Better than Miracle Gro: Make Fertilizer from Weeds 

I have always pulled my weeds by hand, usually dropping them wherever there's open space to let them decompose and naturally mulch lol. Love that I can say, "it's not lazy, it's organic mulching!" 😂👍

I used grass clippings from my yard to make a compost tea in a bucket in my shed. I poured it on Mama's okra garden. The plants grew to 7 feet tall! They produced so much okra, we had to give away gallon-size ziplock bags full of them every week all summer long.

Weed corpse juice to feed my garden?? Delicious 🥴

now, here it is a funny story. I was chatting with a neighbour the other day whose garden is pretty much what you will call the classic 'perfect' garden. Let's spray the potatoes against whatever with some chemical, but already showing me signs of blight. When talking about fertilizers he won't use cow manure because you know 'weeds' might be there, so of course chemical pellets all the way for him. I nod politely because in fact one can learn from anyone. In my garden on the other hand I learn a lot from observing weeds. They are amazingly resilient and prolific. So I started to grow my vegetables as if they were weeds and I am glad to say, it works 🙂

I made a lovely Comfrey feed this year, and even though the grasshoppers massacred my garden except for the zucchini, it did turn into a real witch's brew of fouls smelling ick and the zucchini love it! Thank you for your never-ending support and encouragement. You're a great teacher, Ben, and we are all the better for it! With all the turmoil going on in England (London) I'm so glad you have your beautiful garden to disappear into and in which to find solace.

The gas produced in the water bucket is mostly methane due to anaerobic bacteria conditions. It would be mostly carbon dioxide if it was aerated with a bubbler. With no air induction, a tight lid, and methane capture, this is basically a single batch biodigestor. The main difference between the end result (sludge vs tea) is time.

I've never used the double bucket idea but have chopped leaves of nettles/comfrey etc and layered those in a jar with sugar, diluting the resultant ooze about 20 to 1. Another one is to dry eggshells, place in jar and cover in vinegar - it fizzes quite a lot so don't overfill or screw a lid on till it has finished and that gives a nice calcium booster, again only a tiny splash to a watering can. Another one an old miner told me about was to take the horse dung I gave him, shove it in a coal sack [the old ones that were permeable] and stand that like a giant teabag in a container of water. I use the same idea if I'm making a large amount of weed tea as it makes it easy to strain the slimy goo left at the end. Oh, and an old gardener told me that if you want a plant specific fertiliser to use old leaves/trimmings [as with courgettes/tomatoes] and add those leaves to its own batch of fertiliser as the plant produces itself what it needs and wants. I grow dandelions as a crop anyway but the leaves of those are excellent for trace minerals including calcium. I was told that the upright leaves of the plant indicate it has brought the calcium up from deep with the ground, whereas the ones flatter to the soil are still doing that. No idea if its true but I've stuck with that for decades. I've always tried to live in harmony with my weeds because losing battles are rarely happy things to fight and it is so encouraging that you advocate much the same attitude - thank you.[ My carrots have been a greater disaster than my onions [from sets] this year btw. I could weep!]

I just opened it up after 6 weeks and gave my pepper, tomato, eggplant and potato plants a drink...! It smelled like horse manure....think they loved it..😊

Natural solutions are always much better when it comes to natural environments!! I recently started developing a slug attractant from paper pulp, leaves and malted Barley to keep the slugs away from plants! So far it works amazing!

I put my weeds and greens into a small horse trough and chop them with a weed eater. As an experiment , I put the chopped greens into a black plastic bag and left it in the sun. After several days I had the equivalent of fresh horse poop. I then aerobically composted it. Great stuff! Michael

