It's a sad sight to see when your tomato plant has gotten droopy. One expert gardener is sharing his tips for growing tomatoes with his TikTok audience.
The scoop
FlavCity (@bobbyparrish) is showing an unconventional way to revive tomato plants. He explains that users can add banana peels and water to a bowl to help ripen tomatoes and bring vitality back to the plants.
@bobbyparrish 🍌 + 💦 = 🍅 #gardenhack #gardentips #tomatoplants #gardeninghacks ♬ original sound - FlavCity
The user explains that the peels and the water should sit at room temperature overnight before straining out the peels in the morning (save the fruit for banana bread). The video shows dark, murky water that FlavCity explains is very high in potassium.
"Take that water out to the garden and give the tomatoes a really good drench," he recommends.
In a few days, you'll start to notice the plants perk up and the fruits transition from green to delectable red. Plus, he notes that the resulting tomatoes are "juicy and sweet like sugar."
How it's helping
This hack works because potassium is a critical limiting nutrient for plants, along with nitrogen and phosphorous. The plants struggling to hold their leaves or changing color may be a sign that they need a nutrition shake — with the help of banana peels.
FlavCity's tip is a great way to use up banana peels, too, which are often just discarded after the fruit has been removed. This keeps these valuable, nutrient boosters out of the landfills where they would normally just decay and produce planet-warming methane gas.
Another TikToker used banana peels for a similar concoction of "jungle juice." The mixture includes fermented organic banana peels along with leafy greens like kudzu, comfrey, weeds, and spider lilies. After diluting it, the TikToker uses it as a fertilizer for the plants.
What everyone's saying
Users loved this low-waste hack for boosting tomato plants. "Just did this with mine the other day! I had green [tomatoes] for the longest and they are starting to turn red," one user wrote.
"I've been doing this with my grape tomatoes for a few months now and they are THRIVING," another user shared.
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