Potato peelings as a fertilizer - for which plants are used. Feed recipes. Potato peels are a great fertilizer! Peeling potatoes as fertilizer

19.11.2019

When growing any plant, it is very important to choose the right and effective fertilizer. Different cultures need a variety of supplements. How to fertilize your own garden or garden? Is it possible to do without chemical fertilizers? What can be used for feeding at home, and what household waste do we most often throw away, unaware of their value for fertilizing the garden plot.

Potatoes and their waste

Each of us throws away tens of kilograms per year of potato peelings. Many dishes cannot be cooked without potatoes, and in our country this root crop is in great demand. However, not everyone knows about the value of potato waste.

Potato peels as a fertilizer can be used in the cultivation of most garden and horticultural crops. However, such a fertilizer must first be prepared.

Cooking fertilizer from potatoes

In order not to waste too much time and not worry about soil contamination, there is one simple recipe for preparing potato top dressing, which is suitable for absolutely all summer residents.

During cooking, do not throw away the potato skins, but dry them. Yes, dry it. Every time you have potato scraps, lay them out in a single layer on a baking sheet and put them in the oven.

After our potato skins have dried, put them in a rag bag. Before the summer season begins, the dried skins need to be crushed. This is not at all difficult to do, dry skins easily break and crumble.

How to fertilize

Finally, winter is over, the snow has melted, and the sprouted seedlings are already waiting for transplanting into warm soil. Before planting seedlings, the beds are prepared according to all the rules. The beds are cleared of last year's plants and dug up.

Now it's time to prepare our fertilizer. Dried and crushed cleanings are placed in a barrel and poured with boiling water. After cooling, the potato fertilizer is ready. The cleanings themselves can be placed in the holes when planting, and the water can be used to water the sprouts.

Benefit

Potato peels as a fertilizer perfectly nourish the soil, providing your seedlings with all the necessary minerals and trace elements for good growth and a rich harvest. In addition, cleaning this tuber is widely used by gardeners as a bait for crop pests.

This method eliminates the use of pesticides in the fight against garden pests. A special advantage of such catching pests is absolute safety and high efficiency.

What crops can potato waste be used for?

Experienced gardeners claim that after such feeding, currant berries ripen the size of a cherry, and the yield increases several times.

Currants can be fertilized by instilling steamed peelings next to the bushes or by watering with water from the decoction. Fresh cleanings can also be buried in the ground.

Also, potato waste is great as a fertilizer for cucumbers, pumpkins and cabbage. These crops can be fed directly when planting seedlings. In the hole, you need to put a little potato gruel, which turned out after brewing the crushed skins, sprinkle with earth and place the seedling.

Important! When fertilizing with potato peels, one rule must be followed for maximum efficiency. It is better to water the crops with a decoction without the admixture of cleanings, but it is better to drop the gruel next to the plants or lay it in the holes when planting.

Fertilizer for indoor flowers

If you are a lover indoor plants, potato peelings can also be successfully used for feeding them. Preparation of fertilizer occurs in a similar way. The gruel can be placed in the ground when transplanting flowers, and the decoction is very good for watering flowers.

It is noteworthy that potato skins for preparing fertilizer can also be prepared by freezing. For this cleaning, it is better to immediately grind in a meat grinder, put the resulting slurry in a bag and send it to the freezer. In the spring, when it's time to fertilize the soil in the country, you just need to get a bag of gruel and brew it with boiling water.

Growing vegetables, fruits and berries in your own garden is not only a favorite hobby for many, but also a way to get environmentally friendly and healthy food for your family. Healthy foods provide our body with the supply of essential vitamins and minerals, which has a beneficial effect on overall human health. Remember that no products bought at the market or in the supermarket can compare in value with the fruits from your own garden.

Prudent homeowners use food waste as fertilizer in the garden. In fact, this is not simple frugality, but concern for the health of the soil, replenishing its fertility. Think about how much vegetable waste, eggshells, discarded tea leaves and coffee grounds, without bringing any benefit, go to the landfill! But all this can be an excellent organic fertilizer for the garden.