Many years ago when I started my gardening "career", I became fascinated with the use of garden "teas". Back then, I was looking for gardening approaches that would "supercharge" my veggies. I brewed up a concoction that was based on compost, molasses and a couple of other ingredients and applied it to my raised beds for several years. My wife (a non-gardener) hated this smelly stuff and at one point asked me how I knew this stuff works. I tried to explain the concept to her but she never understood the concept and at one point, told me that she wasn't interested in why it works but does it improve the veggies in some way. Good question! I didn't know. I resolved to find the answer to her question. To do this, I sowed identical varieties of peppers and tomatoes in two different raised beds. I applied my compost tea to one of these beds and not the other. At the end of the season, I didn't notice any difference in the veggies produced in either bed. Admittedly, since I didn't precisely measure any of the veggies, there could have been small differences, but none of them looked "supercharged". Needless to say, I was disappointed. But I didn't give up because I believed in the concept. I resolved to test various other forms of garden teas in subsequent seasons. After 3 or 4 years of trying alternatives, I still didn't get the supercharging that I hoped for. I gave up trying.

Yesss finally! Tell the people 🙌 start rocking the KNF and JADAM gardening everyone!!

Thank you Ben for all the great advice! As a busy gardener whose weeds tend to get ahead of me, I have a favorite method of dealing with them that is simple and easy to do. When I have a patch where the weeds are big enough and plenty enough to grab in handfulls, I wait till the surface is dry and the sun is hot, hopefully with a drying breeze. I pull each handful of weeds and slap them against my thigh or another handfull to dislodge the dirt, then I lay them back on the ground to serve as mulch, making sure that the leaves are in the dirt and the roots of each successive bunch are on top of the leaves and in the sun. This covers the leaves and exposes the roots, turning the mass into a nice bed of mulch. This works especially well when the majority of weeds are of the same age and kind, but it also works well enough with a variety. After the weeds have wilted sufficiently, I can add more mulch to fill in any bare areas. Nutrients go directly back into the soil, I don't need to spend time doing anything else with the weeds, and I can get by with a minimum of additional mulch.

I did that this year with weed tea and it sure is effective for growth. I had difficulty getting peppers and tomatoes to flower but the growth was phenomenal.

The NPK of compost tea is miniscule, you don't have to water it down

I don't know why I even bother looking at other videos, yours always seem to be the most articulate and enjoyable.Thank you and keep em coming.

I am in a very wet climate of Hawaii so putting any roots on the ground is a sure thing to have them grow again. One thing I sometimes do if I have collected a lot of weeds is to cut the roots off and then lay the weeds down into my bananas or papaya’s or other heavy feeder plants or on pathways where I need to cover with material so other seeds do not grow. I do throw the roots away to make sure they are not in an area to grow again.

I thrift large decorative pond pots (no holes... looks like a 20 liter flower pot but is for a small water feature) and I place them around my garden, leaving them open topped to fill with rain water and I throw my weeds and pruning into them. They house frogs, dragonfly nymphs and ...yes... mosquitos (which the frogs and dragonflies adore as a snack). I bought a USB rechargeable wireless misting sprayer that has a filtered intake at the end of it's hose. I just drop the filtered end of the hose into these random pots spread about my garden and give the locals a nice foliar spray. Occasionally, it rains well and the spill over feeds the nearby plants and, more importantly, the soil life. And I clean them out into the compost when they get too full.

Good morning Ben, it was so enjoyable to see what you do with those horrible weeds. It is the best way to go. My husband use to dig them up, bag them and then they were waiting to be collected by the garbage collectors. What a time consuming waste. Weeds are amazing how they can grow, nobody wants them but they are always there coming from nowhere??!! I love the tea section, perfect instead of spending a fortune on "organic" fertilisers. Most enjoyable video, how to make use of unwanted garden invaders. Have a special day, kind regards.

I made comfrey tea and nettle tea this year when I found out about this! It’s so great to make fertilizer for free😊. And now I know I can use other weeds as well! This was really insightful.

Thank you for bringing my sanity back. We live in New Zealand so some of the weeds we have are different to yours but I removed weeds and left them to wither on the top of the soil and the damn things were looking as healthy as over a week later just lying there staring up at me smirking. I now know where I was going wrong.

YES!!!! Glad to see this technique being publicised. Nice additions for the chop n drops.

I’m making comfrey and stinging nettle liquid fertilizer for over 40 years. When it starts to stink I sprinkle some rock phosphate over it and the stink is gone.

