No, not the chicken noodle out of the red and white can. I'm talking about cooking plants (not necessarily vegetables, either) and using the broth as a fertilizer and even as an insect repellent.

Here's an idea from HGTV. The suggestion is to pour boiling water on oak leaves. Simple enuf but the tannins in the leaves make me wonder if it is entirely safe. I've got some nice purslane weeds which darn near require boiling to kill (okay sure, they make good compost :o). I actually sat an uprooted purslane plant on a concrete block in full sun one time to see how long it would live. After 3 weeks, it was blooming and beginning to set seed!!

Anything with this much "life force" MUST have plenty of nutrients useful to the plants I actually WANT to grow!

And, with regards to meat in the broth? Why not! I know of some pesky rabbits who owe me BIG time for all the healthful veggies they've enjoyed at my expense!

Steve

The soup or tea notion has been an idea with me for quite awhile, Nancy. I've become something of an herb tea drinker myself and feel that "I" benefit from it!

Many years ago, I made some manure tea for the garden. After leaving it for a few weeks, it smelled abominable and there were MAGGOTS! No way was I dumping that stuff on my food! Manure is for my compost pile - - the compost is for my soil. The plants can get their roots down in it if they want - it's up to them.

I did some reading about manure & compost teas and such. The French apparently swear by their stinging nettle tea - once again, the author reported it smell hideous. Hey! I've enjoyed stinging nettle as a green vegetable. And, I've got nettle tea in the kitchen right now - Good Stuff!

I guess it is a well-grounded folk remedy for damping-off to use either willow tea (don't think you can drink that ;o) or chamomile tea as a soil drench to protect seedlings. Nicotine from tobacco can be an effective, if somewhat dangerous, insecticide. Garlic and hot peppers are supposed to repel bugs.

I understand that the microbial decomposition of the material; compost, manure, alfalfa, whatever; is beneficial to the plant. But, even tho' we use microbes to partially digest our food and drink; beer, wine, yogurt, etc.; mostly, we COOK our food to make it more digestible. Making nutrients more readily available to plants SHOULD work the same way, don't you think?

I may be all wet on this, Nancy, but I'm going to try it next season and see what happens. Right now, I'm using Miracle Gro regularly on the flowers and it is - expensive! And, I just decided to make more use of the fish emulsion on this-and-that in the veggie garden and it - stinks!

So, I'm going to make "soup" or some equivalent and spray it regularly on a few plants and see how they do by comparison to others treated with MG and dead fish. Can you imagine? The plants might love it! It would be great if you can come up with your own technique for a liquid fertilizer and report to us here, also.

Steve

I don't know much about herbal remedies but I really want to caution you on planting nettles. It isn't toooo much of a problem around here but I know it sure is elsewhere. I've enjoyed having it for dinner but the painful experience of lying down on it in a mountain meadow wasn't any fun.

The tea isn't my favorite since it essentially reminds me of the vegetable - kinda like drinking the juice from spinach. My favorite tea is Stash's Licorice Spice. So I got a little crazy this year and decided to try to expand my tea garden which consisted of catnip and lemon verbena. We've got mints in the yard (quite a few) but I'm not much of a mint fan, either.

I didn't grow any nor harvest nettle from the wild this year, just ordered some tea with a seed order from Richters. I talked a little about my new tea plants on the heirloom forum. Have 6 little planters and about 50 feet of a garden row in these herbs right now. Turns out that anise hyssop has the best flavor but the Korean mint is very similar and much more productive. Still like catnip and lemon verbena so all these will be in the mix for the Winter months. (You should know that NONE of these herbs are in Licorice Spice but the flavors are somewhat in the same class. ;o)

Sorry about your tough growing weather. I'm here in the Wild West where it's been hot and dry throughout. However, I think the temperature only topped 100°F once this Summer. Looks to me like we are now on the downhill side of the 90's . The dry part we've got down pat - just about exactly 1 inch of rain since June 21st . . .

Steve

Or make "sun tea" in a big glass jar.

Either way, it takes less energy than cooking them.

The blender or a juicer would especially help in making all or most of the nutrients available.

But, I swear, brewing something like compost or manure in a bucket of water for 14 to 30 days would be "off-putting" to 90% of the population!

Jerry Baker, Nancy . . . you should know that he has been roundly criticized by academic horticulturalists. Doesn't mean he doesn't have some reasonable ideas for the home gardeners. Here are a bunch of his formulas.

Steve

I would figure that running water through it would make a tea with some of the nutrients released from the leaves by the bacteria etc. that are eating them, plus some of the bacteria themselves. Possibly the potted plants like it so much because it introduces a healthy mix of micro-organisms into the potting soil.