What food waste is used as fertilizer in the garden

Probably the most popular food product is potatoes, they are part of many dishes and are very tasty and healthy food in their own right. And its skin, cut in a thin layer, removed after cooking, dried or frozen, can become a raw material for compost (like any other vegetable waste), top dressing for currants, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers (plants from the nightshade family should not be fed with potato peels, plants from this family are susceptible to the same diseases) and even a breeding ground for beneficial soil organisms that help plants absorb nutrients from the soil.

The peel is scalded with boiling water to get rid of late blight pathogens, after which, depending on the further purpose, they are poured with water for infusion - the resulting slurry is laid in the soil as a nutrient medium for microorganisms or buried in the ground without soaking. And also the skin of a potato can become a bait for catching Colorado potato beetles. It needs to be laid out in heaps in several places of the potato plantation and wait. When the beetles gather on the peel, collect them in an iron bucket, douse them with kerosene and set them on fire.

At our site, we boil potato peels, together with carrot and onion peels, for 15-20 minutes and water potted flowers and seedlings with this water. Put the boiled waste under the currant. Directly from above, without digging anywhere. A week later, there is not a trace of them left - all the earthworms are taken away.

A natural fertilizer rich in minerals can be prepared from banana peel and vine branches. Any plants will gratefully respond to such a fertilizer. The skins and twigs are poured with boiling water and infused for several days, the resulting infusion is watered over the plants after watering with plain water. They can also be dried and used to prepare soil for seedlings and indoor flowers, mulch (more).

What else is thrown out in the kitchen that is not edible for humans, but very useful for plants? Eggshell. In a year, a family of three eats so many eggs that 4-5 kg of eggshells are collected. It can be used as a drainage layer for flower pots, insist as a top dressing, can be crushed and applied to the soil. This fertilizer is rich in calcium and trace elements. But the soil should be not only nutritious. It should also be loose, moisture-permeable.

Tea and coffee have long been loved by many people. If I sleep tea leaves and coffee grounds do not throw away, but dry and save, a rather impressive supply of substrate can be accumulated to improve physical properties earth. If you mix tea brew or coffee grounds with clay, heavy soil, it will be easier for plants to deploy their root systems, the roots will receive required air, the water will be absorbed faster, which means it will water the plant faster and its excess will not remain in the soil. Also, these two kitchen wastes can be used as mulching material, this will help prevent excessive evaporation of moisture from the soil.

Here is another valuable video from Ivan Russky about using food waste to improve the soil:

When you buy vegetables, eggs, tea and coffee, you pay for peels, shells, tea leaves and grounds too, so why not use them? With such fertilizers, you can be sure of 100% naturalness and usefulness of the crop, and almost for free! If you are a beginner summer resident, feel free to use food waste as fertilizer in the garden - this is natural organic matter, and it will bring much more benefit in your dacha than in a city dump.

So-called organic farming is gaining more and more popularity. The essence of the method is to use the minimum amount of chemical fertilizers on the garden plot. Chemicals need to be replaced with something. Preference is given to natural organic matter. We do not hesitate to send food waste to the trash can. But if you spend a little time processing potato peels, then they can be used as fertilizer. With a minimum of effort, you will get excellent natural remedy for feeding.

What are the uses and benefits of peeling potatoes?

Any summer resident wants to consistently receive a good harvest from his garden plot, spending a minimum of money and effort on this. Therefore, instead of buying fertilizers in the store, all kinds of folk remedies. Chemical and organic fertilizers, in addition to high cost, have other disadvantages. On the soil in which you make them, not only agricultural crops, but also all kinds of weeds begin to grow well. If you do not exactly follow the dosage, an excess of chemicals gets from the soil into vegetables, berries and fruits, and from there into your body. As you can easily guess, there is nothing good in such an “overdose”. This will not benefit either your health or the soil.

Potato peelings, the benefits of which have been time-tested for the garden, are absolutely safe for humans and completely free fertilizer. Unlike chemicals, organic matter decomposes much faster, being processed by the bacteria contained in the soil. This means that the necessary trace elements will quickly reach their destination through the root system. " By-effect» fast decomposition - release of heat. If you fertilize in the spring, the soil warms up noticeably faster.

