Why I NEVER Buy Fertilizer (11 ways to fertilize for free!)

What is up everybody? It's Frenchie Powell with Permaculture Northeast bringing you guys a video on why I never ever buy Fertilizer all right and to answer this question we first need to start in nature now This is the longer video some of you guys like that some of you guys don't but it's jam-packed with information all right So let's go along number one We start in nature and the reason is I'm in the woods right now And we haven't had rain in a while now It is full of greenery from tall trees to bushes to understory vegetation and We gotta ask ourselves the question who goes through and fertilizes this all you go outside your door look at the roadside ditches Look at the hillsides everywhere greenery vegetation grows in abundance and Nobody fertilizes it all right so that tells you that nature takes care of itself in a way And there's a method behind how it does it and we can mimic those methods all right, so how does nature? Fertilize itself if we can figure out that we can figure out how to fertilize our gardens and our little farms Homesteads farms gardens the whole mix for free all right, so what lessons do we learn from nature all right? So look across here lesson number one is nature covers it covers with leaves it covers with sticks it covers with logs It covers with ground cover You know I guess pun none unintended pun intended, baby Okay, it covers everything you don't look around and you don't see bare dirt But many times when you look at someone's garden That's all you see is dirt and then eventually that dirt raises weeds and so nature covers And that functions all does a whole lot of things you know it holds in water it Suppresses unwanted growth from vegetation it does a lot of stuff, but nature covers. That's lesson number one Lesson number two is a huge mistake I see everybody focused on fertilizer make and that is nutrition all right we talk about nutrition with plants Generally with nitrogen phosphorus and potassium and you have your NPK ratio that we say corn needs this ratio Beans need this ratio tomatoes need this ratio, and so we talk about nutrition with plants as though we know it all all right Nitrogen phosphorus potassium, that's like saying you need carbohydrates protein and fats to live so all I'm going to feed you is bread Steak and olive oil, that's all you get to eat Well, how's your health going to be give it a month give it two months give it a year give it a decade if you? Live that long How would your health be if you ate those three things all the time and so how is a plant's health when we force feed? It these individual Elements solely for its health all right, that's not all plants get to get minerals trace minerals microtrace nutrients from the soil from nature's fertilizer that we never even foresaw them needing and This would lead to a holistic health of your plants for their immune system their growth both in vegetation and in root structure Far beyond what we ourselves could understand or begin to try to guesstimate So that's lesson number two Focus on feeding not really your plants But focus on feeding your soil because that's where plants get their nutrients from All right, if you're trying to feed your plants you're doing the wrong thing feed your soil, and you can grow anything So lesson number one cover lesson number two feed your soil, so those are the lessons now Let's dive into how we practically do that So let's say you buy a bag of fertilizer at the store. You open it up. You look inside. What does it look like? It's white it kind of looks like salt The reason for that is plants need to their nutrients plants need their nutrients to be bound to a salt Compound in order to uptake those nutrients it gets down to the chemical charge on the root hairs And the chemical charge of the nutrients they need it bound in something in order to uptake it now when you add that that saline solution to the soil Plants uptake it they get really large really lush because with that extra salt they need to uptake more water And so they kind of end up bloated In a crude sense, but anyway when we talk about fertilizers. There's different types. There are quick fast relief relief quick fast release Fertilizers they get nutrients to your plants right off the bat, and then there are slow long-term Fertilizers and nature does the exact same thing. We see it everywhere So let's start large and work our way small with the longest Slowest release fertilizers that we can have all the way down to the immediate plants need nutrients Let's get it to them. All right, so let's actually move over to the garden and see these different fertilizers in action Alright, so fertilizer number one is right here behind me and that is rocks All right, the longest slowest term release fertilizer Longest release fertilizer for free is rocks and the reason for that is they're literally solid minerals Alright plants need minerals and sometimes you will see rock dust sprinkled in a garden for that mineral content Well, we know that rocks when they break off or when they shear off are sharp, but over time they get smooth They start to erode they break down from wind from rain from you know Anything crossing over them from I don't know anytime you water your garden or brush up against them Rocks wear down and that is a small amount of rock dust always being released Throughout the year into your garden anytime water gets in there and it freezes and then thaws and then freezes and then thaws through Winter you're spreading fertilizer and so rocky gardens can actually make for a really good garden as long as you're not rototilling or plowing Because it is constantly having a source of minerals that's there and available for the plants And so even if these things are underground You're going to be having fungi and root hairs and root structures that are getting into this that are breaking it up And