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
I just stumbled across this video on DIY compost-free fertilizer today and immediately thought of this post, so I'm sharing it here. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1q7NonSlEU
Quick summary if you would rather not watch: bloom yeast in warm water with sugar, add in what you have of powdered eggshells, wood ash, and Epsom salt. Ratio from the comments that I can't double-check against the video is:
Metric:
'Merican:
Anecdotal evidence supports this. I cannot find any studies or articles about this because when I try to Duck around and find out, I cannot tell which of the top results are AI slop and it's all over the place. We are in Hell. So my advice is to try it, maybe omitting different ingredients for comparison, and test it out. I'm currently trying to find a good vegan alternative to add calcium in place of eggshells that's cheap, available and which I would actually have on hand regularly as someone who does not use eggs.
this is such a useful resource thank you!! I have a shocking amount of wood ash available to me and weirdly enough an absolutely thicc bag of Epsom salt that someone gave me as a gift. And of course I have sugar and yeast, I bake a lot of bread XD I saw some people in the comments were saying that you can skip the egg shells but I do have some. And I also saw a comment saying you can use rice water to get natural yeast? I eat a ton of rice so I'll probably experiment with that c:
I hear you on the AI slop stuff. I use Ecosia instead of Google for obvious reasons but it's so difficult to find real websites instead of slop. These days I do trust anecdotal evidence a fair bit (when there's no potential to harm anyone) so I am happy to give this a shot! A friend has also gifted me a jar of homemade compost tea, the kind where you put plant scraps in with water until it turns gross. So maybe I can divide my plants into two groups and see which makes them happier C:
That sounds like a great plan! If you feel like it, I'd love to see you report back with the results.