The structure of the soil is also improved. It becomes lighter, looser. This is especially important for peaty, clay, silty soils.

Everyone knows that potatoes are very useful. It contains many trace elements useful for humans - potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, calcium, iron, sodium. But the same substances are necessary for the proper growth and development of plants. The most common chemical fertilizers contain nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium.

Potato peelings contain many useful substances that are so necessary for the plant.

In addition, 10–25% (depending on the variety) of the mass of potatoes is starch, and 3–5% is glucose. It is these substances that plants store in seeds, bulbs or tubers. Starch and glucose are the main food for the developing embryo. Therefore, potato fertilizer will be useful for crops at all stages of development.

Another important point is the availability of potato peels. Potatoes in one form or another are present on the table of every family, regardless of financial situation, almost daily. Even if you remove the peel in a very thin layer, about a tenth of the mass of tubers will still go to waste. A more likely option is 15–20%. Now calculate how many cleanings you can accumulate by next summer, if you set yourself a similar goal from the beginning of autumn.

Video: potato peelings to help the gardener

Pest control

One more useful property Potatoes are great bait for pests. Slugs, the click beetle (its larvae are popularly known as the wireworm) and the Colorado potato beetle are especially fond of it.

You need to start setting traps as soon as the first shoots appear or seedlings are planted in the ground. So you are guaranteed to protect the future harvest.

The potato peel pest trap is very easy to make.

Making traps is easy. Dig into the ground glass jars, old unnecessary buckets and pots, cans or circumcised plastic bottles so that the edge of the container approximately coincides with the top edge of the pit. The container should be deep enough and without holes. Put potato peels on the bottom every evening. To enhance the effect, you can water them sweet water(a tablespoon of sugar per glass), syrup, or add a little old jam that no one will eat anymore. In the morning, you just have to go around the containers, collect the pests caught in them during the night and destroy them. Just do not throw the collected over the fence. After a few hours, the slugs and insects will return to your yard.

Another option for a trap is to bury a long piece of wire with cleanings strung on it in the ground. Leave one end sticking out of the ground or mark the place where the trap is buried. Once every 2-3 days, dig it out, collect the pests that have come across and change the bait to a fresh one.

How to prepare and use fertilizer?

Raw materials for the preparation of fertilizer must be collected all winter

Not suitable as a fertilizer for peeling boiled potatoes. Prolonged heat treatment destroys all useful trace elements.

Of course, if you just lay out fresh potato peelings in the beds, good harvest don't wait. They will start to rot very quickly, especially in summer, in the heat, spreading the appropriate "aroma". In addition, mice, rats and other rodents that live in the vicinity will come running to your site - for them this is a wonderful delicacy. And in general, landings “processed” in this way look very unaesthetic.

At the same time, fresh potato (like any vegetable) peelings can and should even be added to the compost heap.

Potato peels are a good addition to compost

Exist different variants fertilizers. But in any case, cleaning, before feeding, must be thoroughly washed and disinfected using boiling water, dry heat or cold to destroy bacteria and / or fungi present on them. Otherwise, you will only infect the soil and healthy plants.

To get the right, useful fertilizer, you need to act as follows:

Rinse cleaning in cool running water until visible traces of dirt disappear.
Wait for them to dry and lay them out in a single layer on newspapers or a thin cloth. If weather permits, dry outside in a well-ventilated area, out of direct sunlight and possible rain. When it's already cold, do it in an apartment on a battery or on a balcony. Complete drying takes 7-10 days outdoors and 2-3 weeks indoors. Exact term depends on the thickness of the peels. Those who wish to speed up the process can dry them in the oven. Arrange the cleaning on a baking sheet covered with baking paper, place inside and leave for 3-4 hours at a temperature not exceeding 100ºС, with the door loosely closed. The procedure will take even less time if it is carried out in a special electric dryer or microwave oven. The main thing is to choose the right mode. The finished fertilizer becomes noticeably lighter, the peels are translucent and break easily.
You can simply freeze cleaning. The disadvantage is that there is probably not enough space in the freezer to store them. Another most suitable place is a balcony. But as soon as a positive temperature is established on the street, the fertilizer will have to be used for its intended purpose. It is strongly not recommended to defrost cleanings and freeze them again.
If drying at home was carried out naturally, cleanings are stored on the balcony, in an unheated garage, shed, and so on, so that the cold destroys pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Arrange the future fertilizer dried in the oven in linen bags and keep in a dry, cool, well-ventilated place. Perfect option- pantry.
Grind dry cleanings in a meat grinder, blender or food processor to a powder. This ready-made fertilizer is the so-called flour. In addition, in this type of cleaning they take up much less space, they are easier to store and transport.
In spring and summer, use dry cleanings to prepare the infusion. Put them in a bucket or barrel, filling the container about a third, pour boiling water to the top and close tightly. Wait 3-4 days for a characteristic odor to appear. Without stirring the contents of the barrel, scoop a liter of infusion from the top, pour into a 10-liter bucket and add water (9 liters). Now mix thoroughly and water the plants.
The gruel remaining at the bottom of the container will also come in handy. It is dug into the ground under bushes and trees and added to the holes when planting seedlings.
Another option for preparing the infusion is to pour boiling water over the cleaning, wait until it cools down to a temperature of 35-40ºС, and strain.

Bury dried cleanings in the ground or prepare an infusion

What plants need to be fed?

For which plants is potato peel fertilizer useful and how to feed them so that the benefits are maximized?

Table: how to feed crops with potato peels?

Agriculture	Type of feeding
Cucumbers, pumpkin, cabbage, squash, zucchini, watermelons, melons.	When planting seedlings in the ground, a “porridge” is placed at the bottom of the hole from dried peelings filled with boiling water. It is sprinkled with a layer of earth of the same thickness, then another portion of "porridge" is needed. The last layer is soil again. Then a sprout is placed in the hole, and it is covered with earth.
Onion, garlic, turnip, radish, radish.	Watering with an infusion of dried potato peels every two weeks since the end of May. It is better not to water individual bulbs, but to pour the fertilizer into the furrows between the rows of plantings. The infusion must first be filtered so that the pieces do not fall into the garden. On the surface, they are absolutely useless, and besides, they attract pests. Remove the nozzle from the watering can - it clogs very quickly. Despite straining, the infusion is quite thick.
Raspberry.	Cleaning in the form of flour is applied to the root zone, then the soil is well loosened. An infusion of fresh cleanings is used for irrigation (about 5 liters per 1 p / m).
Strawberry.	Under each bush in the spring, flour is poured from cleanings. For small ones, one handful is enough, for those that are larger - two. In addition, dried scrapings will successfully replace mulch.
Currant.	White, and pink, and red currants love cleaning, but the effect of top dressing is especially noticeable on black. The berries will become noticeably sweeter and larger, reaching the size of sultana grapes or even cherries. Dried cleanings are buried at the roots to a depth of 15-20 cm, after slightly moistening with water so that they do not take moisture from the plant. The procedure is carried out in the spring, as soon as the soil has melted sufficiently. If you are satisfied with the condition of the plants, you can feed the bushes every two years. It is possible to feed the bushes in winter, if the soil around them is cleaned in the fall and covered with polyethylene. As fresh cleanings accumulate, shovel the snow, spread them on the ground and bury them again. Dig up the soil well in the spring. Watering with infusion of potato peels every 12–14 days is also effective.
Fruit trees.	Dried peelings are buried within a radius of 0.5–1 m from the trunk, depending on the size of the tree. Or sprinkle the resulting circle with “flour”, immediately after that loosening the soil well. The norm per tree is 0.7–1 kg.
Tomatoes (tomatoes), eggplant, nightshade, Bulgarian and hot peppers.	Feeding is not recommended. Since potatoes and these plants belong to the same nightshade family, they are affected by the same diseases. Even disinfection in the form of scalding with boiling water and drying at high temperature does not fully guarantee the destruction of bacteria and fungi that cause late blight, black scab and verticillium. In addition, these crops naturally contain the same micro- and macroelements as in potatoes. Therefore, fertilizer from cleanings will not have a noticeable effect on them.
Annual and perennial flowers and ornamental shrubs.	Watering with an infusion of dried potato peels. Under perennials add flour in spring and autumn.
Houseplants.	Watering with an infusion of dried potato peels. The procedure is carried out every 3-6 weeks, depending on the condition of the foliage. They can also be watered with cooled water, in which jacket potatoes were boiled. This top dressing stimulates the growth of greenery. Sometimes it is advised to bury fresh cleanings in flower pots, but from such a “fertilizer” it will soon go very bad smell, and midges will start in the apartment. An exception is saprophytic or epiphytic plants, for which decaying organic matter is vital for growth and development (orchids, dracaena, and so on). They can be distinguished by the presence of aerial roots and the ability to grow in water. In this case, you can not do without good drainage. Apply cleaning in very small quantities.