Thank you for the ongoing encouragement. I seem to be in need of it this year,so challenging. Thank you also for the unending love you produce for all your viewers!

made a five gallon bucket earlier this spring, works great and lasts a long time I'm still using the same batch months later. probably just gonna mix in the last of it with my lawn.

Good to know that you can use alkanet as a replacement for comfrey. I have plenty of the former but none of the latter!

Hey Ben. Hows life going on Brother. . This is from Bangalore, India... A thanks and a salute. . You are indeed someone with whom I should have been through my life gardening. . Just a quick Tip...... Weed Tea Wonder. . Soak in hot water all those kitchen scraps and those garden weeds that will decompose into a large container. . Keep adding sugar or jaggery or rotten fruities that helps to add lot of glucose, sucrose and fructose to the mixture at the start. . Then connect a air pipe from an aquarium motor to pump oxygen in it. . Keep doing it for a month, with twice a day 1 hour oxygen pump on to keep feeding the rotting mixture with some active air borne microbes. . In a month or so, you will get a highly earthy smelling liquid/plant decomposed tea that 1: 20 part of clean water can be sprayed on veggies in your garden. . I bet, your green veggies will tripe in size if you spray that diluted solution twice a day. . Your tomatoes, Potatoes, green peas and all small plant seedy veggies will have thick leaves and high resistance to insects and fungus. . And. .... Always in your garden keep a mixture of sweet honey/sweet cane juice/sweet sugar/sweet jaggery/sweet apple juice/sweet pineapple juice/sweet sugar beet juice diluted in water somewhere where ants are not there. . That will help attract lots of bees 🐝and pollination friendly insects which helps improve your yield by few folds. . Try it Brother. 😊😊😊

I usually weed my gardens the day before I cut my grass. Pick the weeds throw (seedless) on the lawn and cut.

Don't forget that many weeds are both tasty and nutritious! How about an episode on collecting and preparing them?

What great idea I’ve just started putting my grass clippings in a drum with water it really smells after 2 weeks but the plants are loving it 🇳🇿🌱

Hi there Ben. Thx for another informative video. :-) Lots of times when I don’t plan on making a weed tea or adding my weeds to the mulch bin-put my teapot to work. This is great for the odd ball standing alone weed… Boil water in pot and when it’s a a rolling boil thoroughly saturate weed making sure to get plenty going down and he tap root. Cheap and organic way of ridding weeds and this is great for garden paths and sidewalks with those “hard to pull out” weeds.

Thanks for this. I use whey in my compost tea - there's no bad smell - I do a continuous brew method, just add more water, comfrey, and whey (small amounts of whey) as I go.

This is something that I do as well! Plus, I collect rain water and because most of my plants are in pots, I try to collect the run off as well. Then, I water my plants with the run off + compost teas :)

Thank you so much for your advice and generous sharing of your knowledge. I sometimes add prinary rock flour to take away the intense smell. Love from Germany

I've heard that if it smells bad it probably is. I recommend looking into aerated compost tea and keeping your weeds for composting or chop and drop. Beneficial bacteria needs oxygen to thrive and out compete bad bacteria which is mostly anaerobic. I like to dehydrate certain plants that are high in nutrients and adding that to my aerated compost teas. Feed and grow the Soil Food Web and it'll take care of itself and your garden!

Doing this same thing in 2 20-gallon plastic bins, they've been sitting in the back of my garden since June and this video made me remember they are there!

I'm going straight home to set this up this evening, thank you for the great tips.

Many of my weeds go through the donkeys first, but I'm going to try the comfrey bucket squish. Thanks!

I would advise against chop & drop if you don't know what plants you're doing that with, because you can spread insects & fungi that could harm your plants. Any plant material that is damaged (or when it rots under the plant) can introduce the same issue into the plant you are feeding. Also it may root & grow if it's too vigorous of a weed. Best to let them rot in a bucket of water, then dig a hole, pour the bucket in a hole, cover it with dirt, & plant there. Works best with plants in the same genus.

