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Homemade organic fertilizers for container plants?

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Tropicaltoba:
I’m curious if anyone else is making their own fertilizers for container plants? I’ve been using old leaves and coffee grounds in a worm bin and also have been trying some experiments with bokashi composting for fruit and high nitrogen wastes. I find the solids products work well for my large containerized that have worms in them, but I’m not sure what to do with all the leachates? I’m hoping to use them as a liquid fertilizer for my smaller plants but have concerns about toxicity. I was wondering if others have tried similar things?

tru:
Maybe treat it as a concentrate, mix w water to experiment with? I think the only real way to tell would be an EC reader, not sure about the leachates maybe cheesecloth would work? I figure they're probably way smaller than that though

I've never heard of bokashi but after reading up on it sounds really interesting!

I keep a fishtank so all of the dirty water goes directly to the plants instead of down the drain, I have a compost bin going but I'm new to it all so idk how good I did, tried to do the whole browns to greens ratio but It's hard to say if it was done right

elouicious:
I've done the same in the past-

Bokashi is great for composting on a small scale to produce liquid feritlizers

As tru said unless you have the same inputs to the bin, the leachate will always be a bit of a moving target but in general a dilution of 1:100 will be good for almost all applications

Really heavy feeders like some species of cactus can take it straight

What are your toxicity concerns?

(freshwater aquarium water changes are an amazing liquid fertilizer, I would like to begin experimenting with a protein skimmer from reef aquariums as well)

pagnr:
A standard toxicity test is to plant 100 radish seed in a pot and count the germinations. High rate = very low to zero toxicity. Low rate of germination = higher toxicity.
You may need to standardise by knowing the germination rate of the radish seed, that should be 100% in most cases.
You could test toxicity of your fertiliser on radish seedlings in pots, if they go backwards it should be an indication.

roblack:
Used to feed plants black water from freshwater cichlid tanks packed with fish, plants, and driftwood . Never bought fertilizer for the house and porch plants, as the back water was fantastic. Have considered keeping freshwater fish again, partly for the wastewater.

I would be afraid to use skimmate from a protein skimmer. Not sure if the salt is transferred well in the foam, but who knows what is in the cup. Marine tanks, water, and fish usually end up getting dosed with all kinds of stuff, including antibiotics and copper. Even if it is good for plants and fruit, doubt enough could be produced and fed to plants to make much of a difference.

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