Preference is given to natural organic matter. We do not hesitate to send food waste to the trash can. But if you spend a little time processing potato peels, then they can be used as fertilizer. With a minimum of effort, you will get an excellent natural remedy for top dressing.

What are the uses and benefits of peeling potatoes?

Any summer resident wants to consistently receive a good harvest from his garden plot, spending a minimum of money and effort on this. Therefore, instead of buying fertilizers in the store, all kinds of folk remedies are used. Chemical and organic fertilizers, in addition to high cost, have other disadvantages. On the soil in which you make them, not only agricultural crops, but also all kinds of weeds begin to grow well. If you do not exactly follow the dosage, an excess of chemicals gets from the soil into vegetables, berries and fruits, and from there into your body. As you can easily guess, there is nothing good in such an “overdose”. This will not benefit either your health or the soil.

Potato peelings, the benefits of which have been time-tested for the garden, are absolutely safe for humans and completely free fertilizer. Unlike chemicals, organic matter decomposes much faster, being processed by the bacteria contained in the soil. This means that the necessary trace elements will quickly reach their destination through the root system. A "side effect" of rapid decomposition is the release of heat. If you fertilize in the spring, the soil warms up noticeably faster.

The structure of the soil is also improved. It becomes lighter, looser

This is especially important for peaty, clay, silty soils.

Potato peelings contain many useful substances that are so necessary for the plant.In addition, 10-25% (depending on the variety) of the mass of potatoes is starch, and 3-5% is glucose. It is these substances that plants store in seeds, bulbs or tubers. Starch and glucose are the main food for the developing embryo. Therefore, potato fertilizer will be useful for crops at all stages of development.

Another important point is the availability of potato peels. Potatoes in one form or another are present on the table of every family, regardless of financial situation, almost daily. Even if you remove the peel in a very thin layer, about a tenth of the mass of tubers will still go to waste. A more likely option is 15-20%. Now calculate how many cleanings you can accumulate by next summer, if you set yourself a similar goal from the beginning of autumn.

Video: potato peelings to help the gardener

Pest control

Another useful property of potatoes is a wonderful bait for pests. Slugs, the click beetle (its larvae are popularly known as the wireworm) and the Colorado potato beetle are especially fond of it.

You need to start setting traps as soon as the first shoots appear or seedlings are planted in the ground. So you are guaranteed to protect the future harvest.

Potato Peeling Pest Trap

done very simply

Making traps is easy. Dig into the ground glass jars, old unnecessary buckets and pots, cans or cut plastic bottles so that the edge of the container approximately coincides with the top edge of the hole. The container should be deep enough and without holes. Put potato peels on the bottom every evening. To enhance the effect, you can pour them with sweet water (a tablespoon of sugar per glass), syrup, or add a little old jam that no one will eat. In the morning, you just have to go around the containers, collect the pests caught in them during the night and destroy them. Just do not throw the collected over the fence. After a few hours, the slugs and insects will return to your yard.

Another trap option is to bury a long piece of wire with cleanings strung on it in the ground. Leave one end sticking out of the ground or mark the place where the trap is buried. Once every 2-3 days, dig it out, collect pests that have come across and change the bait to fresh.

How to prepare and use fertilizer?

Raw materials for the preparation of fertilizer must be collected all winter

Not suitable as a fertilizer for peeling boiled potatoes. Prolonged heat treatment destroys all useful trace elements.

