Homemade fertilizer
 

I live in an area were it is hard to get good quality orchid fertilizer locally. Is there anything that i can use to supplement the things my orchids need. Like how you can plant a banana peel under a rose bush for the potassium. Obviously i would never plant a banana peel under an orchid for fear of rotting but you get the idea. My main concerns are phals and dendrobiums.:scratchhead:

Eggshell and animal bones (chicken or fish) are rich in Calcium and Potassium. Simply dry them and crush then you can sprinkle a few of the powder to orchid roots.

My grandmother told me that water from rinsing rice or meat is good for plants. I have been using rice water for a while and I can say my chids are healthier and greener. Some say it contains vitamin B-1.

That's all I can write on top of my head.

Has anyone tried to use bat guano I have a huge supply of that.

there is some concoction of epsom salts coca cola and beer that supposedly works....epsom salts is good for greening up but i dont know about the coke and beer...maybe you mix the salts and coke and drink the beer???

there must be someone out there that has successfully used common houseplant fertilizers, diluted appropriately for orchids, however.
I am not so sure what the concern about urea based fertilizer is since at least 1 very prominent orchid fertilizer admits to using some.
Nick

I have a hydroponic Epsom salt all purpose fertilizer. Should i try that? The coca cola and bear actually make sense. They would both have the phosphoric acid that orchids need, the coke would add extra carbon dioxide and beer isn't actually carbonated it is nitrated (depending on brand) so some bear bubbles are nitrogen not carbon dioxide.

Urea is a type of nitrogen but i don't know why some think it is bad for orchids. I think it is just a myth that has woven into orchid society through years of personal preferences getting mixed with actually orchid culture fact.

I may be wrong though so don't be to mean when correcting me.

Any fertilizer with micronutrients would be better than anything you throw together. At least the fertilizer container will give you the proportions and you have no guess work involved.

Wouldn't that be better than the guesstimate on your part?

Brooke

I definitely wouldn't test this on a favorite orchid or anything like that. I am going to test it on a cheap wal-mart phal or something like that.

Epsom salts is good for magnesium, vitamin b complex (capsule form) is good for rooting, and molasses is very high in potassium and carbohydrates....and it has a decent amount of magnesium, iron, and calcium. I use all three of these regularly, in conjunction with my fertilizers. Winter time is the best time t0o use the molasses....if you get it from a health food store, it has up to 500mg of potassium per serving.

Okay so this is what I am going to make my homemade orchid fertilizer out of.


Guano- Which I will dry and grind. It will be used for it's phosphoric acid and it's multiple forms of nitrogen, none of which are of an urea form.

Bones and Eggs- Which I will dry and grind. They will be used for there calcium and Potassium.

Epsom Salt- For it's trace minerals.

Potash- Which is in the water soluble part of wood ashes. It is used for it's trace minerals and potassium.

Molasses- For trace minerals and potassium.

Rice water- Which will be used to put the fertilizer into a liquid form.

I will play around with the combination and I will share all my results with you but won't give away all my secrets. I will keep the end recipe to myself because I intend to sell it. This fertilizer is completely organic and urea free to those who it may concern so I think it will be widely appealing.

:) Thank you all so much for the help!!!:)

How are you going to know your N-P-K, to write on the label? There is no way to tell what percentage of what nutrients your final mixture will have.....good luck with that!

Well I won't exactly but I will document the results enough for people to feel comfortable to use it.

I know you guys think i am crazy lol but i think it is worth a shot the formula that i am working on is lacking nothing that industrial formals have.

I use home recipes a lot for my garden plants but for orchids I prefer to stick to the normal fertilizers. For one, I want to be able to control exactly what my plants get. And organic sources (like the bone, eggs and guano) of fertilizer are not immediately available to the plant. They must be broken down by micoorganisms first. I don't know if bark based mediums have as much micro organism activity as normal soil, so it's possible it takes much longer for them to be broken down and available to the plant. And seeing how airy the medium is, at every watering the fertilizer will be washed out before it has become of use to the plant. I may be wrong, since my courses on this sort of stuff were 4 years ago, but I'll still stick with my trusty orchid fert!
Good luck in your fertilizer business though.

Thanks lol.

Nobody here is mean. :biggrin: Nitrogen as urea requires a step or conversion to available nitrogen (into a from a plant can use). Since we grow our orchids in free draining media, any nitrogen needs to be available. If the fertilizer were to persist in soil, urea would eventually be converted by soil microbes - making it available. But since most of our orchid fertilzer just runs through the media and does not persist in "soil", there is minimal conversion from urea to usable N.

