Before every happy owner of a summer cottage, each season faces such a great task as obtaining not only good, but the best harvest from their allotment. And everyone wants this to happen at the lowest cost. In order to achieve this, the gardener is ready to go to any tricks and tricks. And first of all it concerns soil fertilizer. After all, everyone is well aware that not only quantity, but also the quality of the crop depends on its fertility.
Many amateur gardeners have heard that potato peelings can be used as fertilizer. For which plants is this feeding method most suitable and the worse the usual fertilizer? Each summer resident scans such a question in his head, preparing in the winter season for the spring-summer season. After all, the issue of savings is interesting to everyone. It is worth sorting it out in order.
What is the minus of organic and mineral fertilizers?
In order to increase productivity, they usually used mineral (phosphates and nitrates), as well as organic (manure and peat) fertilizers. But both of these types of fertilizers have a common minus - the monetary value. In addition, organic matter usually heavily clogs the ground with weeds, and chemical fertilizers tend to accumulate in vegetables and fruits, and then get into the human body, creating huge problems for it.
Therefore, modern summer residents and are looking for more economical and safer ways to fertilize the earth. One of them, which has proven itself very well, is to use potato peelings as a fertilizer. This method is known to many, but there were no negative reviews about it. Only from year to year more and more positive reviews are heard about him. In addition, it helps to protect the crop from some pests. Therefore, most summer residents and turned to such an unconventional method as fertilizer with potato peelings.
How to turn waste into food for plants?
If you make an effort to save the waste, which is potato peelings, until spring, and not throw them in the trash, they will be of great benefit. In the spring-summer period on the garden plot, they will serve as an excellent top dressing, which is absolutely harmless, for many garden crops. Yes, and protection from pests such as slugs, wireworms and Colorado potato beetles. Therefore, if you are thinking about the question of whether potato peelings can be used as fertilizer, prepare them in the off-season.
To do this, it is not necessary to freeze potato skins. It is enough to dry them. This will not be difficult at all, because the oven will destroy fungi and bacteria, possibly trapped in tubers from the soil. And they will take up much less space.
What benefits do they bring to the garden and the garden?
During the summer season, potato peelings are used as fertilizer and as protection against some pests. Yes, and as a bait for the Colorado potato beetle or slugs, the potato skins proved to be excellent. It is only necessary to decompose them on the surface of the earth before the appearance of sprouts, and when the pests stick around them (usually this happens at night) - destroy them. This way you protect your crop from such misfortune.
It’s good to drip them into the ground near those plants that love starch, which is contained in large quantities in potatoes. Rotting, they will give it to the soil, thereby filling the lack of this product in it. And soaked cleansing is an excellent way to get well established and quickly strengthen seedlings of some plants.
How to prepare fertilizer from potato peelings?
Potato peelings as a fertilizer for the garden have long established themselves in the best possible way. No wonder summer residents try to find out the best recipe for its preparation. Of course, you can just bury it in the ground. But in this case, along with the cleanup, the phytophthora preserved on them will also get into the soil. And besides this, it will take more time for their complete decomposition than if they fall into the soil in the form of properly prepared fertilizer.
Therefore, it is worth remembering a few rules for its preparation:
- Dried cleanings should be crushed so that transportation to the country house and further work with them would be easier.
- Shredded dry peel of potatoes is placed in a barrel and pour boiling water. This will help to cope with late blight, as well as with other pests that have survived since the fall.
- The thickening formed after soaking is laid in the holes when planting seedlings, and the plants are watered with liquid from above, which helps not only fertilize the soil, but also cope with some pests.
What is the benefit of feeding pumpkin potato peelings?
Potato peelings proved to be great as fertilizers for cucumbers and other members of the pumpkin family. Use them as top dressing when planting seedlings of these plants. It is prepared as follows:
- Dried and finely chopped during the off-season peeling of potatoes is poured into a barrel in the spring and poured with boiling water to kill all the pathogenic bacteria that have remained on them since last year.
- After they get wet under the influence of hot water, the contents of the container must be mixed well so that it turns into porridge.
When they begin to plant seedlings, they first put a handful of this substance in each hole, sprinkle it with earth, then put porridge from potatoes again and again land. Only now seedlings are planted in this mixture. It will be wonderful to grow after this procedure, because the mashed potatoes, which are mixed with soil in the garden, will be enjoyed by all our assistants in the soil. It will appeal to worms loosening the earth, and billions of soil bacteria.
Such top dressing is good not only for cucumbers and pumpkins. Excellent growth thanks to it will be in cabbage, and even onion crops.
The right fertilizer for berry crops
But not only on garden beds, gardeners use such a wonderful fertilizer as potato peelings. They also took root in garden plots among fruit trees and shrubs. Excellent reviews from many gardeners received potato peelings as fertilizer for currants. After all, they are an excellent source of starch, as well as glucose, which this shrub so likes.
Therefore, in order to be with an excellent harvest of delicious berries, you should not be too lazy in the spring, at the time when fruit and berry plantings are digging in, make dry peeling of potatoes into the ground. Then in July, the bush will reward you with a magnificent harvest of large, selected berries.
In addition, potato peelings are used as fertilizer for raspberries. In this case, they are also introduced into the soil during spring loosening. It is also good to use potato infusion for watering berry bushes in the summer . Any gardener who at least once tried this method of plant nutrition will never give up on him.
A few rules for using potato peelings at the site
In order for potato fertilizer to bring only benefit and not force a summer resident who wants to start using it, to be disappointed, several rules for using them on the site should be remembered:
- Peeling potatoes is undesirable to lay on the surface of the soil. This, firstly, will make the site look untidy, and secondly, it will attract numerous rodents to the territory who want to feast on.
- Potato peeling as a fertilizer for currants and other fruit crops is dripped near the roots in a dry form. This is done so that, decomposing in the soil during the summer, by the time the fruits ripen, they will give to the earth all the glucose and starch that has accumulated in themselves.
- Other vegetable crops are recommended to be watered with infusion of potato peelings from a watering can, having previously removed the strainer so that it does not become clogged.
Having fulfilled all these simple rules, an amateur gardener will certainly be with a large and excellent quality crop by the fall.
Are potato peelings suitable as a fertilizer for all plants?
What must be remembered? Potato peeling as a fertilizer is not suitable for all plants. Do not use them for plants belonging to the solanaceous family. Such as eggplant, peppers, tomatoes and the like are representatives of this family. The thing is that by nature they have a lot of common diseases. Therefore, there is always the danger that pathogenic bacteria will remain on well-dried and steamed boiling water purifications.
Are potato peeling fertilizers for indoor plants?
Potato peeling as a fertilizer is perfect not only for garden and garden crops. Indoor plants are also great for this kind of organic top dressing. To do this, it is also worthwhile at home to dilute the solution from dry peeling potatoes and monthly top dressing by watering all home plants. Their greens will be more magnificent from such leaving, and even many pests can be eliminated without problems without using purchased chemistry for this.
Why is this fertilizer convenient?
No wonder this type of soil fertilizer and plant nutrition is gaining more and more popularity. It is very economical, because potato dishes are the basis of the diet in any family, regardless of its income level. And considering that even with the ideal quality of tubers about one fifth of them are to be disposed of, a fairly decent amount of cleanings is accumulated during the winter season.