Don't Toss Those Banana Peels: Use Them To Give New Life To Your Rose Bushes

From smoothies to muffins, there's always a way to repurpose bananas into something useful. Meanwhile, their peels are typically discarded. If you have a garden, however, you can make something out of the entire fruit. Banana peels don't mean much to humans, but they're the perfect item to help your roses bloom. Just like bananas offer up plenty of nutrients for people, the peels have all the right components to ensure that roses grow beautifully. The potassium-rich ingredient keeps roses strong and produces strong stems.

The flowers require potassium to stave off diseases, so you can ensure that any pesky pests won't become a thorn in your rose bush's side. Plus, potassium produces healthier buds and retains the gorgeous green hue in the flowers' foliage. Using the fruit's leftovers for magnesium is another one of the best banana peel uses, as roses use magnesium to fortify their cell walls in order to absorb more nutrients. Additionally, magnesium improves the soil quality in your garden.

In order to reap all the benefits of banana peels, simply chop them up and add them to your compost pile (this guide to at-home composting may help) or just put them a few inches into the soil. Banana peels can take a few weeks, or even months, to decompose, so composting them is the best choice. The humid environment in the compost pile will make the peels break down faster, so the roses can access the nutrients sooner rather than later.

Roses benefit from fertilization every three or four weeks, so you can toss the peels in using that timeframe. If you follow that, though, make sure the peels are actually decomposing within three weeks. Since they take longer to naturally break down, you can opt for other ways to infuse your rose bush's soil with banana peels. Blending dried peels into a powder or "brewing" a banana peel tea by letting the discarded peels sit in water for a few days are easy ways to make sure your roses are getting their nutrients in on time.

As much as bananas are rich in nutrients, they're not impactful enough to solely fertilize roses, so these methods are often combined with other fertilizers. If that's what you're doing, try not to let your rose bush be exposed to too much potassium. An excess of the mineral could affect the flowers' growth rate and cause a deficiency in other nutrients. Potassium toxicity isn't all that common in plants, but if your roses' leaves start to yellow and develop brown spots, it's time to give the bananas a break. Thankfully, rose bushes aren't the only plants that benefit from the ingredient. You shouldn't use banana peels for houseplants since they can attract pests, but the peels are perfect for an outdoor vegetable garden.