Your Rose Bushes Will Thrive With The Help Of A Common Kitchen Scrap

If gardens had a favorite food, it might just be bananas. Though overripe bananas are great at attracting hummingbirds, plants seem to prefer the peels. This is especially true for rose bushes, which appreciate the nutrients this part of the fruit adds to their soil. Banana peels are rich in potassium and supply smaller amounts of calcium, magnesium, zinc, and more. Plus, banana peels enrich rose garden soil with phenolic compounds that combat pests and diseases. Like other kitchen scraps you might toss into a compost pile, banana peels also enhance soil structure. This helps oxygen reach the roots of your rose bushes. The roots need oxygen to synthesize sugars and supply the rest of the plant with growth-fueling energy.

Roses need substantial quantities of potassium, which banana peels are happy to provide for free. This mineral is crucial for these beautiful shrubs because it supports root development and mitigates the effects of stress. The healthier your roses' roots, the better they can absorb other key nutrients. Potassium is also integral to photosynthesis, which powers growth and flowering, and helps rose bushes take in the right amount of water, which is important for producing lots of gorgeous flowers. This nutrient even helps the plants build strong cell walls. Roses that get plenty of potassium tend to grow vigorously and fend off pathogens.

Banana peels provide other types of assistance to roses too. For instance, they feed microbes that change nitrogen from the air into a form plants can use. These microbes also drive the decomposition process that turns organic matter into the humus plants depend upon for nutrition.

There are several ways to use banana peels in your rose garden. Depositing these peels in your compost pile is one easy way to unlock their benefits. Consider cutting them into small pieces to help them break down faster. If your compost bin is overflowing or you aren't set up to make it at home, put chopped-up peels in the soil surrounding your roses bushes. Place them near the plants' roots to encourage nutrient uptake. Burying them about 6 inches deep is ideal. As the peels decompose, they'll slowly release nutrients that help your roses thrive and might even encourage them to make more flowers throughout the growing season.

You could also turn banana peels into a DIY fertilizer tea you can feed to your roses whenever they need a nutrient infusion. Just dice a few peels, steep them in a bucket of water for two to three days, and pour the resulting liquid at the base of each rose bush in your garden. To create a nutrient booster that keeps longer than homemade fertilizer tea, dry a pile of banana peels and run them through a food processor to create a powder. You can keep this handy soil amendment in a jar and sprinkle bits of it near the bottoms of your rose bushes as needed. You can even use it on container-grown roses. Like buried banana peels, the powder supplies nutrients at a leisurely pace, which shouldn't stress out your plants.