Of course, if you just lay out fresh potato peelings in the beds, you won’t wait for a good harvest. They will start to rot very quickly, especially in summer, in the heat, spreading the appropriate "aroma". In addition, mice, rats and other rodents living in the vicinity will come running to your site - for them this is a wonderful delicacy. And in general, landings “processed” in this way look very unaesthetic.

At the same time, fresh potato (like any vegetable) peelings can and should even be added to the compost heap.

Potato peels are a good addition to compost

There are different fertilizer options. But in any case, cleaning, before feeding, must be thoroughly washed and disinfected using boiling water, dry heat or cold to destroy bacteria and / or fungi present on them. Otherwise, you will only infect the soil and healthy plants.

To get the right, useful fertilizer, you need to act as follows:

Rinse the cleaners in cool running water until visible traces of dirt disappear.

Wait for them to dry and lay them out in a single layer on newspapers or a thin cloth.If weather permits, dry outside in a well-ventilated area, out of direct sunlight and possible rain. When it's already cold, do it in an apartment on a battery or on a balcony. Complete drying takes 7-10 days outdoors and 2-3 weeks indoors. The exact time depends on the thickness of the peels.

Those who wish to speed up the process can dry them in the oven. Arrange the cleanings on a baking sheet covered with baking paper, place inside and leave for 3-4 hours at a temperature not exceeding 100ºС, with the door loosely closed. The procedure will take even less time if it is carried out in a special electric dryer or microwave oven. The main thing is to choose the right mode. The finished fertilizer becomes noticeably lighter, the peels are translucent and break easily.

You can simply freeze cleaning. The disadvantage is that there is probably not enough space in the freezer to store them. Another most suitable place is a balcony. But as soon as a positive temperature is established on the street, the fertilizer will have to be used for its intended purpose. It is strongly not recommended to defrost cleanings and freeze them again.

If drying at home was carried out naturally, cleanings are stored on the balcony, in an unheated garage, shed, and so on, so that the cold destroys pathogenic bacteria and fungi. Arrange the future fertilizer dried in the oven in linen bags and keep in a dry, cool, well-ventilated place. The ideal option is a pantry.

Grind dry cleanings in a meat grinder, blender or food processor to a powder. This ready-made fertilizer is the so-called flour. In addition, in this type of cleaning they take up much less space, they are easier to store and transport.

In spring and summer, use dry cleanings to prepare the infusion. Put them in a bucket or barrel, filling the container about a third, pour boiling water to the top and close tightly. Wait 3-4 days for a characteristic odor to appear. Without stirring the contents of the barrel, scoop a liter of infusion from the top, pour into a 10-liter bucket and add water (9 liters). Now mix thoroughly and water the plants.

The gruel remaining at the bottom of the container will also come in handy. It is dug into the ground under bushes and trees and added to the holes when planting seedlings.

Another option for preparing the infusion is to pour boiling water over the cleaning, wait until it cools to a temperature of 35-40ºС, and strain.

Bury dried cleanings in the ground or prepare an infusion

What plants need to be fed?

For which plants is potato peel fertilizer useful and how to feed them so that the benefits are maximized?

Table: how to feed agricultural

crops with potato peels?