on the surface you're having home for lichen and stuff like that to be accumulating nutrients and stuff like that So anyway rocks are gonna be your number one for free fertilizer So have them around you can even mulch an entire garden with just rocks, and it will do fine and Yeah, so that's number one So fertilizer number two the log All right, this is your second long-term release fertilizer Breaks down faster than a rock, but it takes a long time takes a log time Okay, so anyway, we've got logs we've got sticks honestly There are kind of path liners in our to be food forest here got another log back there And it paths are a great place to place logs because they're not in an area you need to work to really kind of Get in to plant your seeds. They can just sit there. They can mark an area. So even here we've got I Forget where that even came from Anymore, but we've got logs all right, and they are here. They are idle They're just sitting by but like the rocks anytime it rains anytime you know weather events happen, they're leaching nutrients and Fertilizing the soil and so also underneath the logs you're gonna have a host of life, and so if we just Roll this over You can just see a mass of fungi that are working on chewing up this log and breaking it down Don't see any wood lice or worms here But I see some tiny tiny ants have a home in this area. Sorry guys, but It provides habitat toads can sometimes if you have a pile of logs Find that to be a good home, and they'll eat slugs and snails in your garden So logs are your number two slow-release fertilizer that is absolutely free Okay after the log we've got three more fertilizers right in this area. Let's take a look what they are Okay, so we've got three different levels of releasing nutrients We're gonna start here with the slow one and that is what we've been walking on that is wood chips And here you can tell why this is a slow release in a sense because you've got you know chunks of wood and You know of all different sizes from large to tiny and this stuff just breaks down Magnificently over really kind of two and more years the first year it kind of sits there But afterwards it just gets better and better and better and that stuff breaks down quicker gets nutrients to the soil faster and Holds moisture wonderfully wood chips and any mulch really are like a sponge and everything from this side down really any of these finer mulches that we're going to be talking about work well for holding moisture into the Ground and above the soil and everything so after wood chips the next one's actually going to be sticks now You may not have I mean it's hard to not have wood chips around you have to look for them Sometimes maybe your neighbors and people you know don't have a wood chipper But there's always wood or tree trimming companies around that will have wood chips we have back yonder a pile of wood chips that they came and trimmed some of our trees that we had and Just that were old and were risk if like a high wind storm came through by anyway We kept the wood chips so wood chips are great. We use them on our paths and around some of our Perennials so here. We've got a black current We've got some wood chips around the base of there with the hay as well, but anyway wood chips are great Sticks are along the same lines, but you can literally have sticks anywhere and everywhere Just walk along under a tree and you will completely find as many sticks as you could want These are all white pine sticks, but break off some sticks from bushes break off maple Twigs break off any sticks and of all the different sizes they will break down a great medium term release fertilizer That will work for your garden adding that high carbon high nutritional Content to your soil then we've got spent hay all right This is really like faster when you talk about breaking down Straw actually would break down a little slower, but when we talk about feeding the soil Straw is nowhere near the nutritional content that hay has people will say if you put in hay you're putting in tons of Field seeds and everything we do have grass in here, but it's because we have transformed this field Into a food forest or to be food forest and this grass is just coming up from that It's not really sprouting any of its own seeds because it's too deep too thick we go down a ways till we even hit soil Hay is great nutrition. You've got grasses. You've got wildflowers. You've got clover all these things that are now Dead organic Rotting material in your garden and every time I keep repeating this every time it rains every time you know Well, yeah every anytime a storm, so that's rain You are getting more and more Nutrition leaching into your soil and so spent hay is great. It's old hay. It's bad It's no longer good for animals Or even fresh hay if you bought it that would work too for growing food Using a resource that grows such abundantly as grass Okay, so that was fertilizers three. Yeah rocks logs Gosh I'm forgetting rocks logs one two Mulch sticks and hay three four five so we are on number six and that is weeds all right I don't care if you mulch you will have small amounts of weeds Especially if you don't mulch you're gonna have a ton of weeds so grass is probably our biggest weed in a mulch garden We also have some English plantain but This stuff here. That's fertilizer. All right. You've got high nitrogen fertilizer grass as high as silica as well If you have like seed heads, that's nutrition there for the soil English plantain that's nutrition for us well Doesn't really taste good though So yeah weeds are a fertilizer so what we'll do is we'll take it and we got some young bean plants here And just put the weeds at the base of the plant as it decomposes as it breaks down We're feeding our plants, and that's the goal well Okay Feeding our soil which feeds the microbes and the worms and everything which then feed the plants feed your soil feed your