Oh, and some beers (stouts mostly) are bottled or canned with NO2, but most are carbonated. All "real" or natural beers are just bottle conditioned and are carbonated by continued yeast metabolism. I'm no orchid expert - but I know my beer! :blushing:

Lol I knew someone would originally correct and thank you. Also I worded it poorly when I was talking about the beer I should have stated it as you stated it.

I figured out why rice water is good for orchids. Rice is very high in potassium about 880mg per cup. The temperature at which water boils is more than enough for the bonds that holds the K in the carbs of the rice grains.

:lol: I'm glad you took that as it was meant - kind of in jest. You're going to fit in great around here. ;) It sounds like you have lots to add to the mix. Welcome, and keep the interesting threads coming. Oh, and don't forget to post pics. :photo:

No, BlakeeBoo, you are not wrong. In Singapore where I am, there is a gardening book put forth by one of our Botanic Garden pioneers called Eric Holttum. He advocates using urine, a very valuable fertiliser which is full of urea, diluted 37 times and left to rot for a day. They throw this on all the orchids which bloom well and grow well with the treatment. Of course it stinks then, but you can always hose it off after the plant has drunk in the urea. When very dilute, there is no smell.

Hope this doesn't sound gross for those not used to the idea. It isn't done too often nowadays, though.

The magazine put forth by our local Orchid Society once ran an article by a medical doctor whose hobby was growing orchids. It was on "beering" his orchids. He takes everyone's leftover beer after a party and dilutes it, maybe ten times. And then splashes this over his orchids. I remember the phrase, "Orchids love beer!" he stated.

So I tried it, but only once. Orchids are so slow growing I didn't detect any positive response! :) What I'm saying is go ahead and try it if you want.

The difference between a delicate orchid trying to survive and those hardy ones in our gardens that grow like weeds and are near indestructable is that the delicate hothouse orchid might die with the beer on them. :scratchhead:

Well, that's my two cents worth.

OK, besides the grossness:shock: I have a few comments. :rofl:

First, urine does contain urea, but not only urea. Animals excrete different compounds depending on the length and structure of the "loop of Henley", a feature of the kidneys. We have them, birds have them, cats and dogs have them. But our excretions are much different than that of birds and cats. Concentrations of N, urea, and uric acid differ greatly from genus to genus, and person to person (and day to day, hour to hour). Bottom line, human urine has nitrogen in many forms - but at an unknown concentration that can vary greatly.

Second, You say it sits and "rots" for a day. How much urea is being converted into available nitrogen in that time frame? I don't see how we could tell.

So, he starts with a questionable solution of unknown concentration then dilutes, it 37 times? Why not 38 or 36? It seems like a very specific yet arbitrary number.

PLEASE don't take this the wrong way! I'm not trying to be a smarty-pants. I'm just a skeptic. Forgive me!:shock:

Using urea naturally!
 

Yes, Royal. I don't think you are trying to be smarty pants but appreciate what you said. All that has to be considered too.

Just be reminded we are dealing with hardy plants in the early days of the Singapore Botanic Gardens, and in the 90-degree-F heat, the compounds in the urine will rot. I have often wondered about the 37 times myself, put forth in the book "Gardening in the Lowlands of Malaya" - a very old book. It is about as scientific as letting leaves rot and putting this under the orchids (vandas, spathoglottis and arachnis, mostly) for compost. Just empirical fact. In those days, hardly anyone comes out of University to take on a horticultural job.

Holttum goes on to create the compost with urine too. One layer leaves, splash with urine, add more veggie material, splash with urine, add burnt wood ash. He's long dead so we cannot ask him. But the topic at hand is what fertiliser can you use without buying the stuff but make it yourself. So we go back to pioneer days.

Incidentally, my Filipina maid tried using urine on the orchids diluted as I suggested and the plants perked up and bloomed, dendrobiums mostly, so there must be something good and right in the recipe!

Be cautioned that we have hardy orchids. I don't want somebody's precious phalaenopses dying on account of taking up my ideas.

For phalaenopses, I have learned to use diluted Gaviota 63 to make leaves. This is a foliar feeder so I squirt the back of the leaves. I get this off the crown for fear of crown rot. When the plant looks healthily growing, I switch to Gaviota 67. Again at the back of the leaves. This is higher in potassium so it stimulates spikes. The spikes appear in the rainy season when the temperature is much cooler.