Thanks Ben for another cheery informative video ❤xx

Brilliant stuff Ben, fantastic way to get something back from those pesky weeds.

I didn't expect you to use the word 'ripe' to describe the smell of the compost tea. That's a very nice word to use, almost flattering lol.

Great content as usual. Over the past year i've seen so many videos talking about using weeds for compost or tea but none of them went into as much details as yourself describing what type of weeds are best for what. I am limited on space and I don't think my neighbours would like the smell of the tea but the last option you presented might be something I can at least try as I get so many weeds!!

Thanks..,! I have one brewing..but will start a comfrey one...like the idea of double container..!

I’ve really enjoyed your informative video, Ben. Keep up the awesome work you’re doing. It helps so very many of us! cjk in the U.S.😊

I use pond water, my cows use it too...for everything. Cows are gross but the plants are happy.

I just did this yesterday, totally winging it. Stacking functions for the win!

I love your enthusiasm and encouragement. This channel is the best. Thank you

Brilliant idea. I am going to do this tomorrow. Good use for old buckets.

Looks like Ben has a wedding anniversary coming up in a couple days. Happy anniversary!

Been doing this since last year and will definitely try out the less pungent method for the vuchet closest to the house 😂

Ben, fantastic information my friend. I will be doing every aspect of this video in my garden. Thank you

I have a number of comfrey plants on my allotment and Once or twice when my potatoes are growing I chop the comfrey down and just lay it down in the bottom of the furrows. As I dig up the potatoes the soil covers the comfrey and in this way it gets incorporated into the soil for next years crop.

Ben! I love this video....so greeny and back to soil ( so useful )🎉🎉🎉❤❤❤🌼🌻🌱🌸💐🌹🍄💮🌺🕊️🕊️🕊️

My weed batch is going for pass 5 years!! I just top it up with new material,it will get better as it ages. U can add anything organic into it.

I dumped synthetics a long time ago. Miracle grow is the worse. Enjoyed .... always enjoy your channel. Today's show was very informative 👌 👍. Cheers from across the pond.

I strain the tea each time i want to dilute some with water, & before watering the garden. This helps to keep out seeds, etc

I use any weed to hand for weed tea. Leave 2-4 weeks until the weeds are black. Throw the black wet stuff onto the compost to kickstart or continue the heating process. Filter the weed tea into wine bottles. If you live near the sea, get some seaweed.

sir, I'm from sri lanka, I will give you a nice formula to try. to make 200 ltr fertilizer, add 10 kg very fresh cow dung,3kg brown un refined suger and 20 kg weed. mixed them in 200 ltr berrell. also you have to give aeration by useing air pump. after qne week your fertilizer will be ready.you can use it whithin one month.long live kind gentleman .

I literally thought this was Alton Brown at first glance!😂

I do the fertilizer tea with the “weeds” that have long tap roots that pull the nutrients up, and I sometimes just leave the “weeds” where they are, to do the job they’re trying to do. Since those so called weeds are packed with the nutrients we need, I figure they’re doing what they’re meant to do, and I can eat them later. 🤷‍♀️

I always use comfry tea ,I have a big blue water barrel with a tap on I fill it up with comfry and collect the dark brown liquid ,I don't add water to this one just the leaves and stalk. My other barrel is the same but I fill it with water and steep the comfry 😊 a little smelly on both accounts but pure goodness 😊

This is amazing 💜☮️Thank you so much! I will be doing something like this for sure, I look forward to playing with this concept in future gardening…. One idea, perhaps a sort of “cut down as you go” meaning to cut down the larger parts as you weed, keeping the cuttings bucket with you as you go, hopefully makes sense. Off subject but some stuff can also be used in making cordage, was going to rip out daylily but for cordage it has now earned it’s stay. Please take care and have good days 💜☮️🌸🌻Happy gardening

I heard some years ago that the best weeds to use in making "tea" are the fastest growing ones, nettles, dandelions and the like because they grow so fast that have the most nutrients to give up to a "tea". Sounds good but I just do as you first suggested, mix and match my weeds as I collect them. I have been making fertilizer "tea" for years and I also only use collected rain water. Thanks Ben. I will also give the dry method a whirl later this month.

