Hi all! I'm poor. I'm attempting to get my balcony garden started without spending more than 30 dollars. (I'm probably nuts, I know.) It looks like a good chunk of that will be going to a water hose and sink attachment so I don't have to haul a milk jug of water back and forth a hundred times, so I'm hurting a bit on funds for fertilizer. To make matters worse, the landlord says I'm not allowed to compost anywhere in the apartment or on the property. (I would just hide it under my kitchen sink, what she doesn't know won't hurt her etc, but there's other reasons why I can't unfortunately.)
Is there any option for fertilizing my plants with like... five dollars left? If I mix coffee grounds and eggshells into the soil will it do anything other than bother the local slugs? I've seen that stuff about letting plant scraps sit in a bucket to make "tea" but what I read said it can't replace fertilizer - is there a way to make it so that it can?
I have a bag of epsom salts, a strong appetite for veggies, and the willingness to steal the neighbor's lawn clippings if I must.
I'm also willing to accept that I may have to forgo the water hose C:
EDIT: Thank you all for suggestions! Here's what I'm going to try in no particular order:
- Grass clippings and banana peels in water to make tea
- Getting a med-free friend to pee in a jar and letting that sit for two months
- Reach out to local Buy Nothing group and gardening groups to see if someone has leftover fertilizer or compost
- Steal dirt from local megacorp office to save money on dirt and spend that on fertilizer instead
- Ask around to see if anyone keeps fish so I can use the aquarium water
- Reach out to local mushroom farm to see if they'd give me their growing medium
- Skip the faucet hose and spend the money on some decent cheap fertilizer from Costco
the most i use for container gardening is the same tomato feed for every plant, tbh. you might be able to find a bottle within your budget, and since it'll need to be diluted a lot, it should last a while.
if you want to really go above & beyond, plant-scraps-tea & crushed eggshells etc will top up their nutrients. if you're ever boiling veggies etc in unsalted water, consider letting it cool down & watering your plants with that too.
overall, i try not to go overboard with feeding various nutrients, unless it looks like the plant needs a pick-me-up. it's a lot easier to give them more nutrients when they're too low, than to try to flush out nutrients if they're getting too much of something.
FWIW, "salting" one's cooking water does fuck-all beyond vibes. The saline levels required to quicken the time it takes to reach boiling, for instance, would make the food prepared in it chemically burn your mouth โwith salt. So, bonus! ๐คซ
No, but seriously. It's physics. ๐
I always learned that the point of salting water is to infuse salt into whatever you're boiling. It super does not make water boil faster though.
I completely understand, and yet that too is folklore. ๐จ๐ผโ๐ณ๐ค๐ผ Ah well, can't blame the nanas for mostly getting it right, in their own ways. ๐๐ผโโ๏ธ