Somehow, there isn't any other fertiliser here to equal Gaviota so I am wondering what do you all use on your orchids. Or should this be another thread?

For organic feeding, there are brown pasty liquids derived from animal blood that we dilute and water the roots. Dendrobiums seem to go crazy with delight in this medium and throw out multi-spikes.

This is the exception I spoke of in my earlier post. If an orchid is grown in soil or compost, the urea persists and has time to make that "step" and convert to available N. A Phal or any epiphyte grown in free-draining media or on a mount will only be able to use available N because the fertilizer doesn't persist as long.

I do know one reason why your orchids look great -- YOU LIVE IN SINGAPORE!!! :biggrin:

Thank you all for your input.

This brings up a question I've been wondering about. When you say fertilizer derived from Urea, is this the same as NO2 or is it Nitrate? I may have my terms wrong but I'm coming from a pond background where the fish poop is changed by bacteria to first Nitrite, Nitrite 2 and then Nitrate which plants then use. Is the desired result to have Nitrate available to the orchids?

There are some Australians mainly who are doing semi-hydroponic growing of food crops and fish (which they call aquaponics) using the same theories that ponders use to keep ornamental fish and plants in balance. Here's a link to their site.

I know from experience that many plants grow exceedingly well bare root in pond water, processing the Nitrates produced by bacteria from the fish waste into strong growth. I am interested in incorporating this into my new fascination with orchids and keep looking to see if others have done the same. At the least, using the water from a cycled pond or aquarium should be beneficial in watering the orchids.

What Are You All Growing?
 

I read that and had a guilty giggle.
Royal, my orchids are struggling to survive. Maybe it is my personality what is so perverse -- the orchids that grow well here are what I am indifferent to. I ignore oncidiums and neglect my dendrobiums. They bloom now and then despite my inattention.

But the orchids I grieve over are my phalaenopses and cattleyas (and all their intergeneric crosses). Let's face it, these are actually subtropical or temperate plants. I cannot get cool nights where I live - min night temp 25 C. Some nights fall to 23 C and I get excited thinking, "My orchids must be happy tonight!"

Sure enough, they throw out spikes soon, and then the hot dry days come, and my house has the wrong microclimate for them, and the stalks are short and the buds are few. Whites seem to do better. And any of the dark pinks, probably due to doritis parentage, since doritis (esmeralda?) can withstand more sun and heat.

Then all those evil weevils come to eat them up. I have snails and red mite. I refuse to use insecticide but try tea-tree oil without knowing the concentrations to use.

There is a supplier of phalaenopses here and going to their farm is like reaching orchid heaven! But the "farm" is a very large room, airconditioned, and with huge fans blowing air sideways into the room. Must cost the earth to upkeep them, so they are sold to us at higher prices. They buy compots and then grow them in separate pots until they bloom.

Dendrobes should do well, if you give them constant love and affection which was what my (late) father-in-law did with his orchids. And the commercial dendrobium growers (run by my husband's girl cousin and her husband) have acres under netting and overhead mist sprayers that come on four times a day!

They are all from three clones. Hardy. Good substance, good arrangement, etc everything a good orchid should be. And there are only three plain colours -- which they sell as Multico White, Multico Red and Multico Yellow. So many of them so that I find them deadly dull. Princess Diana ordered Multico White from their farm for her wedding bouquet. Ho-hum...

The farm is sold off to a friend now, so I don't have access to it. Or rather, what incentive have I to go there and not be recognised and welcomed?

The best orchids I have seen are grown by a girl with terminal cancer. She spent all her last days with them, watering, fertilising, spraying on bug killers. They were so fat and green and perfect without holes or a single flower out of place.

There are a lot of orchids that I miss seeing around here because they are passe. Long time ago since I saw species, and early crosses. No Vanda coerulea, Arachnis hookeriana, scented arachnis flos-aeris and the magnificent grammatophyllum speciosum - the tiger orchid. Lots of leaves and takes ages to flower. These can never be commercially grown and so are of no use to the modern money-minded orchid growers. Very sad.

Hence I love this topic -- trying to grow orchids without commercial fertiliser. BlakeeBoo, if you ever succeed, sell me some. The media I use is charcoal and brick but I stick some cubes of asplenium nidus root into the pot. Where did I get these? I have a humongous bird's nest fern growing in my garden and the roots are literally there for the picking. This can absorb whatever urea there is to release the nitrogen.

