My favorite natural fertlizers

Jan 27

All right ya'll. A lot of talk has been going around lately about adding fertilizers to the garden. While I'm all for using natural, organic fertilizers - there isn't really a need if you add these natural fertilizers periodically throughout the season. And the best part is, some of them can be made at home.

Worm castings

My all time favorite fertilizer to use in the garden is worm castings, hands down. You can buy it at most garden centers, but the best way to get worm castings is to make it yourself. I go into the methods of how HERE. I usually put a large handful into most planting holes and use it to add nutrients mid season.

No matter how you make it, worm castings are amazing for your garden because:

🪱 High in nutrients and trace elements

🪱 Release slowly into the soil so it won't burn your plants

🪱 Help with soil structure and water retention

Get started making your own worm castings by using the Worm Factory 360.

Mushroom compost

Mushroom compost is typically a blend of brewer's grain, cottonseed meal, cocoa bean hulls, gypsum, ground corn cobs, hay, manure etc. that mushroom growers have used to grow mushrooms and then pasteurized to remove any pathogens or weed seeds. Since most growers don't reuse their growing medium, they can package up the leftover nutritious materials to gardeners like us!

Mushroom compost is great because:

🍄 Has balanced nutrients that are readily available for your plants to use

🍄 Works really well to top dress soil if you don't want to use soft mulches like leaves

🍄 Promotes even better drainage in the soil

close up of mushroom whose farming produces amazing mushroom compost

Homemade compost

Homemade compost is a little more fluid in its composition than the other two fertilizers listed above. It's contents vary wildly depending on what you put into it, how long it's been sitting, and how it is processed. I love my backyard compost bins and have been using my lomi composter to precompost my kitchen scraps before adding them into the bin. This has helped take care of the 🐭 issues I was having with my outdoor bins. I use my backyard compost when putting my garden to bed in the fall. It has the whole winter to continue to decompose and turns into the good stuff by early spring.

Whichever method you choose to use, homemade compost is great because:

🌱 You reduce the amount of waste going to the landfill

🌱 Leaf mold is an amazing soil conditioner for the garden

🌱 It's a natural, slow releasing fertilizer