I like the concentrate a lot better than the weed tea. One thing I will probably add though is wood char in the bottom so I can charge up my biochar rather than create fertilizer. Biochar makes a weak chemical bond with nutrients so that plants can get at the nutrient in the soil but water doesn't wash them away

The weed tea I've tested averaged a NPK of 3-7-4. A good general NPK value for plants is a ratio of 3-1-2, so the phosphate level of weed tea is on the high side and the nitrogen is low. Miracle Gro has a NPK of 24-8-16, and is by far a better ratio for plants.

Hi from Norway. Some science on the subject here: Nettles have a NPK in dried form of 2.0.5 so very low in nitrogen, if you «brew» the plant in water it will further dilute the NPK and if you then again dilute it 1-10 with water the «fertlizer» will be very weak. It is the same story with Comfrey it has a NPK in dried form of 1.8-0.5-5.3 so almost the same as nettles. The fact is that you can not make something stronger NPK wise than the biomass you started with. I agree that these greens brews are better than nothing, but they are definitely not strong fertilizers as said in the video. I like your videos but it would be great if you said in the start that the «facts» of the video are anecdotal, and that you have not made a nutrient test on the liquid to back up the claim of the video title. I myself do hot compost! But I still add a purly chemical Nitrogen (urea) as this is the only nutriend I seem to be lacking. (and I really do not know, because I have not tested my compost) Ps: As for the beneficial bacteria, a brew as described will be dominated by Lactic acid bacteria, who will convert the sugars of the greens into lactic acid and Co2. So a mono culture. But again, there is little science done on how lactic bacteria is beneficial in the garden. Best regards Per

There's nothing like free fertilize that works great!😃

What kind of nettles? The nettles I deal with in the midwest in the US are borderline invasive. I barely stay ahead of them. Since they are perennial and spread by both rhizomes and seed, they would not be a good option to chop and drop, correct? I do chop and drop in areas that don't have the nettles (or Canadian Thistle). Thanks. I love your videos.

Aha! Horse tail I’ve finally got a use for you! 💪 and I’ll try not to let the bucket blow off …

Thanks for advices. Great video.

Nice one Ben,there really is no need to buy synthetic fertilisers, everything is provided for us through nature 👍

Hello I'm from Portugal, move about 4 months ago to a country house with ~3k square meters. It has a lot of trees (peach, apple, cherry, olive...) but also a lot of weeds because no one take care. Me and my wife want to take care of the trees and make a vegetable garden (already start with potato, sweet potato, lettuce). However we lived entire life in the city (until now) so we are learning and our knowledge is growing little steps at time. In our search see some people that talk about use 'weed tea' as a insecticide/fungicide/pesticide but don't explain much about it, someone here has experience with that? We dont want to use commercial/health hazard things, prefer something more biologic instead...and hey have a lot of weeds at hand 😂

After living in my home for 5 years straight. I have plucked and used them as compost for my various gardens. Now, i RARELY get weeds except in very select places that share fences. Those weeds tend to move underground anyways. The rest of the yard stays clear unless a dandelion drops in lol. It's crazy to think back and just how lush with weeds it was, now i have a section cordoned off specifically for biodiversity

Great tips on making good use of weeds, thank you.

Looks like you’re hoeing around a tulip poplar @2:00, state tree of Kentucky, USA.

Be aware the smell is worse than you think and I've worked on farms, also uncovered it will be a fly breeding ground

Thanks Ben!! Instead of comfrey or alkanet, which I don't have in my allotment, would borage have a similar effect?

Great video! I subscribed

Thank you! Always great content and uplifting 👏 🎉

Hello, I made a weed fertilizer tea with Borage plants and tomatoes leaves 5 weeks ago. It is very 😷 but looking good. I was wondering if it is a good combination for all purposes fertilizer on veggs and flowers plants too.

