Fermented fruit fertiliser

Gather up your fallen and damaged fruit.

Having damaged or fallen fruit in your garden isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can extract more goodness from your fallen fruit befor eyou feed it to youtr chooks or add it to your compost. Just ferment it!

This info was originally included in a little article I wrote fro Grass Roots Magazine No. 273 Oct/Nov 2022 called, appropriately, ‘Fermented Fruit Fertilizer’.

Just as fermenting garden weeds or particular herbs such as Comfery and Nettles, fermentation is a great, totally natual way to get a little extra from your wastes. When you pick up fallen or dmaged fruit, don’t throw it away.

If you have any whole fruit or large pieces, cut then into smaller pieces.

Mix in a little molasses to kick things off.

Store it in a container and when you have a good amount, smash up the fruit a little to allow the fermenting microbes to get righrt inside and cover it with water, then put a lid on the container. Then put it somewhere shady and let it sit for two weeks to a month. It doesn’t matter if you leave it longer, I often forget.

As with any garden ferment, you can add a little molasses to get the process kicked right off. It’s not necessary but it can help.

The microbes doing the fermenting will break down the fruit into water soluble products, get rid of some of the other microbial nasties and prepare a nutritious tea for your garden.

All that you need to do is to strain the solid material out of the mix and keep the liquid. The solids can be added directly to youor garden, onto your compost or, best of all, into your worm farm. The worms love it!

Dilute the liquid at least 10 : 1 and use it to water the root zome of your plants. It is an especially good way of returning some of the nutrients to the tree that you got the fruit from. It’s better than leaving rotting fruit around to break down as it doesn’t attract pests. The soil microbes will devour it quickly and boost your plant with their by-products. Everybody wins, from the tiniest microbe to the tree (and don’t forget you too).

If you want to try and squeeze a little more ‘boom’ out of the wastes, try soaking them in vinegar for a week or two before disposing of them into your garden. This draws out some of the acid soluble chemicals that weren’t dissolved by the water. I’ve a whole page dedicated to vinegar extraction in the works. It’ll be on our composting anfd fertilizing page soon.