, made from fish, grass clippings, seaweed, chicken manure, wood shavings, even urine.

She says you can mix grass clippings, seaweed and dried chicken manure, wood shavings with water (the ratios shown in the Homemade Fertilizer Tea Recipes Chart included in her article). You allow the tea (water mix) to sit for 3 days at room temperature, “giving (it) a good shake or stir once a day.” On the third day, “most of the soluble nutrients will have oozed out into the water solution” and you have a liquid fertilizer. Use it within a day or two.

Done? But you are not done. Ms Barbara says:

As a general guideline, most vegetables use the three major plant nutrients – nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – in a ratio of roughly 3-1-2: three parts nitrogen, one part phosphorus and two parts potassium. This means that an N-P-K ratio of 3-1-2 is more “balanced” in meeting plants’ needs than 1-1-1, the ratio many gardeners assume is best… The teas made from grass clippings and urine come closest to providing the optimum 3-1-2 ratio.

Miss Barbara, if I use homemade liquid fertilizer, I have to worry about the ratios of N-P-K!? As a gardener, I would be very lazy to do that.

Now, I am going to tell you an even lazier way to have your garden fertilizer right where you want to apply it. It’s also all free!

Look up now, to the right image, where you see 2 houses, some coconut and banana trees – and no garden. The red and yellow blossoms you see in the foreground grew by themselves, beautiful as they are. The photograph I took 10 years ago, exactly on the date of my birthday (3 months from now). I know they are squatters, the families in those houses have not taken advantage of the green, green grass of home – if I lived there, I would have turned those grasses into the best natural garden fertilizer in the world!

And no sweat! How? I will ask around the neighborhood and hire a hand tractor with rotavator blades. I will then have the rotavator pass over the whole place, repeating once if necessary – making sure that the rotating counter blades cut the weeds simultaneously with the soil, and mix those green and brown pieces together in one simple rotary motion – automatically laying a green-brown mulch all over! All I have to do now is wait for the mulch to decay and give up its richness to my vegetables.

That’s my Sweet No-Sweat Garden Fertilizer!@517