Make your own liquid fertilisers

[ChanellG]

I am guessing that if everyone started pouring strong coffee on the ground to kill slugs it would ultimately have an environmental impact that was potentially negative. Too much coffee isn't good for us, so it probably isn't good to have it in the soil and water table. Who knows what kind of chemical reaction that would cause.

I would think it would be more popular in the EU to put a little dish of beer down to deal with the slug problem, lol. I don't have a slug problem at the moment, but I am thinking that upturned bottle caps around plants might be a good idea. You'd get the effect of diatomaceous earth with less hassle.

 

[ChanellG]

Leafmold is that dark brown humus that you find on the forrest floor. Not high in nutrients but an excellent soil conditioner, holds moisture too.

Its a fungal process that takes a year, can be speeded up if you have a means of chopping the fallen leaves up, running them thru a lawnmower for instance.

Ideally you'd make a wire netting enclosure & just pile the leaves into it. Don't cover & keep damp in dry weather. Simple as that & much more useful than the ash from burnt leaves.

I know a girl in London that goes out after dark & collects the bagged up sacks that the council has swept up

Glad I happened upon the link to this at the bottom of the page and revisited the thread. I have some of those wire tomato cages linked together in a "square" column and piled high with leaves. I was planning on putting black plastic over the wire cages (the spaces are quite large) leaving the top and bottom open.

I've read about making leaf mold in black trash bags and was considering that means as well. I didn't chop up the leaves this time, just piled them up in my homemade wire bin. Most of them were green also, because I had been cutting back the philodendron and pruning the maple.

 

[zigs]

Sounds good, don't know if I mentioned, I did a small experiment last autumn, mixed a damp bucket of leaves with some yeast & covered it with a few layers of paper, it was useable leafmold by spring. Can take a year or more to rot down on its own.

 

[TheCrazyPlantLady]

Thanks for the tip! I love learning of new ways to make fertilizers.

I never heard that about comfrey, luckily I haven't eaten any. I've heard mixed views on acorns causing liver problems as well, due to the tannic acid in them. Apparently they are safe as long as they aren't consumed in large quantities. I've always wanted to make acorn pancakes because when I was younger the boy in My Side of the Mountain made acorn pancakes and I heard Native Americans did as well.

OMG, I loved that book! And I too always wanted to make acorn muffins. And live in a hollowed out tree!

 

[TheCrazyPlantLady]

Sounds good, don't know if I mentioned, I did a small experiment last autumn, mixed a damp bucket of leaves with some yeast & covered it with a few layers of paper, it was useable leafmold by spring. Can take a year or more to rot down on its own.

was it traditional yeast, or instant yeast? We live on the edge of a forest, so we get a lot of leaves in our back yard. I filled 3 black garbage bags with leaves and watered them down last fall, and they are no closer to leaf mould than when I started. I also piled some up on dirt covered with gardeners fabric, and while it increased the earthworm population by about 10 times (I have never seen so many baby worms in my life!) they didn't do any sort of decomposing on their own

 

[zigs]

Just dried baking yeast I think, although there's a possibility it could have been turbo yeast.

Spoke to @clueless1 about it, he reckoned there's a waste digester he knows of that uses yeast to turn waste into compost in a few days.

Strange that the worms didn't eat the leaves, seen worms pulling leaves underground here.

Might work better if you could run the leaves thru a shredder or lawnmower first. Worth a go with yeast, as its fungus that breaks leaves down & not the bacterial action like in a compost heap.

 

[TheCrazyPlantLady]

Yeah, I'll try the yeast trick. We only have a little push mower - it really doesn't do more than bend the leaves
I did put a whole shwack down on the pathway between my fence and my raised bed. They haven't decomposed, but I haven't had a single weed poke through back there, so I'll be doing that again this fall

 

[zigs]

Bit like my new garden shears then, they just bend the grass

Some leaves take a lot longer than others, can you borrow a goat to put them through?

 

[TheCrazyPlantLady]

LOL - I would love to have a goat, but I think there are some silly laws about keeping them in the city!

 

[zigs]

You could pretend it was a very expensive breed of dog

 

[ChanellG]

@TheCrazyPlantLady, I live in the city and people have both goats and chickens (restricted numbers). Guess it depends on where in the world you are.

@zigs, Love this new feature! Reminds of that other place...

I think the difference with the leaf decomp may be whether the leaves are green or if they are dried out. Dry leaves crumble quite easily so maybe this has to be a two or more step process if you want to use the leaf mold right away? I have put dry stuff in the compost and seen it disappear completely.

The fresh leaves I put in the tomato cage bin will start "going down" as they dry out (that is the volume will seem reduced), and then I have room to add more on top. I suppose in a bag the heat and humidity would do the work along with any yeast that was naturally present. I have been saving leaf mold info to Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/pin/321796335845144425/

 

[zigs]

@zigs, Love this new feature! Reminds of that other place...

Both here and the other, other forum are running on Xenforo 1.2 now.