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
Coffee grounds and eggshells will go a long way, but they aren’t a substitute for any other augmentation.
I wouldn’t even consider composting in an apartment - the logistics are just too painful in such a small space (and with long composting timelines).
So about the watering - the cheapest thing you could do is get a faucet aerator-to-hose adapter. It screws into the aerator on your sink and lets you screw on any regular garden hose fitting. The down side is that many faucets don’t like seeing back pressure when the faucet is on, so you could damage your faucet if you turn a valve off at the end of the hose. One option is just “don’t turn it off”, or look at a waterbed filling/draining kit. It’s got a sink adapter very similar to the metal one but it lets some water hiss through under pressure.
Another possible fertilizer source would be an all purpose chemical fertilizer from a dollar store. You don’t get much but you also don’t need much. Definitely not as natural as rolling your own compost, but a lot more practical in a small space.
Question - is this what you mean by aerater-to-hose or am I looking at the wrong things? If I can bring the hose cost down then I'll have more for dollar store fertilizer
Close! This one looks like the right fit: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Danco-Chrome-Female-Standard-Adapter/3647052
That assumes your faucet has an aerator you can unscrew!
That piece is available at my local Lowes! Now a new problem. My landlord seems to have glued the aerator to the faucet? That or there's a lot of grime, or it just isn't an aerator, but there's a seam and a lot of sticky gunk. I'm gonna try soaking it in some vinegar, wish me luck XD