This just in! Fermented “weed tea” more nutrient dense than commercial fertilizers for half the price. Gardeners rejoice!

Long before modern agriculture and the widespread availability of chemical salt based fertilizers, our ancestors fed their gardens with compost, manure, urine (sometimes?), and PLANTS. This method of making a “weed tea” from unwanted plants has been around since the 1930’s and originated in Japan, and is known by the name Fermented Plant Juice or FPJ.

Why use weeds? Well, because most plants that we refer to as “weeds” are considered to be in a group of plants called dynamic accumulators. These are plants with long taproots that pull minerals from deep down into the soil that most conventional crops can’t reach. Then they make these nutrients more bioavailable by storing them in their leaves and stems.

Most chemical fertilizers on the market contain little more than NPK (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). They offer the plant a short burst of the base nutrients. Whereas weeds, along with NPK, contain a diverse blend of micronutrients like magnesium, boron, copper, iron, manganese, zinc, selenium, silicon, and sulfur.

What plants are best for “weed tea”?

First we need to collect the plant(s) we are going to use for our Fermented Plant Juice (FPJ). Care should be taken when choosing your plant cuttings since the success of your FPJ is directly related to the quality of the plants used. Plants should be very fresh. Cuttings that have been taken and left to dry out will not have enough moisture for complete fermentation to occur.

Some examples of fresh cuttings that would be great for FPJ are tomatoes, dandelions, hemp leaves, zucchini, eggplant, bananas, stinging nettles, mullen, garlic, and many more!

If you want a good cheat sheet for the garden, download this Dynamic Accumulator chart from our store and post it in your grow room. The most important thing to remember is to have a high water content in your cuttings so that they can properly ferment.

The second most important thing to remember when collecting cuttings for FPJ is the time of the day. All cuttings and plants should be harvested early in the morning. You want to harvest the plants when they still have the morning dew on them. This will both give you a higher water content, and it will also be when the plant is packed with the most nutrients and when the microbes are the most diverse.

Gathering the Supplies

The production is very simple and cheap. For 0.5L FPJ you need the following utensils:

• 1x 1L jar
• Approx. 500-800G brown unrefined sugar (can also be made with normal sugar)
  • Note: Unrefined sugar still contains its molasses content
  • Note: Approx. weight because you need the same amount of sugar as plant matter
• Enough plant matter to fill your ¾ glass jar.
• Mixing bowl
• Paper towel or a tissue that breathes
• Rubber band
• Dark storage space
• (Optional) 1-2 tablespoons of LAB serum (speeds up the process).

*Tip: You will need to know the weight of your plant material for the second step. It’s best to weigh your mixing bowl before placing your chopped up plant material into it so that you can tare your scale.

Now that you have collected your plant material, you will need to increase the surface area by chopping it into little tater tot sized pieces. It is best to chop the plants directly into the mixing bowl to retain the most water and juice. If you have a larger amount of plant material you can lay it out on a tarp or concrete pad and chop it up with the straight edge of a shovel. This step is essential for proper fermentation. Increasing the surface area of the plant material allows more room for the sugar to attach to.

Next, weigh your plant material and add an equal amount of sugar. Mix vigorously. The sugar sucks water out of the plant material by osmotic pressure and brings many nutrients and microbes along with it. It also makes for an excellent food source for our microbes until they make it back to the soil.

At this point, you can add your LAB to the mixture. While not essential, LAB stimulates the fermentation process by breaking down the plant material through lactic acid fermentation and making the nutrients more bioavailable. Pour this resulting mix into the jar until it is 3/4 full and press it down so that there are no more air pockets. Next you add another 1/4″ of sugar to seal your mix and prevent unwanted fungi from colonizing.

Finally wipe down the rim of your jar with a vinegar soaked paper towel. This is the safest way to clean off the jar without using any harsh chemicals that can hurt the microbes or contaminate our FPJ. When the rim is clean, tie a paper towel or cheesecloth filter over the opening to allow gas to escape. If you put this in a sealed container, the CO2 produced during fermentation could cause the container to explode.

Leave this mixture for 3-5 days until a thick syrupy liquid has formed at the bottom of your container. The time you leave your ferment to sit is directly related to how much water was in your initial mix and the temperature of the space it was left to sit in. Strain off this liquid and discard the excess plant material in to your compost pile. Congratulations on your first FPJ!

How to use your new FPJ in the garden

This is the best part. A little bit of FPJ goes a long way. When using FPJ dilute it down to a ratio of 1:500 and spray it onto the surface of your leaves as a foliar feed, or in your water as a soil drench.

This means you can use 1 tablespoon of FPJ mixed with 2 gallons of water. Like many things in nature, FPJ is best used as part of a natural farming concoction called the “Maintenance Spray”. This includes 1 Tbsp FPJ, 1/2 Tbsp OHN, and 1 Tbsp of BRV. In this mix the FPJ acts as the fertilizer, OHN acts as protection against pathogens, and the BRV adds many amino acids, and wards off pests that would otherwise be attracted to the sugary solution. BRV also buffers the Ph on the surface of the leaf allowing the rapid conversion of any remaining sugar on the leaf surface.

Timing is everything!

Maintenance spray can be given from the end of the seedling phase until the second week of the flowering phase. The application is done by foliar fertilization. It is important to use a normal pump sprayer, otherwise the microbes will burst due to the pressure and the small openings.

Spraying should not be done during full light or high temperature, otherwise there is no possibility of transpiration. This leads to overheating of the plant and corresponding reduction of photosynthetic performance. The best time to spray is early in the morning before the sun comes up when there is still dew on the plants. If that is not possible, plants can also be sprayed in the evening after the direct sun is off the plants but before the temperatures drop for the night.

It is also possible to apply to the soil through watering, but not as efficient as via foliar fertilization.