Making Liquid Manure
Homemade Organic Fertilizer to Revitalize the Garden
Spring is an excellent time to make up a batch of liquid manure from the new lush growth. Use liquid manure to as an organic fertilizer to add nutrients and trace element
Every so often, the garden needs a tonic to revitalize and revivify. Making liquid manure from “found” ingredients provides a cheap and effective way of increasing and maintaining garden fertility and capturing minerals from deep within your soil.
Generally, there are three sorts of liquid manure that can be made easily and quickly by the home gardener:
- from green plants
- from animal manure
- from urine
Green Plant Manure – batch production
An efficacious brew is made from green plants. To make this, collect a variety of strongly growing green plants. These can be prunings – strip the leaves from branches - or weeds pulled from the garden. A combination of tree leaves, grasses and soft and hard weeds will result in a good mix of nutrients.
Weeds from the garden will contain stored plant nutrients from previous fertilizing regimes. In fact, these weeds may reduce the leaching of valuable goodness from the soil. The pulled weeds can be left on the surface as a mulch but put through a liquid fertilizer cycle will maximize their effectiveness and kill any seeds.
Trees, being relatively deep-rooted compared with flowers and vegetables, tend to pull up a different combination of minerals. Composting, mulching or making liquid manure from these will enrich the garden.
It is a similar story with some of the weeds in the garden and round about – many tend to specialties in the elements they hold in their leaves and stems so variety is the spice of liquid manure! Deep rooted comfrey for example, is high in Nitrogen (almost double horse manure) and also donates a large amount of potash as well as magnesium, iron and calcium.
By soaking and fermenting in liquid manure stored goodness becomes available to garden plants.
Typical mix
A typical mix might include: grass cuttings (full of nitrogen), masses of leaves from the tulip hibiscus hedge, plantain, dock, comfrey along with azolla and water hyacinth from the river, and a random selection of anything that can be pulled by hand.
The pull-by-hand theory is that this will tend to deliver the softest and most succulent green stuff. Sometimes lime or wood ash is added to reduce acidity and to add other elements.
Amount to make
200 Liters or 40 gallons is a good amount to make at one time. An old wheelie-bin is perfect. Put in about four buckets of your selected green stuff – while it is fresh. Then fill the bin with water and leave it. And leave it.
In warm weather it might be ready in about a month and in colder autumn it could take almost three. After a while it begins to froth and bubble and smells strongly agricultural. A little longer and it settles down. Often the "barnyard" smell will indicate that the batch is ready, another sign is the presence of a few rat-tailed weevils floating on top.
Warning
Never touch the liquid with your hands. It can be strong smelling and difficult to scrub off. Strong rubber gloves dedicated to the purpose should be used.
To use
The liquid manure is diluted for use. Usually one third of a bucket to two-thirds water is a reasonable ration. The general advice is to dilute it until it is the color of wet tea.
This can go straight onto the garden where it will provide an immediate boost to growing plants and increase the activity of soil biota. It is particularly good for young plants.
It can be used as a foliar spray if suitably diluted.
Be cautious: do not put it on ready-to-pick leafy green vegetables.
Finally, it becomes too weak and ineffective. The green stuff will have lost its green and be smelly grey, white or black “stuff”. This can be put onto the compost heap or used as mulch around trees.
Liquid Green manure- Continuous production
An alternative method is to place the greenery in a sack suspended in the bin. Once mature some liquid is drawn off, diluted and used. When the solution is weakened put in another sack load. This way the manure can be maintained in continuous production.
Liquid manure is an excellent starter for composts. If the pile is damp or wet use the solution undiluted.
Animal liquid manure
About a bucket of horse manure is put into a open weave bag or sack such as an old feed bag or a Hessian potato sack. This is suspended in a 200 liter (40 gallon) drum and allowed to soak. After a month or so It will be ready to use on the garden. Dilute it to the color of weak tea and use it on small trees. Be careful not to put it on or even near leafy vegetables that will be eaten: beans yes – lettuce no. Cow or chicken manure can be substituted.
Urine.
Human urine is used to make an excellent garden tonic. Urine is collected and diluted and watered onto plants. Like plant based liquid manure, it should be diluted to a weak tea colour. One should avoid using it in the same place regularly.
Liquid manures are useful because they provide a homemade, cheap, organic fertiliser that is in a form that can be used immediately and beneficially by garden plants. It can be used to revivify a flower garden in mid-season.
