Bananas are delicious and it's a shame that you have to throw the peel away — except — you don't! It turns out a banana peel can be very beneficial to your garden. Once you've finished your nutritious snack, you can keep it eco-friendly by using the peels in your garden in these three awesome ways:

Compost Tea
Any time you soak a solid in a liquid for a couple of days or more, that liquid leeches some of the nutrients out of the solid. This is called a compost tea. Since we don’t eat enough bananas at one time to warrant running the dehydrator, I put the peels into one of these 2-quart pitchers about 3/4 full of water and let them sit in the fridge. In this case, the water is drawing out some of the potassium, phosphorus and other micronutrients from the peels, making the compost tea rich with nutrients. When we eat a banana, I’ll tear the peeling into narrow strips and chop them up into small chunks. Those chunks go into the water and sit in the fridge until we have eaten enough bananas to fill the pitcher. At that point, I let the pitcher sit for one more day until we eat another banana — at which time, I strain the liquid off the banana peels into another pitcher, clean the first pitcher, fill it 3/4 full of water again, and repeat the process. I keep the banana tea in the fridge so that it doesn’t go bad until I’m ready to use it One way to use the mixture is as a liquid fertilizer. Just mix a cup into a gallon of water, and water the base of your plant.

Dry Fertilizer
Another way I intend to use banana peels in my garden is as a dry fertilizer. When the banana tea has steeped long enough, and I have strained the solids off the liquid, I break out our food dehydrator! If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can spread the peels out on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for about 8 hours at the lowest setting on your oven. Once dry, you can store them as is in an air-tight container, or do what I do and pulverize them with a mini chopper Really, you would get a finer grind on the peels if you used a coffee grinder but since I don’t have one the chopper will have to do for now. Just understand the smaller particles break down faster and becomes more readily available to the plants. When I plant something new, I’ll be adding 2-3 tablespoons of the powdered banana peel in the planting hole with the seeds or seedling. The powdered peels will feed the seedling slowly and not scorch or burn the roots like commercial fertilizers may.

Natural Pest Control
Aphids will treat your garden like a buffet. However, they cannot stand banana peels. Just using peels in the garden is enough to deter aphids, but if you want to give your plants a little extra protection, use that banana tea we talked about earlier! I mix the banana tea with water at a 5:1 ratio (5 parts water to 1 part banana tea) in a spray bottle. The spray bottle I use has measurements on the side, so it’s easy to dilute the mixture to whatever I need. Spray the diluted tea directly on the leaves and stems of your plants. Any aphids that are on or near your plants will soon vanish and won’t return. (The spray also absorbs into the plant and helps feed it, as well.)

I'm going to have to try out this natural pest control! What an awesome idea. Not only is this an excellent idea to try now, but it'll also be effective when the collapse takes place and you're bugging in at your cabin! For more information on how you can utilize banana peels in the garden, visit Survival at Home!

Featured Image via Kate Fisher/Flickr