Homemade Liquid Lawn Fertilizer

A lush, green lawn is both beautiful and inviting, but keeping your lawn green and healthy requires some feeding and care. Making homemade fertilizer is easy and will help you grow a spectacular lawn.

Get your hands on some quality manure. Chicken or horse manure works best. Fill a burlap bag with manure, tie off the top, and put in a 5-gallon bucket. Fill with nonchlorinated water. Essentially, you are making a "tea bag" of fertilizer which will now "steep." Allow it to sit for about a week, agitating once a day. Then suspend the bag over the bucket until it stops dripping. The liquid should look like regular tea. To make tea quicker, put manure straight into bucket and fill with water. Let sit two to three days, then strain into another bucket. Spray tea onto lawn. Repeat about once a week.

Again, this is a "tea bag" procedure. Fill a burlap bag with mulch. Add 2 tbs. molasses, which contains many different types of sugar. Also add 2 tbs. seaweed or fish emulsion, which contains micronutrients. If available, add a handful or two of hay. Tie top of sack and put into a 5-gallon bucket. Fill with nonchlorinated water. Let sit for three or four days, agitating two to three times a day to aerate. Then suspend bag over bucket to allow liquid to drip into bucket. Spray liquid on lawn once a week or as needed.

Mix together a can of beer, a can of soda (not diet), 1/2 cup liquid soap, 1/2 cup liquid ammonia, 1/2 cup mouthwash, 1/2 cup molasses. Beer and soda help to activate healthy microbes in the grass, while the mouthwash discourages bothersome insects. The ammonia provides nitrogen to encourage growth. There are many lawn tonic recipes out there, so it's a good idea to try a few and see what works best for you and your particular grass and outdoor conditions.