Organic gardening involves understanding that sustainable systems are the key to continued productivity. It is important to take steps to ensure that your soil is healthy, and that the crops you grow get the nutrients that they need, not just in the short term but over time. Good gardening practices such as mulching, creating polycultures and crop rotation can all help to maintain the natural cycles on your farm or in your garden. But another way to feed the plants is through using liquid plant feeds.

If you are an organic gardener then creating and using home- made plant feeds is one of the methods you can use to ensure that your plants and your soil remain happy and healthy. You can make organic plant food from materials you are likely to already have access to in your organic garden or in the natural environment close to your home.

Liquid Plant Feed Ideas 

There are a range of different liquid plant feeds that can be created quickly and easily for use in your organic garden or on your permaculture farm. Some common liquid plant feed ideas are included below:

Compost Teas

If you are already making a good quality compost at home, you can use some of that compost to make one of the quickest and easiest natural plant fertilizers imaginable. Simply add a good shovelful of good compost to water, strain the resulting liquid and use it on your vegetable patch.

If you keep livestock or live rurally and have access to farm manure then you can use these manures in a number of different ways to enrich your soil. One such way is to make a liquid feed from the composted manure. You can use the manure of a number of different creatures to create this liquid gold. If you have pets, you may be able to compost their waste for this purpose. If you keep fish, old aquarium water also makes a great liquid feed, as the fish waste will help your plants to grow.

Another variation on compost tea is to use the liquid found at the bottom of a wormery, in which worms turn your household scraps into good quality worm-castings and composted materials. The liquid drained off from the bottom of a wormery is a great food for plants and you can even make the wormery yourself. Vermiculture, the practice of keeping worms to aid in composting food scraps and other waste, can be a great idea for many organic farms and gardens.

Plant-Based Liquid Feeds

Comfrey is a plant that is extremely useful to the organic gardener in a number of different ways. All organic gardeners should have a comfrey patch in their gardens. Comfrey leaves decomposed in water make a liquid feed comparable in nutrition to commercial feeds. 

Green tea is another option for a liquid feed, which is high in nitrogen and other nutrients. All liquid feeds are often called 'teas' but actual tea can be an option, especially if this is a plant that grows well where you live.

Nettles are a common weed that, if handled carefully, can be a real boon to any organic gardener. Nettles can be used to make a nitrogen rich garden fertilizer for leafy plants. Simply allow nettles to rot down in water to make a nutritious liquid feed for nitrogen-hungry plants.

But nettles are not the only plant usually considered to be a weed which can be used in this way. You can also use the same idea to make use of many common weeds plucked from your vegetable beds or other growing areas. This is a way to return their nutrients to the soil without risking spreading them by putting them in your compost.

If you live by the sea or ocean then seaweed is another valuable natural resource. Seaweed can also be used to make a home-made plant fertilizer. Since seaweed is rich in both potassium and trace elements, it can be great for the overall health of your soil as well as for various crops. 

Potash Liquid Feed

Wood ash is a great source of potassium and can be great for fruiting plants. Unfortunately, if you make a liquid feed with wood ash and water alone then the result would be strongly alkaline. Still, if the soil where you live is very acidic then a wood ash liquid feed could be one way to help redress the balance and bring the soil to a more neutral pH. 

Fish/ Meat Based Liquid Feeds

Though vegetarians will be likely to want to steer clear of this one, if you eat fish you can make your own fish fertilizer using the waste by-products of the fish that you eat or whole fish if you have them available and going to waste. Blending waste and adding water can allow you to use fishy waste as a liquid feed.

If your garden is short of phosphorus then you may want to create a fertiliser that contains plenty of this important nutrient. Meat eaters can use the ground bones from meat meals to make their own bone meal fertiliser, which can also be blended with water and applied to the garden in liquid form.

A bokashi bin system can be used to ferment meat, dairy and fish along with other kitchen waste and to create a nutrient rich tea which can be used to feed your crops, as well as a stable soil-builder that can be added to your regular compost heap or bin.

Whichever liquid plant feeds you choose to use, it is important to choose the right option for different plants and different growing areas. A liquid feed can give plants a boost – but choosing the wrong one can be detrimental, or even kill plants. Consider what plants and soil need, and always err on the side of caution when deciding how strong a solution to use, and you should not go too far wrong when using liquid plant feeds in your organic growing efforts.