When growing a garden we all know the soil needs lots of organic matter. Plenty of leaves, compost, manure, and mulch. We want to build the soil up and we want to use the best garden fertilizer possible. Jason typically dumps on 13x13x13 (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium) and tills everything together.
All of the above is good and we plan to continue doing it. Especially piling on the carbon (wood chips, leaves etc) and adding a high nitrogen manure on top (like chicken poo) in the fall. But I’ve found the best garden fertilizer for spring and it may not be what you expect.
Let me explain 🙂
I showed up at the farm where we have a herd share to pick up my weekly gallon of milk, and like always I read the notes and lists of extra available items. 1 item read as follows: “Sour milk for feeding pigs or use as fertilizer $2“. While it made sense to feed it to pigs, the fertilizer part was interesting to me.
But as I drove home, a little memory jiggled to the top. A patch of grass that always grew 2-3x thicker and taller than the grasses around it. When we milked, occasionally a cow would need medicine and her milk would be dumped while she was on the medicine.
That lush green patch was where we dumped the bad milk!
Another memory popped up. In the Farmer Boy book (part of the Little House Series), Almanzo grows a prize winning pumpkin by feeding it milk.
The next week I went to get my gallon of milk and looked for the sour milk. Sure enough, he still had some. I bought a bucket full, took it home and dumped it around the young tomato plants. This stuff was sour, curdled and chunky, but being raw milk, it wasn’t too offensive, I was really curious to see what would happen.
Within 2 weeks, I could see a huge change. The plants had doubled in size and were already in bloom! Most of the early blooms didn’t set, but another week showed tiny tomatoes setting.
I bought another 2 buckets of the sour milk and poured it along the bean rows, in our raised beds and on a few potted plants that we had wintered over.
Now in July we’re seeing the results. Typically we don’t get ripe tomatoes until the end of August (blame the long growing season of the plant, the poor subsoil that town gardeners deal with, whatever), but we are already getting tomatoes! Jason just brought one in the other night and another one is on the vine nearly ready to be picked.
The green beans are also doing amazing. However… I poured the sour milk right at the plant stalks. This was a bad idea since the roots didn’t need to go anywhere due to all the nutrients needed being right there. We have to be careful picking them or they uproot.
The best garden fertilizer would be milk!
Why milk? I’m not a scientist, but I have a few theories.
- First of all, raw milk is incredibly nutrient dense. Especially this milk as it is from cows fed an all grass/hay diet.
- Secondly the overgrowth of bacteria (what makes milk sour) would be highly beneficial to the soil’s microbes, fungi and beneficial bacteria.
- Finally, this is a ready nutrient. It doesn’t need broken down first like organic matter, nor does it need time to dissolve/work like a granular fertilizer.
Does the milk HAVE to be raw? I would guess not… however, pasteurized milk won’t have the same enzymes and good bacteria in it as the heat kills them so there could be a difference. I guess the only way to find out would be to give it a try.
So what do you think? Will you try putting milk on your garden next spring?
I have used whey from cheesemaking to water plants, and saw some pretty good results. Most of the time, though, my whey is too acidic and I figure it would be bad for them. If you’re using sour milk, though, maybe I’ll give it another try this summer. The cow calved yesterday, so we’re looking forward to good milk products again soon!
I have no idea about the whey for plants, but I do know it’s great for hogs… maybe you need none of those for your whey 🙂
Someday we want a cow. The farm we were buying from sold and the owner is moving back to Ireland. Last week I got my last gallon 🙁
The plants love the whey as well as the milk. 🙂 The milk is high in the calcium that many plants need. 🙂
Can you use sour milk in the compost pile?
That all depends on how you are doing your compost. If you are just tossing stuff into a pile and letting it break down, by all means toss the sour milk on. However, if you are going for a ph balanced compost pile then I really don’t know.
We would like to do more serious composting but in our little plot it’s just not feasible right now. I just hollowed out an area in the back where we toss all of our scraps.
Wow, I had no idea you could use sour milk for fertilizer, but it certainly seems to do the trick! Thanks for sharing at Merry Monday!
I myself use powdered milk on my plants and have always been told that the milk contains calcium that plants need. I also save my banana (potassium) peels and wrap the peel around the root ball of those plants that I am going to be placing in garden along with a crushed egg shell ( more calcium). My garden has really improved since the addition of milk, banana peels and egg shells.
We don’t eat many bananas but I will try to remember now to put the peels in our compost bucket. We already save all our egg shells for that purpose. 🙂
I remember reading that book as a child and how he grew the pumpkin with milk. Great memories. I haven’t considered this for our small garden but thanks for the tip. #HomeMattersParty
We just started a garden so this is fascinating to me. Saw this on TTA but I hope you’ll start posting on our party too. It’s called Farmhouse Friday. Thanks for sharing!
When you mentioned milk it struck a chord for me also. I read Farmer Boy and remember Alonzo feeding milk to the pumpkins, too. I’m going to give it a go but where would I get sour milk? I could give it regular milk. I wonder if that would be just as good?
Thanks so much for the tip. I started tomato plants from seed this year and they are doing well but here in CT we can’t plant til almost May 30th. I’m thinking of putting them outside anyway and covering them at night.
Thanks again, Linda @Craftsalamode.com
I don’t know how I missed your comment Linda, I’m super sorry about that. As for milk… It doesn’t have to be sour. I just called a local farm and asked if they had raw milk I could have/buy for my garden and got the sour milk that way. I do think it needs to be raw, or at the very least whole milk to work the best.
This is such a good tip! I’ve never heard of using raw milk in the garden, but you’re right – it is such a nutritional powerhouse! I’ll have to check this out. Thanks!