good morning Welcome to our Homestead
and Welcome to our Greenhouse we're
going to be talking about kitchen scraps
we're going to be talking about the most
common ones everybody uses and how
effective they are in the garden we're
going to talk about some common methods
of how to use them in the garden let's
get going
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so hopefully all of us have these things
available to us and I think most of us
do even if you're not an avid Gardener
you're still going to have some scraps
in the kitchen that you can use in your
garden and using them in the garden is
extremely important for building soil
fertility and helping to feed the plants
in additionally if we are gardening
we're going to have scraps that we can
use from the plants that we're picking
to put right back in the garden so you
probably already guessed that the three
most common kitchen scraps everybody
tries to use in their Garden or
everybody hears about are coffee grounds
eggshells and banana peels and I have
some of these with me this morning and
we're going to talk about some Miss on
what some of these will do and some of
them won't do but yes over time all of
them are extremely beneficial for your
soil but it's the amount in which you're
able to put in your soil and the form in
which you're able to put it in your soil
that makes a difference but let's talk
about the most common one that everybody
always thinks about using in the garden
and that's the coffee grounds and using
them to acidify soil so if you're trying
to use those coffee grounds to acidify
the soil it's going to take an extremely
long period of time to do so why because
the grounds themselves are not that
acidic the pH of the coffee grounds
themselves are anywhere between 6.5 and
6.8 which is acidic but it's just below
neutral most of that acidity comes out
of the grounds when you make the cup of
coffee so utilizing those grounds on
your plants it's going to take a very
long period of Time for That soil to
acidify you're much better using sulfur
or this and that's a lemon lemons are
incredibly acidic especially the Rind of
the lemon so if you don't have any of
the juice left on the inside which more
than likely you're not you're going to
be using that on the inside most of us
just have the peels left those peels can
be around 4.5
in PH which is extremely acidic so
adding those to the soil is going to
help your blueberry plants out even more
much more than the coffee grounds and
when I talk about the methods of how to
use these things I'll talk about the
best method for this lemon too in
addition to its acidity citrus peels
contain a lot of magnesium calcium and
nitrogen but in addition to that it
contains a lot of sulfur which
contributes to that acidity let's talk
about one of the other very common ones
and that is eggshells so do eggshells
contain a lot of calcium absolutely is
calcium good for your garden and
necessary absolutely however getting
that calcium in the soil and
bioavailable for your garden takes an
extremely long time down here are some
eggshells that I had crushed up and put
in my compost pile over a year ago that
compost was added to the garden and as
you can see
it hasn't broken down that much even
over the last year
so if you want these eggshells to be
bioavailable quicker for your garden you
really need to completely dry them out
and crush them into a really fine powder
and that's going to give the microbes in
your soil a leg up on breaking them down
but if you're trying to add these
eggshells next to a tomato plant that
say has Blossom and rot which needs
calcium to cure it's just not going to
work it would work over time to help add
calcium to the soil but your Tomatoes
two years from now are going to benefit
that all right let's talk about the
ubiquitous banana peel banana peels are
known for potassium and that is very
true the peel actually contains 42
percent of the potassium for the entire
banana and if you've ever left these on
your counter you know how quickly they
break down into the soil so adding these
to the soil in any form actually is
going to add a decent amount of
potassium for your soil around your
plants apples everybody loves apples and
this is a very common kitchen scrap well
apples do contain a lot of nitrogen but
what a lot of people don't know is the
seeds contain a lot of phosphorus but if
you think about it
adding those to the soil adding those
seeds they're going to take an
incredibly long time to break down and
how many seeds do you get in an apple
you'd have to have a ton of apple seeds
to add the amount of phosphorus that you
would need to really heal and rejuvenate
your soil quickly or a plant that's sick
that needs phosphorus you just can't do
it with throwing an apple in the garden
and then of course there are greens this
is some Swiss chard leaves that weren't
the best to eat those are going to add a
lot of nitrogen into your garden as well
and these you can chop and drop and
that's what I want to talk about next is
methods for adding these to the Garden
so of course chop and drop is one of
them and it works really well with
Greenery
that Greenery does lay on the top of the
soil kind of creates a mulch but it also
does add a decent amount of nitrogen to
the area
but not the amount you're thinking of
dropping these right next to a plant is
not going to instantly green up the
other plant that's struggling so while I
do recommend chopping and dropping in
certain situations especially for that
mulching it's just not going to add that
much to the soil immediately like we all
need before I talk about those other
methods I do want to say also that
adding One Singular thing to solve a
problem is probably not going to do it
like with the example of adding
eggshells for calcium or just Greenery
for nitrogen there's probably other
things that the plants are lacking that
they need as well and just adding your
standard NPK that all these fertilizers
at the store have in them your nitrogen
phosphorus and potassium
it they're lacking so your plants need
Boron they need sodium they need
magnesium they need sulfur and these
other elements help your plant to
actually take up and convert other
nutrients like the mpk and they all work
in concert together so while adding
something like a nitrogen fertilizer
will green your plant up really quickly
it's only doing that it's not helping
with anything else so what can we do
well the other two methods are going to
be much more effective and the first one
is composting when you are composting
all those things together the microbes
in the soil the worms all of the
microbiology is helping to break all
this down together and mix it up into a
form that's not only bioavailable for
your plants but it's all mixed together
so everything is there that your plant
is going to need so I would say the
number one method to be able to add your
scraps to your garden is to come post
them first now we know this takes a long
period of time but it's highly
beneficial and there are quick
composting methods out there that you
can try if you want so let me show you
another pretty solid way to use these
kitchen scraps and that is to take them
into your garden or in your greenhouse
and kind of dig this trench by where you
anticipate growing something next and
what we're going to do with them
is we're just going to bury them in that
Trench
so burying kitchen scraps
is a method of composting
and that is feeding the soil that's
feeding the microbiology in the soil
near where your plants are going to grow
this method may be a little bit quicker
than the compost pile but you don't have
a huge wide variety of diversity as in
the regular compost pile so it's an
awesome method and I do recommend it so
here's the last method I'm going to talk
about and that is drying your kitchen
scraps beforehand and then grinding and
mixing them up now this method Works
especially well with the eggshells and I
believe I mentioned that before if you
dry out your eggshells and you crush
them up into a fine powder it's going to
be more bioavailable quicker to the
microbes in the soil and then hence to
the plants so check this out these are
dried kitchen scraps that are ground up
and you can see how well it's broken
down so far but there's no composting
that has happened yet in this because
the moisture is gone and there are no
microbes or soil biology working on this
this is a great food for your garden if
mixed into the top layer of soil all you
need is a little bit of moisture and
then that microbiology will start to
work on it very very quickly so how do
you do this well there's a lot of
different ways and you can just put
these things in a dehydrator and then
kind of crush them up yourself in some
fashion
my wife actually shout out to her
she got me a piece of equipment that
goes in the kitchen it's a kitchen
composter and I didn't even have a clue
it was for my birthday I didn't have a
clue I didn't ask for it and she
surprised me with it and I was a little
skeptical at first but boy does it make
some amazing stuff for the garden now
it's not necessary that you have that
piece of equipment to do this you can do
it the old-fashioned way like I just
said you can dry it out in the oven even
and then crush it up by hand but if
you're interested I will leave a link to
that piece of equipment in the
description below and if you use it and
like it give a shout out to her in the
comments section below if you found that
information helpful let me know in the
comment section below or of course if
you have any questions also leave them
for me in the comments section below now
I want you to go check out this video
right here which shows you how to
Trellis and prune cucumbers for a huge
yield have a beautiful blessed day we'll
see you next time bye
thank you