BTW, if you're going to use the blender thing for making liquid weeds, get a spare container and use only that one for weeds, kitchen scraps, and so forth. Dandelions are a great weed to do this with because their roots are so deep; they bring up lots of minerals from deep down.

Since this is the frugal gardening form, I would suggest people concider getting soil tests done before using lots of fertilizers since they cost money and too much of something is bad for your soil and the environment. Contact the cooperative extension service in your state/county to find out about soil testing. The more complete residential test here in FL costs $7.

As to cheap, easy liquid fertilizers you can make. I know one that is pretty much free (well you gotta have water to dilute it with so however much water costs you or the electricity for pumping it.) There is a bit of a smell as you apply it but it goes away by the next day. What is it you ask? Urine. It is usually recomended to dilute 10 or 20 to one. The ratio that works well for me on outdoor plants is on cup (8 oz) urine to one gallon of water. I usually add a bit of vinegar to the collection bottles to keep em from stinking too much when you open them to pee.
Sound too gross for you, just remember that urine is steril unless the person producing it has a urinary tract infection. It seems to make a good liquid fertilizer and in compairison tests I've done between it and Miracle Grow, so far there is either no difference or the plants that get the urine are doing better. FYI, lots of fertilizers use urea for their nitrogen source, urea is only about a step away from urine. Human urine also has other nutrients and micro nutrients that can be helpful to your plants though these vary depending on the person and their diet. As with most fertilizers, watch out for salt build up.

Someone asked what amonia has that plants might want. Amonia is a nitrogen source, just an extra step away from the urea and urine.

Ok, if the liquid gold option of fertilizer doesn't suit your tastes there are other options. Most of em for liquid fertilizer are likely to get smelly before they are done though. You can make teas for your plants with all sorts of things, most people do this outdoors in buckets or trash cans. Just soak whatever you want to use in water for a time Then strain/dilute and use the water on your plants. Things that can help include adding an air bubbler into the water to keep it airated and help promote good microbes (this can also help against the bad smells some.) I don't know the exact length of time or specific dilution for these mixtures right off hand but do some searching and you can probably find a recipie for you desired ingredient.

Favored materials for making these teas. Compost, (some people use manure but others don't think that is good,) Nettles, alfalfa, comfrey leaves (good choice as they grow back quickly and have medcinal uses as well,) worm castings, corn meal, seaweed, weeds, and many others I don't know about. These materials will each impart different nutrients or properties. Some are more for promoting beneficial fungus to fight bad fungal diseases instead of just as fertilizer. Heck, regular tea and coffee can be diluted to help against slugs/snails.

I was curious what it costs to make nitrogen fertilizer. I don't have it down for the commercial product but if I was able and interested in making 1 pound of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer, I would need to shell out 26 cents to the gas company for the use of their natural gas. If I was to make ammonium nitrate, it would cost even more. (you can explore this using the link below)

Obviously, the fertilizer manufacturers don't pay as much for natural gas as I do here at home. But, the high pressure and high temperature (900 ºF) required to make synthetic nitrogen fertilizers consumes a great quantity of fuel and releases considerable heat into the atmosphere. I wonder how steeping a batch of weeds from the garden in a pot of boiling water would compare.

In that case, I think that my 26 cents would go a long, long way. Sun tea makes some sense. Blending which does, after all, use some electricity makes more sense. Boiling a kettle of water and pouring it over nettles, alfalfa, comfrey, oak leaves, or even lawn clippings certainly wouldn't be an outrageous use of energy by comparison to commercial fertilizer manufacturing.

Steve

You can make "compost tea" using an aquarium pump and aerator to aerate a barrel of water and compost. The aerator is needed to prevent accumulation of anaerobic bacteria which are not good for plants (or people).I haven't actually tried this but this is what is recommended in my soil microbes book. This is affordable but unfortunately not really "frugal" because aquarium pumps require electricity and they don't last forever.

For nitrogen I grow a lot of nitrogen-fixers. Probably all of the herbaceous members of Leguminaceae are capable of it, some woody members can, and various other plants like Ceanothus also harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria. I grow several species of Lupines around the base of my fruit trees and in my mixed borders, Strawberry Clover and Lathyrus sativus var azureus in vegetable beds over the winter, and I am currently trying to raise a single specimen of Acacia angustissima (a native of the southern prairies of the USA) to maturity to produce seed as another promising nitrogen-fixer.

As much fertilizer as I do use, I strongly prefer longer-lasting, old-fashioned types like rock phosphorus and Jersey Greensand. They are not as fast as liquid but they take longer to leach out.

Betty