Agriculture	Type of feeding
Cucumbers, pumpkin, cabbage, squash, zucchini, watermelons, melons	When planting seedlings in the ground, a “porridge” is placed at the bottom of the hole from dried peelings filled with boiling water. It is sprinkled with a layer of earth of the same thickness, then another portion of "porridge" is needed. The last layer is soil again. Then a sprout is placed in the hole, and it is covered with earth.
Onion, garlic, turnip, radish, radish	Watering with an infusion of dried potato peels every two weeks since the end of May. It is better not to water individual bulbs, but to pour the fertilizer into the furrows between the rows of plantings. The infusion must first be filtered so that the pieces do not fall into the garden. On the surface, they are absolutely useless, and besides, they attract pests. Remove the nozzle from the watering can - it clogs very quickly. Despite straining, the infusion is quite thick.
Raspberry	Cleaning in the form of flour is applied to the root zone, then the soil is well loosened. An infusion of fresh cleanings is used for irrigation (about 5 liters per 1 p / m).
Strawberry	Under each bush in the spring, flour is poured from cleanings. For small ones, one handful is enough, for those that are larger - two. In addition, dried scrapings will successfully replace mulch.
Currant	White, and pink, and red currants love cleaning, but the effect of top dressing is especially noticeable on black. The berries will become noticeably sweeter and larger, reaching the size of sultana grapes or even cherries. Dried cleanings are buried at the roots to a depth of 15-20 cm, after slightly moistening with water so that they do not take moisture from the plant. The procedure is carried out in the spring, as soon as the soil has melted sufficiently. If you are satisfied with the condition of the plants, you can feed the bushes every two years. It is possible to feed the bushes in winter, if the soil around them is cleaned in the fall and covered with polyethylene. As fresh cleanings accumulate, shovel the snow, spread them on the ground and bury them again. Dig up the soil well in the spring. Watering with infusion of potato peels every 12-14 days is also effective.

Each gardener seeks to use on his site not only effective, but also environmentally friendly top dressing. Potato peelings can be safely attributed to these. natural organic fertilizer will appeal not only to garden crops, but also to indoor plants.

Can it be used?

Potato peelings are a public raw material that does not require additional financial investments. Behind winter period so much material is harvested that it is enough for the entire garden season. The main thing is to learn how to store it correctly.

Advantages

Helps to increase the percentage of humus in the soil.
Improves soil structure, increases its air exchange.
Potato organics by the strength of the impact resembles complex mineral fertilizers.
Environmentally friendly fertilizer that is not capable of harming human health.
Organic top dressings enhance the growth of weeds, but this is not the case with cleanings.
Potato skins not only nourish the soil, but also help fight garden pests.
It is impossible to “overfeed” the land with such fertilizer, as is often the case with other types of top dressing.

disadvantages

To achieve the desired result, huge volumes of biomaterial are sometimes needed. It is very problematic to store it in an apartment.
It is impossible to take control of the concentration of nutrients.
Not suitable for all cultures.

The composition of the peel

Raw potato skins are easily processed by soil microorganisms, and therefore nutrients are delivered to plants faster. In this case, heat is released, which has a warming effect. This favorably affects the development of the root system of plants, improves the supply of nutrition.

Cleansing contains many useful substances: vitamins (mostly vitamin C) and starch, fats and glucose, macro- and microelements (a huge amount of potassium, phosphorus and magnesium, sodium and calcium, iron), mineral salts and several types of organic acids .

Such a rich composition of nutrients has a positive effect on all stages of growth and development of horticultural crops.

Benefits for plants

Potato peels are a fertilizer that has been tested by more than one generation of Russian gardeners.

They are harmless to garden plants and soil.
Unlike chemical complexes, they are absorbed by 100% and in the shortest possible time. Nutrients are immediately absorbed by the root system of garden crops.
Cleanings introduced in spring protect against unexpected frosts due to the release of a significant amount of heat during overheating.
The soil becomes looser and lighter. This is especially important on loams, aluminas, and heavily silted lands.
Improves seed germination during sowing. Thanks to glucose and starch, it delivers the necessary nutrition to the embryos.

Potatoes are eaten in all Russian families, and therefore it is not necessary to specially extract fertilizer. After all, raw materials usually just go to the trash can.

How to cook?

Potato peelings are harvested in advance and stored until spring.

Drying

The peel is thoroughly washed, allowed to drain and dried. You can simply lay out the cleaning on the windowsill (balcony) or use the oven. If the peel is dried in the open air, it is protected from sunlight and precipitation.

Dry in a natural way of cleaning within 10 days.

If you don’t feel like waiting, they are put into the oven, heated to 100 degrees. Leave the door ajar to speed up the drying process. Usually 4 hours is enough.

Freeze

The peel can not only be dried, but also frozen. However, this method of storage requires an additional freezer. With the onset of cold weather, waste is stored on the balcony.

Note. Potato peels should not be re-frozen. The use of boiled skins is prohibited, since all useful material the raw material has already been given to the water.

