14 Creative Ways to Use Food Scraps?
1. Composting:
Composting is one of the best ways to use your food scraps to create a healthy soil amendment for your garden. This kind of amendment will improve the texture and the fertility of your garden’s soil.
You can use red worms or other composting methods to compost all of your food scraps, so you have nothing to worry about when it comes to cleaning out your fridge! Use these compostable bags if you are not into DIY composting.
2. Chicken Feed :
Chickens are brilliant when it comes to searching for their meals; they often peck at random until they find something that interests them.. which means that if you’re growing veggies and fruits, the chances are that they will love your scraps! I’ve never raised chickens myself, but I know people who have. It is a bit of a commitment, though.
3. Teas:
You can create teas out of many different foods, including fruits, vegetables, herbs, and even grains! All you need to do is take the scraps (stems included) and steep them in boiling water for an hour or so, then use it like regular tea after straining away any pulp or other solids. You can also add other ingredients like apple cores before steeping if you’re trying to get rid of them!
4. Compost Tea :
This one’s pretty self-explanatory; compost tea is simply tea that has had compost added into it while it was brewing .. which makes it unique for the garden (and maybe makes your tea taste a little funny, depending on how long it steeped for).
5. Animal Feed :
You can even use your scraps to feed livestock or just about any other pet you have running around! Even if the animal doesn’t eat vegetables, they will probably still love them as treats. Keep in mind that if you feed an animal something specific like grapes, they might not handle them the same way we do and get sick.
However, there is no harm in trying and seeing what happens! Just don’t overfeed any new food to non-humans because their digestive systems are different than ours, and they can become overwhelmed easier.
6. Composting Worms:
If you’re familiar with composting already, then the chances are that you also heard about ‘red wiggler’ composting worms. These are some of the best types of worms to use for composting because they feed on all kinds of food waste, including meat and dairy products! You can feed them your scraps or even buy special red worm castings, worm poop that you can add to your garden soil.
7. Compost Tea Recipe :
This recipe is designed explicitly for homemade compost tea brewers looking for the perfect blend of nutrients to help their plants grow into beautiful specimens!
8. Fermentation:
If composting is not your thing, then another option would be fermentation! All you have to do is take your vegetable scraps (alone or combined with other ingredients) and ferment them in a brine solution for a few days to a week.
Doing this will create an environment rich in ‘good’ bacteria, which you can use as an all-natural fertilizer for your garden!
9. Fruit & Vegetable Scraps Salad :
OK, I know that posting recipes isn’t the main point of an article like this (I’ll save those for my next post), but this one deserves at least a short mention! All you have to do is chop up all of the fruit and vegetable scraps from your kitchen into small pieces and place them on a plate .. voila! You can season this salad with some salt if it happens to be bland, but otherwise, it’s very nutritious and great for health too
10. Feed Them To Your Compost Pile:
If all else fails and you can’t figure out what to do with your vegetable and fruit scraps, don’t throw them out! Please place them in a designated area of your garden that isn’t being used as often.
Most compost piles have a certain amount of nitrogen-rich material already inside them so that those items will welcome additions to the bank. Or if that’s not available, toss them into some soil or potting mix instead!
11. Soil Conditioner :
This is one option I haven’t tried yet, but I’ve heard mixed reviews about it. All you have to do is take your scraps and grind them down until they are lovely, then sprinkle this on top of the soil before using them as fertilizer. The theory is that the high nitrogen content will help your plants grow healthier and faster, but I’m not sure if it’d be worth using this for veggies or maybe just flowers.
12. Compost Your Scraps :
OK, you have a compost bin already, but what do you do with your scraps? This website mixes all of your food waste with some dirt and moistens the mixture well before placing it near a corner in your garden. Doing so will provide nutrients for your soil while keeping pesky pests from getting into the rest of your vegetables!
13. Top Dress Your Plants :
Similar to the idea of adding compost scraps to your soil, you can also sprinkle a little bit of it on top of the dirt around your plants every so often. Just make sure that it’s ‘finished’ compost and not fresh material because fresh stuff will burn plant roots if it gets too close!
14. Eggshells:
We all know how great calcium is for our bodies but did you know that eggshells are especially rich in this vital mineral? So what do you do with those leftover shells after boiling and peeling some eggs? Well, grind them down (in a blender or mortar and pestle) until they become fine like sand, and sprinkle them around the base of your plants as fertilizer. This is especially great for tomatoes, which are the only fruits that benefit from high calcium levels in their soil!
15. Nitrogen-Rich Soil:
If you’re starting a new garden, then chances are you don’t have any good dirt to use .. well, instead of buying bags of topsoil at your local store, why not just make it yourself? Just take some compost, farmer’s manure, and loamy earth (which can be found at nurseries) and mix it so that they become integrated.
16. Eggshells As A Mulch :
I always knew that eggshells were good ‘fertilizer,’ but I didn’t realize that you could also spread them around as mulch! All you have to do is fill up an aluminum pan with the eggshells, then set them on fire and let them burn until there’s nothing left but fine white ash .. this stuff has more than enough of the ‘good’ stuff that plants need, so all you have to do is sprinkle it around your garden once in a while
17. Coffee Grounds:
Another one of my friends recently asked me what he should do with his leftover coffee grounds (he works at Starbucks), and I didn’t know either! But according to this website, coffee grounds are high in phosphorus which makes them great for reducing acidity levels in the soil. All you have to do is sprinkle these around your plants (especially if they’re veggies like tomatoes or corn) every couple of months, and you’ll be good to go!
18. Compost Tea:
Just like compost, this sounds great, but I’m pretty sure the only people who do this are those hippies living off the grid in their mobile homes .. either way, though, it’s a relatively simple process to make (according to Wikipedia). All you need me compost, water, and molasses (whiapparentlyhat makes it taste so bad).