Put pantry staples—like baking soda, vinegar and olive oil—to good use in your garden. These genius ideas will encourage growth, keep pests at bay and ensure your garden is the most beautiful one on the block. You can repurpose these common household items in your garden, too.
So What Makes Plants Grow Faster & Bigger? Water, air, light, soil nutrients, and the correct temperature coupled with affection and care are the most basic factors to make a plant grow faster and bigger.
While watering your yard plants with bottled water may be impractical, using bottled spring water for your indoor plants will make a big difference for them. To give your plants the absolute best, rainwater and bottled spring water are your best options. Any water containing sugar or salt will hurt them!
Try Coffee Ground Fertilizer
Spread your used coffee grounds out on the sheet, and allow them to dry completely. Sprinkle the grounds around the base of your acid-loving plants. This works because coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, magnesium, and potassium—all-important plant nutrients.
Epsom Salt for Plants
Aside from the anecdotal evidence about human benefits, Epsom salt does seem to help plants. Generations of gardeners have said it helps their plants grow bushier, produce more flowers and have better color. It's also said to help seeds germinate and repel slugs and other garden pests.
Nitrogen is the growth element that promotes green, leafy growth. As a primary component of proteins, nitrogen is part of every living cell. Therefore, this element is usually more responsible for increasing plant growth than any other nutrient.
Baking soda on its own can't be used to fertilize plants, but you can use it with other products to make a good replacement for Miracle Gro garden fertilizer. Just combine 1 tablespoon of epsom salt with a teaspoon of baking soda and a half teaspoon of household ammonia.
'It has antifungal properties that can help prevent the growth of mold and mildew on your plants,' explains Diana Cox, expert gardener at The Gardening Talk. 'It can also help to stimulate root growth, provide essential nutrients to your plants, and it's also been found to increase the germination rate of seeds.
Also, soil that is saturated with a sugar solution can attract harmful micro-organisms that can affect the plant's health. There is no scientific evidence that feeding plants sugar water is conducive to plant health, on the contrary, it can harm your plants and even kill them.
Coffee grounds have a high nitrogen content, along with a few other nutrients plants can use. In compost, they help create organic matter that improves the ability of soil to hold water. It's best to add coffee grounds, not whole beans, to compost.
All plants need space to grow, the right temperature, light, water, air, nutrients, and time.
When you try to grow plants using another liquid, the molecules (or what makes up that liquid) are shaped differently from water molecules. Because of their different shape, they block the process of photosynthesis from occurring, so the seeds do not know they should grow!
What our experts say. Our team of gardening experts were in agreement: pasta water is a good way to save water and, provided it's not salted or seasoned, won't harm your plants. And while it might be able to offer very mild fertilization, it shouldn't be substituted for your usual house plant feed.
One of the more recent gardening myths circulating is related to giving plants sugar in order to help them grow. But does sugar really help plants grow? The short answer is no–plants naturally use the process of photosynthesis to produce their own sugar—or glucose—as they need it.
Dawn dish soap can save your plants from pest infestation, but it can damage them as well — this may sound contradictory, but it's true! Too much of it dissolved in water can burn the leaves of your sensitive plants. If you want to make this work, do these things: For a gallon of water, 1 teaspoon of it is fine.
Watering plants with milk is fine providing you mix it with water first. Milk contains proteins, vitamin B, sugars and minerals like calcium that are beneficial for plant growth, increasing their health in the case of crops like apples, as well as deterring pests and viral and bacterial diseases.
Sprinkle full-strength baking soda on garden soil in paths and around plants where insects are an issue. The best way to apply the dust evenly and without over-application is by using a flour sifter. As a soil dust and repellant, baking soda is effective against ants, roaches, silverfish, slugs, and snails.
It is perfectly safe for plants when properly diluted and used in moderation. Adding hydrogen peroxide to water promotes better growth in plants and boosts roots ability to absorb nutrients from the soil. Diluted 3% peroxide adds needed aeration to the soil of plants and helps control fungus in the soil.