Cleaning in compost

Potato peel is a desirable biomaterial in any compost. It's all about its ability to accelerate the overheating of fresh organic matter.

But there is a problem - cleanings are often covered with fungus, which then, together with the compost, will spread throughout the garden.

Some gardeners carefully select raw materials, others prefer not to risk putting boiled skins into the compost.

How to use?

There are three main forms of application:

in the form of flour

To make flour from the peel, it is dried to a crisp and ground with any kitchen appliances. Store it in paper bags or cloth bags.

Fertilizer is valued for its versatility - it is suitable for almost all garden and domestic plants.

Important! You should not store potato flour for a long time - midges or harmful microbes will certainly start in it.

In the form of a porridge

To prepare a paste-like fertilizer, dry potato skins are taken, hot water and special container. Cleanings are poured with boiling water to protect the biomaterial from harmful bacteria, fungus, and small insects. After about 7 days, the peel will absorb water and swell. It remains to ceiling it, mix it and use it for its intended purpose.

In the form of an infusion

The peel in any form is poured with boiling water, left for a day. The resulting infusion is ready for use both in the garden and at home.

Important! You can not scatter potato peelings just on arable land - this way you can attract pests and rodents.

Top dressing and fertilizer

It is important not only to prepare potato peelings correctly, to bring them into one of the forms convenient for use, but also to be able to correctly apply them.

Cabbage and cucumbers, all types of currants, pumpkins, fruit trees and home flowers will like fertilizer based on cleanings.

Attention! Do not feed peppers, tomatoes, eggplants with peelings. These vegetables are susceptible to the same diseases as potatoes.

For the garden

When planting seedlings.

Young plants more than others need a full range of nutrients. The introduction of potato flour or gruel directly into the holes, grooves facilitates the process of adaptation of crops, contributes to their rapid growth, abundant fruiting.

For feeding a number of gourds (cucumbers, zucchini, watermelons, melons, pumpkins).

Cucumbers are especially fond of potato fertilizer. It is used when planting seeds in the ground or when planting seedlings in a greenhouse. Zucchini and pumpkins, melons and watermelons are recommended to be regularly watered with an infusion of potato peel to increase productivity.

For radishes, turnips, radishes, garlic and onions.

These plants will appreciate potato infusion more. You can use it as a fertilizer after May 20. The intervals between making the composition should not be less than 14 days.

For berries.

Potato skin as a top dressing is used to fertilize raspberries. More suitable flour or infusion. But for strawberry beds, powdered top dressing based on cleanings is preferable. Blackcurrant after making potato gruel gives invariably large berries.

For indoor plants

Potato peelings are widely used for feeding domestic plants. Due to lack of nutrition and lighting (especially in winter), the flowers become faded and begin to dry. Potato infusion perfectly reanimates them, fills them with strength, strengthens the immune system, and restores metabolism.

The frequency of application is once every 1-1.5 months.

Experienced flower growers do it easier: they cool the water after boiling unpeeled potatoes and water indoor flowers with them. Such feeding causes the rapid growth of foliage.

Particularly lazy owners simply bring raw potato peelings into the ground. But this method of feeding is less effective due to the increased risk of pathogenic microflora, fungus, and small midges. This type of fertilizer can only be used for epiphytic or saprophytic crops (these include dracaena, orchids). In this case, do not forget about drainage. Regular sawdust will do.

Pest Control

Potato peels are excellent bait for slugs. It is enough to scatter them in places of accumulation of pests and wait until they are going to feast on fragrant raw materials.

Similarly, you can destroy the Colorado potato beetle. This is especially true after digging potatoes. The pests remaining on the arable land experience hunger. And therefore, with pleasure, they flock to the bait in the form of cleanings.

Wireworm larvae are lured not only with a peel, but also with small tubers. The latter are cut into several pieces and deepened into the ground. After a couple of days, you can safely remove the bait, and with them the pest larvae.

Conclusion

Potato peels are an excellent fertilizer for vegetables, garden plants, and houseplants. This natural organic matter will not only give the crops all the valuable substances, improve the soil, but also get rid of pests.