plants All right, so weeds would be our number six Fertilizer that is for free number seven. I'll tell you we got all of it in here Number seven is right by that area Might recognize these especially if it's fall and that's leaves all right leaves Are a good fertilizer and I want you to think about this trees have roots They're reaching deep down into the soil and they are taking up nutrients that surface plants don't reach nutrients minerals everything and they are supercharging these elements Into you know supercharging it with the Sun into high in mineral content leaves and at the end of the year You know they drop all this fertilizer at our feet, and what do we usually do well? We take our leaf blowers, and we blow all these wonderful fertilizer into our neighbor's yard. We're onto our neighbor's driveway and Then they do the exact same thing it's back and forth until finally one of us Gets a bag fills up this bag with tons of fertilizer and puts it on the curbside to be taken away Or we throw it back in the woods for nature to have it like Use this stuff on your garden it will feed miraculously Honestly if the biggest problem with leaves And I will tell you this the biggest problem with leaves is they blow away really easily So if you put down leaves put something on top of it some sticks to hold them down a thin layer of hay To hold it down Honestly this stuff. I actually have a difficult time using it as mulch because it breaks down so quickly That I will lay it down in fall and by spring Practically have no more mulch left because the soil organisms ate it through winter and so this leaves break down remarkably quickly very good quality soil that you get afterwards and It's amazing stuff so leaves would be a highly recommended fertilizer, and that is number 7 all right number 7 All right, so I had to run inside to grab our next fertilizer, and that is kitchen scraps all right kitchen scraps are Good way of using what would normally be a waste material as a fertilizer all right? now you could do what's conventional and build yourself a fancy compost bin and Get rid of your kitchen scraps that way or you've got communal Communally community composting system you can get into that or you can do what I do and You know you may have checked out our other video already of why I no longer compost, and this is why Take our mulched area full of other fertilizer Pull it all back camera tilted there Lay down all of our kitchen scraps And cover it right camera keeps tilting. I'm sorry Laid down all of our kitchen scraps and covered it right back up So I do that. I don't really have problems with rats or vermin I get it if you're in the urban setting or in Suburbia you might all right if that is the only food source around for those creatures you might have some stuff digging around if you're only worried about Certain critters some sometimes you can do this if you cover it with mulch one that eliminates most all of the odor because it's well Aerated and the moisture and the mulch helps hold on to those chemicals that cause the or they have the odor But you can also put sticks logs or rocks on top of where you bury your compost Just to really kind of keep things from digging into it But kitchen scraps great fertilizer like everything else if it rots it feeds the soil when it feeds the soil It'll feed your garden All right, so for number nine. I'm gonna flip this camera around and show you what that is All right, so it is not news to many of you that lawns are about the ecological equivalent of a desert All right When you just have grass there's not much food for life You can change that if you have Variety in your lawn like clover bees. Oh my gosh bees love clover more than most anything else when clover comes out I don't see my honeybees go after any other flower except our cucumbers ironically, but anyway You can have wildflowers dandelion growing in your lawn that is wonderful But one way to turn lawn into something of value is when you mow it You can leave behind sections of and we mowed a while ago So this stuff's already starting to break down, but you can leave behind your lawn clippings, all right, if you bag them you can lay them out and Dry them out a little bit that would probably be best because when they're really fresh they can get extremely hot because of the breaking down process but grass clippings You know, okay, so we enter our garden We've got some cucumbers some squash and asparagus fern here. Here's a little strawberry, so we'll just take grass clippings and put it at the base of the strawberry and That functions as mulched hay Speaking of the honeybees and what they go after they like squashes as well as clover It looks like our tomato fell down in some wind. Okay, so Getting off topic grass clippings again, don't just bag it up and then mulch thick in your garden with grass clippings because That will let me turn the camera around here, okay, so Yeah, it's yeah, okay, so yeah don't mulch thick with your grass clippings Because that stuff gets really hot. It is fresh It is high in nitrogen and that stuff breaks down super quickly and you will see steam coming off But it also cakes together Really really well, and it is hot It can actually cake together so much they can disrupt the the flow of oxygen to the soil level So you want to make sure that when you lay it down? Ideally you dry it out first So honestly instead of bagging it if you wanted to blow it all into like what's called windrows On your lawn and then come through and collect it from there That would probably be best because that would allow it to dry out a little bit and then it would function as a good mulch for your garden And it would break down. Well, it breaks down really well It's in bite-sized pieces for all those worms and organisms and that'll feed your soil really well. And so that was number 9 no, yeah 9 So 10 and 11, let's get into that Okay, so number 10 and 11 the