Sourdough Starter Might Be the Secret Weapon for Your Garden—Here's How (2024)

Trending Videos

If you’ve been looking for organic fertilizer to help your garden flourish this spring, you might need to look no further than your kitchen cabinets. Sourdough starter is an easy way to give your plants a well-rounded fertilizer that will help them grow and even prevent diseases.

Whether you’ve got leftover starter you want to use up or just don’t want to waste the extra discard you have left from baking, your plants will definitely benefit from what you’re not using yourself.

To get started with this fertilizer method yourself, all you’ll need is sourdough starter and water to dilute it. Make sure the mix is diluted enough that your plants can entirely soak up the liquid without leaving any starter behind on the surface—this will help prevent starter from sticking to the top of the soil and growing mold.

Feed the mixture to your indoor or outdoor plants for a little extra fertilizer. Water the plants from the base (avoiding the leaves) or by bottom-watering with the diluted starter.

So, why does sourdough starter work so well for plant growth? Yeast is the main component that actually adds a lot of length (and life) to your plants—it gives them an extra nutrient boost and can even help them photosynthesize, leading to faster growth.

Plant growth isn’t the only benefit you’ll reap from using sourdough starter in your garden, though. Starters also contain lactic acid bacteria, a good bacteria that can help your plants fight disease (and yes, this bacteria will also help your plants grow even faster as well). When you add lactic acid bacteria to your soil, you might even improve its quality and water retention—a massive benefit to any outdoor garden.

Acetic acid bacteria, also found in sourdough starters, has been linked to better harvests—which means your plants might yield more blooms, leaves, or produce than usual if you use sourdough starter in your garden.

As an entirely organic and safe method of fertilization, using sourdough starter in your garden means you get the added bonus of knowing exactly where your fertilizer comes from and what’s in it.

As with all fertilizers, it’s best not to use sourdough starter on your plants more than once a month. This will keep your garden flourishing without damaging your plants or altering the state of your garden’s soil.

As for using sourdough starter in your compost, it certainly won’t hurt—but it probably won’t contribute much to composting either. It’s best to add the sourdough starter directly to the soil of the plants you’re hoping to fertilize for the most beneficial results.