Ditch The Fertilizer: Compost This Popular Flower & Give Your Soil A Major Nutrient Boost

Sure, there are numerous flowering plants that can enrich your garden's soil, but what about flowers after they've bloomed? If you've never heard of composting flower scraps for a DIY soil enricher, then let us be the first to introduce you to this gardening trick. Besides their obvious benefits during the blooming season, some flowers can continue to improve the health of your garden even after they are no longer rooted in the ground. Mexican sunflowers (Tithonia diversifolia), for example, can give your soil a generous boost of nitrogen. The catch is that they need to be composted first, but not in the way you might think.

When Mexican sunflowers are composted correctly and combined with other macronutrients, such as phosphorus, they can boost a plant's ability to produce fruit and flowers. This process of using organic matter like plants as a fertilizer is often referred to as "green manure." As an alternative to standard or synthetic manure, this involves using fresh, green plants as the soil booster. Many gardeners recommend using the "chop-and-drop" method specifically for Mexican sunflowers, as these flowers maximize their nutrients directly before they start reproducing. This is why many gardeners plant Mexican sunflowers — not just for their aesthetic, but for their ability to serve as a manure alternative.

To use your Mexican sunflowers as green manure, you will need to ensure your flowers are at the correct stage before cutting them. These flowers are best for green manure right before they begin to reproduce, just before they start to produce flower buds. This is when the nutrients are concentrating in the stems to support flower growth, and a good time to harvest and finely chop up the stems and leaves. The finer the chop, the faster the soil can absorb the nutrients. You can use the freshly chopped stems as your soil boost, but you can also set them aside and allow them to break down and decompose before adding them to your garden as compost.  

When adding your Mexican sunflower manure to your garden, make sure to keep it several inches from the actual roots of your other plants. If you apply it too closely to the roots, you can risk fungal rot. It's best to apply the green manure in layers of 2 to 3 inches. If you want to boost your soil even more, you can combine it with a phosphorus-rich material like bone meal fertilizer. Since Mexican sunflowers contain high amounts of nitrogen and potassium, the bone meal can help to complete the ideal fertilizer trifecta. 

Even when they're just planted in your garden, sunflowers act as soil boosters for the rest of your plants. Thanks to their extensive roots, sunflowers have the ability to aerate your soil and improve its drainage. This means nutrients, water, and air are able to be better circulated throughout the soil. Once sunflowers have finished blooming, the rest of your garden can enjoy their beneficial properties.