last two ways that we're talking about to fertilize your garden for free I'm not gonna show you because I don't have it on hand right now but number 10 fast release almost immediate fertilizer over the course of a couple weeks and a couple months is Manure. All right animal manure works really well All right Not everybody has access to it and it's said that you know Especially if you're medicating animals not to put that manure into your garden But you could compost that somewhere else that you're not putting on edible food crops because honestly If you don't deal with your waste somebody else will Okay, and so you're sending it off to a landfill or somewhere else and I don't think that's good That aside manure if if you have sheep or if you have horses or cows That stuff after it sits a little while works great on a garden you can put that stuff down in spring or in fall and Grow things in it that will grow massive. I mean plants love that stuff All right, it's high in nitrogen high in phosphorus potassium and all of the other minerals that plants need and so Don't really try to get focused on exactly what nutritional profile the manure has or what the plants need just lay it out let it sit and Generally things will balance out if not in the first year in a couple years So lay it out mix it with some other stuff if you want some other weeds Sticks fertilizer stuff like that and you'll have a really good fertilizer that will work for what you're doing That's number 10 number 11 the final one. All right, it's free It's P Alright, this may disgust some people. I have no problems if you cut out the video here But honestly guys, let's let's take a real look at this Urine is a wonderful fertilizer and I say that because It's everywhere in nature. It's everywhere with people. All right surprised if that's a shock to you But if you look at the chemical profile of urine It is very high in nitrogen the number one ingredients water that has nitrogen. It's got phosphorus It's got potassium and that's practically the fertilizers that you buy in the store in liquid form All right, they've done studies in Especially in sub-saharan Africa where they took corn and the farmers there they collected as a community Their urine from the community and they said at first this was really hard to get around like the stigma behind it But after you know the first week or so, they they started to warm up to it But ooh bad pun there. Anyway, yeah They they use this on the corn, all right, they use manure a Sorry urine on the corn And they found that the corn that received manure did better than no fertilizer and even did better than Industrial fertilizer now add too much urine and the plants started to not do as well And so you don't want to overdo it if you give them too much urine You can lead to a fit outbreaks and the plants might get stunted because the roots get burned with too much nitrogen but one time dose for a plant in a year or Dilute it with water for a couple times doses guys, especially like You can take a wee into a watering can and fill up the rest with water and then water your plants with it that adds Fertilizer to that water and this is a method The reason I would say specifically use this is it is immediate You can take a plant that and I don't care what garden you have You're always gonna have that one spot that doesn't do as well Are you gonna have those certain plants that don't take as well just because of the seed? Wasn't as good or something you're gonna have some plants that aren't doing as well if you take a Watering can and have urine in it or whatnot because you don't want to go out there and you know Just start going on the plant unless you're in a really rural area and nobody's around but no going like a dark bottle or like a Bucket or a can of some and when you add this to that plant you can see that plant rebound Again, don't overdo it, but give it some additional Human fertilizer and that plant can rebound now. This is free. It's produced all the time Throughout the year and we just take this Fertilizer and we flush it down the toilet And then if you really look into the sustainability of the existing Sewer infrastructure that we have that leads to problems down the way. All right, I'm not gonna get into that now But anyway, if you're interested in more of that read Joe Jenkins the human or handbook, he focuses a lot on that That aside guys, that is the number 11 free fertilizer that you have all of these reasons Oh and all these examples are the reason that I no longer buy Fertilizer myself and why you don't need to either From any garden from any level if you have sand or if you have clay You can just take organic matter of all these different types and of all these different breakdown speeds put it on top of your garden and That's going to break down. That's going to feed your soil in years time You will have that brought that black rich compost that you envy from all the photos online and from all the videos of people who have been doing this for years and Your plants will grow like never before Cover your soil feed your soil. You will have to weed less you will Practically never water. We just got a large rain. Everything's lush but just yesterday we hadn't had rain for about a week and Our lawn was starting to shrivel up, but our garden and everything that was mulched was fine Do it guys listen take my advice or don't if you don't feel like it, but anyway That's Frenchie Powell with permaculture Northeast coming to you guys with those ideas Try them out. Let me know in the comments what worked what didn't if you like this video like it subscribe to our channel for more good content like this and Comment to help get this video out share it with your friends share it on the Facebook pages that you are a part of Let's get this stuff out there. Let's save people money and create a more sustainable future. I love you guys I will catch you all around