Gardening Tips

How to make a homemade foliar fertilizer

How to make a homemade foliar fertilizer

Fertilizing the plants is as important as watering them or giving them a suitable location. Without fertilizer, the plant ends up depleting the nutrients of the soil it is in, and after this it would not take long to get sick or wilt.

And although there are many types of organic fertilizers that you can use on your plants and crops, foliar fertilizer is one of the fastest absorbed, and is therefore particularly suitable for treating weak or sick plants. if you want to learn how to make a homemade and ecological foliar fertilizerjoin us in this EcologíaVerde article.

What is foliar fertilizer for?

Before detailing how to make foliar fertilizer in a homemade and ecological way, we will explain what exactly it is for. Plants grow from three basic elements: sunlight, water, and nutrients. The first two are known throughout the world and very obvious in their supply to the plant, but the third is not always so clear.

When you are going to plant in a pot, it is best to add humus or compost of some kind to the substrate to enrich it with organic matter that feeds the plant. Outdoors this is not so common, but it also gives very good results with the crop since, although the roots have more space to look for food, they will also end up depleting it.

A form of give vitality to the plant and improve its growth is to apply fertilizer regularly, especially when it begins its growing season. This can be applied in a traditional way, on the ground or added to the irrigation water, or in a foliar way. Land plants come from algae, which have no root system and absorb nutrients directly through their leaves. Land plants still retain this ability, and not only can they do so, but their uptake of nutrients by leaves it is much faster.

Here are some recipes to make foliar organic fertilizers and we explain the best way to apply them.

How to make a homemade foliar fertilizer - What is the foliar fertilizer for?

homemade biol fertilizer

The biol, or organic biofertilizeris a very effective fertilizer that is used by breaking down organic matter into a biodigester, a container that you can prepare yourself for this use. For the biodigester you will need a drum or tub, to which you must make a hole in the lid in which to fit a hose connector, then sealing the edges with glue. This hose must then be connected to a bottle with water, where the process gases will end up.

Next, we give the ingredients for a mixture with about two liters of liquids. If you make more, keep the approximate proportions.

  1. Start by pouring 18 ml of skimmed milk, 125 grams of brown sugar and a pinch of bread yeast into a separate bucket. Stir for a few minutes, with a wooden tool, until you get a homogeneous mixture.
  2. In the drum, mix 1.8 liters of water, 500 g of crushed vegetable remains, 500 g of fresh manure and 125 g of wood ashes.
  3. Stir well again and add the contents of the bucket, to mix once more until it is homogeneous.
  4. Then close the lid hermetically and leave the drum to rest in a dark and cool place, with the hose inserted into the bottle with water, at a similar height.
  5. In about 3 or 4 weeks you should see how the hose no longer produces bubbles in the water in the bottle, which means that the mixture in the biodigester has stopped producing methane. After this time, the mixture will be ready. You can make sure that this is the case by adding a little alcohol to it, checking that it forms a thick layer on the biol.
  6. After this, strain the mixture to separate the liquid and you can now use it as a foliar fertilizer.

Horsetail and nettle foliar fertilizer

For prepare horsetail and nettle foliar fertilizer follow these simple instructions:

  1. Boil half a kilo of horsetail branches and leaves and half a kilo of nettle branches and leaves in 2 liters of water for half an hour.
  2. Let the mixture sit for a whole day.
  3. Strain it later, to keep the liquid, which is already usable as a foliar fertilizer.

How often to use foliar fertilizer

The foliar fertilizer application It gives results very quickly but, on the other hand, its benefits also disappear more quickly. For the plant to properly take advantage of the benefits of this type of subscriber, repeat it each 15 days during the months of its activity, which in most species tend to be spring and summer.

How to make a homemade foliar fertilizer - How often to use the foliar fertilizer

How to use foliar fertilizer

To finish, we tell you how to apply foliar fertilizer. What works best is always to use a atomizer or a pump to fumigate. These equipments are not usually cheap, but a good sprayer will last you a long time and ensures a very good application of not only fertilizer, but also natural pesticides in a time of need. Follow these steps to use foliar fertilizer on your plants:

  1. Put your fertilizer or foliar fertilizer in the atomizer, with a drop of dishwashing detergent for every 3.5 liters of water.
  2. Spray the plants with the mixture, making sure to wet the leaves well.
  3. An important detail regarding when to use foliar fertilizer is to always do it first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon, avoiding doing it just before watering or when rains are forecast. In this way, the mixture will not harm the plant due to sunburn, nor will it be removed prematurely from the leaves by irrigation or rainwater.

Also, as an extra tip, we recommend cleaning the leaves before applying products that have to penetrate them. Here we tell you how to clean the leaves of plants. Now that you know how to make a foliar fertilizer or for the leaves of plants, we advise you to also learn about How to make homemade fertilizer for plants with this other EcologíaVerde post.

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