Okay, you all tell me about your orchids. What are you growing?

Fish ponds or soil, the nitrogen degradation process is the same. I found as interesting website about the different forms.
Nitrogen in the soil

Urea is degraded into ammonium then to nitrites then too nitrates. The speed of the process depends on the amount of the correct bacteria that are found in the soil/medium. Ammonium can be absorbed by plants.

In France there is a very popular (to the point that most gardeners worship it) homemade fertilizer for garden plants mainly, since it is really rich. Ever heard of nettle 'tea'? It's high in nitrogen and packed with minerals and trace elements. We ferment a kilo of leaves in 10L of rain water, put it in a shady corner of the garden, and let it rot a few weeks (stinks like sh*t!). Then it is filtered. For fertilizing a 5% dilution is used, and at higher concentrations (10-15%) it is a very good natural insecticide to spray on plants. When I water my tomato plants with it, they grow like crazy, and are luciously healthy. I wonder if the orchids would get the same 'high'? I'm thinking of trying a 2-3% dilution on my cymbidium next growing season.

We also make a 'tea' by boiling horsetails(?- Equisetum in latin) in water. Once cool we spray it on plants to cure rot and fungus. It worked so well when my impatiens plants had botrytis.

Right now I only grow Phalaenopsis and Dendrobium, but I just ordered a flask of 1084 Brassia caudata. I am looking to grow my collection.

my question is about urea and urine is would any "drugs" such as hormones or prescription medication be in the urine and have negative effects on the plants?

The body absorbs (or should anyway) the medication the remnants if any would me in the parts per million or billion ratios.

P.S. I have O.C.D. so I will not be touching human urine.
P.S.S. Lol

i have read somewhere or seen on the news that there are traces of medication found in tap water from urine so im not completely convinced... and wear two sets of gloves!!!! :)

At this point in time we can test for so much I wouldn't worry about it unless you are using some urine from someone that just over dossed or something ridiculous like that.

LOL i can see it now... stealing urine not for drug testing but for orchids.

Over the years I've used orchid fertilizer, diluted regular plant fertilizer, time release fertilizer, and homemade compost (not at the same time, of course.) They've all worked ok for me, but despite my fears of exposing my orchids to rotting material, the homemade compost worked best. Some of my orchids will put up a spike and bloom immediately after a good shot of compost.

Camille and Aboutorchids, great use of natural materials! I've heard about nettle tea and other "teas" but never actually tried them. Compost tea or solid compost is also great. For anyone who's interested, the reason these work so well is because they have natural chemicals that most plants make or consume anyway. Adding the tea just gives the plants more, so they can grow better. I hadn't heard about the horsetail tea though. They must produce higher levels of natural fungicides and other defensive chemicals than other plants. Thanks for the tip!:biggrin:

A couple other points in this thread I noticed, not to sound like a know-it-all, as I'm anything but. Fertilizers derived from urea contain other chemicals besides the nitrogen plants need, and form more salt and mineral deposits than other forms of nitrogen. I think it was Violacea who mentioned the urine. That probably worked because the excess mineral deposits were flushed out during the rainy season. And as was already mentioned, the actual make-up of urine varies widely.

Also, there are ways to determine the N-P-K ratio in your homemade mix Blakeeboo. Home test kits are available from garden supply resources and can give you an approximation of the ratios, or you can go to your local Extension office and ask them to do an analysis. There may be a fee for the second one, I'm not sure, but the people at the Extenion office can give you advice to improve it if necessary. :goodluck:

Personally, I'm trying worm poop once I run out of synthetic fertilizer, as I've seen "liquid worm poop" bottled in recycled soda bottles in stores and I have my own worm bin. First I need to expand my collection to use it up faster though!:evil:

Great site Camille, thank you. It does mean that the Nitrates that result from a healthy pond ecosystem are what plants need and what they can easily use. Good info on nettles as well, I haven't seen them here but now I will look for them.

Have you considered mail order. I know a wonderful website for homemade fertilizer but you have to order all the ingredients which come in large quantities and are not cheap. I do use crushed sea shell (Chicken scratch)in a lot of my potting mix to give plants an extra calcium source and have used egg shells. Plain old Dolomite Lime goes into the mix at 1 tbl spoon per gallon but it buffers the pH and adds a little magnesium. Wheather or not it supplies any nutrients is a little debateable.

Homemade fertilizer?this is great how you do this fertilizer?this is made from what material?can you tell,




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