It's been my experience that the beer formula doesn't really work as well as other fertilizers. It has no micros except Magnesium from the Epsom salts. Its all nitrogen. Its very over rated and has actually caused some of my plants to decline when I tried it. I don't recommend it at all.

i use the beer fertilizer with plain ammonia. my plants seem to like when i use it, and have put on a lot of growth. some people like it some dont. ive just been experimenting with it this summer.
jaci

I agree that some like it and some don't. I haven't done an actual "experiment" with it, but I used it for quite some time on my plants at work, and my plants didn't do well until I switched the fertilizer to what I use at home (Eleanors VF-11).

Again, that's just my opinion. Lots of people love it. Oh, and I think you're supposed to use the plain ammonia, not the scented one.

Gabi

I find that if you use less than the prescribed tablespoon/ gallon of water, it works much better. I have used it as a foliar spray and it works better that way. I've also used the lemmon scented ammonia once and had bubbles in my plants every watering for months. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, since it seemed to aeriate the soil quite well ;)

The reason your plants 'put on a lot of growth' with this mixture is because they are getting a front end load of nitrogen. The reason they look good and get all green and nice is from the Magnesium. But the fertilizer is absent or short on pretty much anything else your plant needs to stimulate blooming and healthy long term growth, and eventually you will get a radical salt build up in the container and need to repot or leach it out. Using it at the 'recommended' 1 Tablespoon per gallon actually burned some of my plants.

It's great that it works for some folks, but I will never use it again.

Last summer I heard someone mention giving prenatal vitamins to your plants, I made a batch of beer fertilizer with a couple vitamins in the mix and the plants seemed to do better. I've also mixed it with asprin in it and had better results of rooting cuttings.

Mentha,

Hmm. I never thought of prenatal vitamims. But that makes sense, in a way. If you're doing the beer fertilizer plus supplementing with prenatal vitamins, I understand why you'd want to give your babies some aspirin. How's it working for you?

Bihai, I appreciate your comments. When I looked into it, I thought it might be a fertilizer that would bring on the lush growth that you see with grocery store plants. I find that these kinds of plants essentially "burn out" - living their "life span" in a short time because they're basically forced to grow fast and furiously. I prefer a more natural growth cycle. VF-11 has worked well for me because, I think, it's a more natural "food."

Denise in Omaha

imatallun,
I'd like to say I use the beer fertilizer faithfully, but sometimes it's all I can do just watering all of my plants. I am really trying not to burn out again, I only have a few plants left, I just now got back into plant trading after two years of refusing to send out anything. I also use VF-11 and fish emulsion when I think of it. I sometimes use tomato fertilizer, acid loving plants love tomato fertilizer.

I use the asprin as a synthetic salyx acid (willow tea) I prefer willow, but I haven't been to the river bed this year yet, so asprin has to be it. Asprin heats up the plant and causes it to root quicker.

imatallun:

i made some willow tea/water last week for the first time to help root some cuttings but it smelled funny. is this normal? how do i keep it and how long? what i did feed it to seemed to like it, i only tried it on my poor guinea plants though;)

can you tell how many asprin to a gallon of willow water? and maybe your method of making this concoction.
thnx
jaci

Unless I misread this, I wouldn't use the aspirin WITH the willow tea. I think (from my reading), that it's one or the other, not both (as the aspirin has in it the same ingredient in the willow tea), thought to encourage rooting.

Jaci,
What I do to prevent most of the smell is just put a willow branch or two in the rooting water with whatever cutting I'm rooting at the time. Crush the stem to release the salyx acid and then put it in the water. I don't tend to make willow tea as a tisane.

If you're rooting in soil or perlite, put the willow stems in water and let them sit for a couple days before watering with the willow water. By that time your willow should have rooted itself.

Use about half an asprin, crushed, to a quart of water. Do not use with the willow water. Willow works so much better though.

hi sight,

I had been looking for the clear ammonia also and thought I would let you know where i finally found it. I found it at Walmart. Good luck in your search as I know it can be difficult to find at times.

Meesh