Green Fertilizer: How To Prepare Organic Top Dressing From Grass, Including Nettle, Use It Correctly, Reviews

2024 Author: Bailey Albertson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 12:53

Green weed fertilizer: pros and cons, recipes, uses

Agronomists call green manure green manure, and gardeners dubbed the infusion of any herb this way, but they give special preference to nettle. It is easy to make such fertilizer, it brings a double benefit: both the weeds are weeded out, and the crops are fed. But is this top dressing so good? Can she always fertilize everything?

Content

• 1 What is green fertilizer and what plants it is suitable for
• 2 When and how to feed

• 3 How to prepare and dilute green manure

  3.1 Video: how to make fertilizer from weeds

What is green fertilizer and what plants is it suitable for

Green fertilizer is a fermented infusion of weeds, green manure, nettle, turf. Any one raw material or mixture in arbitrary proportions is poured with water and kept for several days. Wild yeast that lives on the surface of any blade of grass begins the process of fermentation, fermentation.

In addition to yeast, hay bacillus and other bacteria and fungi that live in the ground and on its surface are included in the work. They feed on plant residues, as a result, amino acids, compounds of phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen pass from raw materials to water; complex elements fall apart into simple ones.

Pros of green fertilizer:

• Completely free.
• It is considered environmentally friendly and natural.
• It is in an accessible form for plants, is immediately absorbed by the roots and nourishes. The effect (active growth) is noticeable at most after 5-7 days.
• It misleads many pests with its smell: carrot, onion, cabbage flies, whitefly butterflies, scoop, etc.
• It has an alkaline reaction that is detrimental to pathogenic fungi.

Minuses:

1. The fermentation process occurs spontaneously. The exact composition and proportion of the nutrients is unknown. Even if you use not a mixture of herbs, but only nettles, the composition will still be unstable due to different cooking conditions: it is hot or cold outside.
2. In addition to beneficial bacteria, the infusion may contain fungi that are dangerous to plants and microbes to humans.
3. A disgusting smell is not the biggest evil, but it is felt immediately. It will be extremely unpleasant to work with the infusion, and then you will have to wash your clothes and go to the shower.

Green fertilizer alkalizes the soil, suitable for most crops, except those that prefer acidic soils. For example, it is strictly forbidden to add organic matter for blueberries, the same applies to conifers, they love acidic soil: oak, acacia, maple, viburnum, hydrangeas, etc. Before fertilizing a particular plant, study its preferences in dressing.

When and how to feed

Top dressing with green fertilizer is equivalent to the application of manure, compost or humus, it contains mainly nitrogen. This element is necessary in the early growing season to build up green parts of the plant (tops, leaves, shoots). And during flowering and fruiting periods, other fertilizers are needed - with a predominance of potassium and phosphorus.

As for the dosages, the flow rate of the infusion should be the same as when watering with clean water. But it is brought in on wet ground.

1. If the soil is dry, water so that the entire layer of the earth, in which the feeding roots are located, becomes wet. In almost all plants, the bulk of the small suction roots are located in the upper 30 cm. For trees and shrubs, you will have to make ring trenches at such a depth along the periphery of the crown and shed along them.
2. Apply the top dressing at the same rate as for regular watering with clean water. For example, 0.2–0.5 liters is enough for a cucumber seedling with 2-3 leaves, 1.5–2 liters for an adult strawberry bush, and a bucket per running meter of a ditch under a tree.
3. After feeding the beds, lightly pour clean water again so that the fertilizer goes to the roots and does not remain on the surface. Bury grooves around trees and bushes.

Application frequency:

• For seedlings, cucumbers, root crops, cabbage before flowering, the beginning of the filling of tubers, heads of cabbage - every 7-10 days.
• Under bushes, trees, strawberries - once before flowering, when there is an active growth of greenery.
• With dill, onions, parsley, sorrel, salads at the beginning of leaf growth and after each complete cut. During the periods of collecting greens, you should not water with an unpleasant-smelling fertilizer.

You can alternate root and foliar feeding.

How to prepare and dilute green manure

Steps for preparing green fertilizer:

1. Fill a plastic container (not made of iron) with mowed, weeded grass, or only nettles, preferably chopped up, with roots and clumps of earth, but without coarse stems. You can add turf. All raw materials are put in arbitrary proportions. Tamp lightly, the mass should fill the container by about 3/4.

   

   If there is no plastic container, a large and strong bag for construction waste will help out.
2. Fill with rainwater or tap water, preferably heated in the sun, but not to the brim, keep in mind that the slurry will ferment and bubble.

3. To prevent the grass from floating up, press down with oppression, for example, with a brick. Cover with a loose lid.

   

   You can use bricks as oppression

4. Keep the container in the fresh air or in a greenhouse. Stir every day to ensure that all the grass decomposes evenly.

   

   Stir the fertilizer every day

5. When the mass turns into a fetid slurry, only separate rough parts of the stems will remain intact, you can start feeding.

Video: how to make fertilizer from weeds

In what proportion to dilute this slurry with water, no one will say for sure. The Internet offers ratios: 1: 8, 1:10, 1:20, and even a glass per bucket. Everyone talks about their own or someone else's experience, because the concentration of nutrients, as already mentioned above, is always different for each gardener. I usually take 2 liters of infusion for a 10-liter watering can, the rest is water. I pour the same solution over the leaves. I put the thick under bushes and zucchini. Not a single plant was harmed.

The gardeners modernize the classic recipe at their discretion, add:

1. Wood ash for enrichment of the infusion with potassium, phosphorus and microelements - a 10 liter glass.
2. A loaf of rye bread per barrel (200 l) for faster and more active fermentation. For the same purposes, add old fermented jam (up to 3 liters per barrel), pressed yeast (100-300 g per 200 liters).
3. Valerian roots to eliminate odor.
4. Egg shells to enrich fertilizer with calcium. No specific quantity has been specified.
5. A couple of shovels of manure or bedding from the poultry house for 200 liters of water.

All these recipes are approximate, "by eye", science has not proven their benefits. Some options, in my opinion, have more disadvantages than advantages. For example, why add artificial yeast when the plants have natural yeast? To make it foam better? From the lessons of biochemistry, I remember that fermentation in the presence of sugar, jam, berries, fruits, bread is alcoholic. It leads to the formation of poisonous fusel oils.

Green fertilizer is a natural infusion of weeds or nettle only. Its composition changes depending on the set of herbs, their proportions, and the weather. In any case, the top dressing will contain more nitrogen, which provokes the growth of tops, leaves, young shoots. Such a fertilizer is applied at the beginning of the growing season, from the moment of flowering, it is necessary to switch to special fertilizers with a well-chosen ratio of potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen and trace elements.