This is all great information and generally all very correct. One misunderstanding from Korean natural farming techniques like this one, is that the brew times are far too long. The smells that come from this are signs of anaerobic decomposition which is completely the opposite of what your soil wants. You should stick to 12 - max 15 - hours of brewing these while there is still dissolved oxygen in the water. Healthy soil systems are obligate aerobe systems. This means that they thrive in conditions of high oxygen and their microbial environments do too. Brewing an anaerobic tea puts anaerobic bacteria into your soils and proliferates pathogens ( plant sicknesses and pests ) Like seeing fungus gnats, is one sign of anaerobic conditions.

Thank you! I will try making that "weed tea" some time! :)

This is a great way to garden, making use of what we have. Thank you

I make a weed tea and then add it to barrels of wood chip, every 2 years i get 200 litres of great potting mix

I think the definition of a weed is a native plant growing exactly where nature intended it to or its genetics wouldnt be suited for that spot. We mean growing where we would prefer some other plant. Thats all fine and good but we have to at least recognize that we are overriding nature. I love your idea. I will admit that I have been a bit lazy utilizing mine. Thank you for sharing your knowledge

They are all over my place - I try to chop and drop and I like the way U do it - lots of mossies are biting me at present and so hot - so loads of weeeeds! Canning tomatoes for sauce at present need 10 crates for this! Can U nimix them with comfrey Ben? I like to chop comfrey with gloves and then use my hands to tear up - as they love the comfrey.

What brand are those long gloves you use?! They look fantastic Love the info you gave as well!

Great idea! Thank you.

I always have weeds in the garden, this is a great way to reuse them. With the tea and concentrate, could you also include some kitchen scraps, such as banana peels, and/or other garden waste such as greens from onions or pruned tomato stems/leaves?

its like its impossible to get rid of the "weed seed bank" but yeah its good to hoe them while they are small. It's crazy the variety of things that can still emerge from any ground

I forgot about this. I bucket method is best. Leave, stir when you remember. Simply use the water residue by about a cup a plant as needed. Rain water replenish the soluble part as needed over a season.

Such a nettle tea is an old timy thing against pests and fungi infection if I remember my great grandfather right.

What a great video. You have a new follower. I tell you what I do with the weeds in my garden. I make tea with them. They are very good for you. I use dandelion flowers, roots and leaves for salad. I use horsetail for tea, and stinging nettles. Also i can't remember the name of the plant that sticks to you. I make tea with that too!!😊

I'd recommend some kind of a fine filter before you put compost tea into your watering can, the little bits can clog the pour head. I use cheesecloth. (Don't make cheese with it after.)

Muriatic acid speeds things up greatly just remember to stabilize your ph when your done digesting your otherwise composted materials. using other acids too like citric acid could help with chelating metals to make them more water soluble.

Wow, thank you so much!! This can also make weeding more fun! I appreciate your clear and concise explanation. New sub here! Thank you 🌻🐝🐞🌍

Love your video. You have a very soothing presence that eases the learning process. Beware of the CO 2 police in your area. I understand they can be quite the problem.

When people say money doesn’t grow on trees makes no sense to me. I think that rennet like the one found in Pizza Hut pizza comes from ones like ground ivy, fig leaf, and thistle if theirs isn’t synthetic or part so yet. So not just weeds but lively plant waste from pruning as well, and all the different parts of plants that come out of preparing and harvesting them should be used. I think people have a difficult time maintaining doing practices like this because they have other things they need to be doing to maintain their residences but I’ve been meaning to try both for making cheese and fertilizer at some point. A lot of trees that are planted in my City are some pretty nice trees that take up quite a bit of soil nutrient, and if only someone would be so kind as to surround them with fertilizer instead of make fun of things they don’t like about some of these plants which make them and the soil sick.

OMG!!! I could kick myself. I was trying to make compost and forgot to poke holes into the bucket. As you guessed it, I had a very rich TEA. I thought the sludge was useless and poured it out. I could have used it in my garden. I think my peppers would have loved it. They are growing slow this year and all that potassium and nitrogen goodness would have been good for them. Oh well, live and learn. Thanks for the information I will keep it in mind.