Using stuff around the house...

You know, It's kind of fun to hit Google and do searches to see if anyone's using random stuff from around the house to use on their plants.

I just made my usual fertilizer:
24oz can of beer
2 cups of epsom salt
1 cup of ammonia
1 cup of molasses

I know there's several variations of the recipe, the different amounts, people being concerned that one amount was too much so they put in a smaller amount, etc. I believe a cup of water or two is added as well to dilute it but I don't bother with that. This is what I make and I put 1 tablespoon per watering can.

I use this fertilizer mostly for my thanksgiving/christmas cacti. They love the stuff and they bloom like crazy when the time comes. If I recall correctly, I read on one thread that this shouldn't be used on herbs.


When the roses were getting ready to be thrown out after several years of not blooming, I decided to make 'Banana Slush' and that's where you buy really brown bananas that are normally ready for banana bread but you just blend it up in a blender (peels included) with some water and pour it around your rose bushes. I did this every two weeks and they all bloomed like crazy. There were some roses that we totally forgot the color of and it was quite interesting to go "Ohhhh, yeah. Remember? You/she/he/they got it from such and such and then planted it here and etc..."

Problem was, as soon as I stopped feeding them the blended bananas, they pretty much stopped blooming. It was a fun period but with the roses reverting back to their non-bloom state, all of them were thrown out. Funny enough, one popped up the next spring ... It was quite a surprise so that one is still around.


I also found a thread where people talked about using their leftover coffee in their pots to pour on their plants due to the tannic acid. People shared experiences of someone in their office just pouring the leftover coffee in a potted plant and it ends up being really happy for it. I have yet to try this. (Probably best to dilute it even though one person said they just did it straight without doing anything else to it)

I tried saving coffee grounds (I don't drink coffee so it's sort of a pain to remind others to save for me) and that only worked briefly. I don't mind because when I did have a batch of coffee grounds, I couldn't really figure out where to apply the stuff. The batch I had was used for a tomato plant with a couple of banana peels that were saved.


There's also the tip of using eggshells in watering cans for the calcium.