Make It Yourself: Reuse Cooking Water as Fertilizer for your Garden!

Don’t toss that cooking water!!

Did you know that you can reuse the water you cooked your vegetables in to help fertilize your garden?

I do this all the time. Because we have a very small yard, I do container gardening and don’t have a compost pile.

To give my vegetables a little extra boost — and save water — I use my leftover cooking water and use it to water my plants. The nutrients from the vegetables will infuse the water, and feed your plants.

It’s easy. Just let the water cool to room temperature, and water your plants like you normally would.

For example, when I was making my Pac Choy Wraps with Rice, this is what I did:

• After steaming the rice, I took the steaming hot water, poured it into a pan, and threw in the pac choy scraps (that would normally go into compost or the garbage).
• Since the water was already steaming, I didn’t need to heat it up more.
• I let it cool and then watered my vegetables!