Want to save money in your garden and grow healthier plants? One of the easiest ways to do this is to make your own free fertilisers with organic materials and household food waste, including banana peels.
1. Banana Water
Soak fresh banana peels in water for a day or two. Then use the water with the leached nutrients in it to water your staghorn (or other plants). Don’t let the peel go to waste though!
2. Add Peels to your Soil or Worm Farm
Chop up banana peels and add to your compost. The microbes will help turn this nutrient-rich organic matter into plant food. Or dig it into the soil around other plants to build up the organic matter and attract worms.
TIP: The smaller you cut the pieces, the greater the surface area for microorganisms to get to work and the faster it will break down to feed your plants.
3. Chopped Dried Banana
If your staghorn is indoors or close to the house and you are worried about the banana peel attracting fruit flies, there’s an easy alternative. Dry out the chopped banana pieces in slow oven and then use them.
Or put the chopped dried banana out in the sun under a strainer to dry out for a day or two into ‘banana chips‘.
Scatter dried banana pieces in the centre of the plant and water them in. You can also bury these in pot plant soil.
Or you can also mix them into the sphagnum moss if you are replanting or starting out with a new staghorn fern.
Each time you water or it rains, they will provide slow release nutrition.
4. Banana Peel on a Trunk or Backboard
If growing a staghorn, elkhorn, orchid or similar plants, put a whole banana peel between the plant and the backboard or tree trunk it is supported on.
By placing it in this position, the banana peel will gradually decay and slowly release nutrients when the plant is watered or it rains.
